Why is the Virgin Birth Essential?

Christology: The Incarnation and the Virgin Conception

If you want to open up your Bibles again to John chapter 1, as I mentioned, or as we discussed last week, we're on the subject of Christology. We're looking at the subject of the incarnation and the virgin conception.

This is one of several specific points of doctrine that we're going to look at in regard to the concept that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man. Sometimes we'll hear the phrase, 100 God and 100 man.

And while I certainly wouldn't say that such a thing is wrong, I'm not here to challenge that, normally I prefer the term fully God and fully man, only because God is a being of infinite measure and thus when we talk about percentages it doesn't really fit.

Everything that is God made its home in Jesus Christ, and thus we can say He was fully God, He wasn't partially God. And so when somebody says 100%, that's not a, as I said, I understand what they're saying, but ordinarily what you'll hear me say is fully God and fully man.

In that, everything that makes a man a man, Jesus Christ was and is. And sometimes people take issue with that and they'll say, well, sin is a necessary quality, and Jesus Christ did not sin and so He wasn't truly a man.

And I say, but sin is not a necessary quality of man because Adam was made as a man and He was a man before He sinned. So sin is not a necessary quality of man, Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man.

And the first part of understanding that is understanding the incarnation and the virgin conception. Last week we looked at this section and we looked at what does the incarnation mean. If you weren't here with us, I want to give you the answers to fill in just so you have them.

What does incarnation mean? The word incarnate means to be put in flesh or to take on flesh. Carne, flesh, incarnate, to become flesh. The verse for that is John chapter 1 verse 14. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen His glory.

Glory as of the only begotten Son from the Father full of grace and truth. We see that the word became flesh. We talked about that a little bit last week, what that means. Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity has always existed, but Jesus of Nazareth as a man has not always existed.

Jesus as a man came into flesh in Bethlehem. Prior to that, He is the second person of the Trinity and always has been. He took on flesh, something new. This is a great issue with Islam, by the way. One of the greatest arguments of Islam is that God cannot be a man because there's a difference and a distinction between God and man and so the Muslim will say Jesus can't be God because God cannot become man.

They're too different. They're too distinct. They're ever more separated and they never two can come together and so we have to understand in one sense they're correct. God can't stop being God. You know we always say there's nothing God can't do.

A lot of things God can't do. God can't lie as He said. I don't lie. God can't violate His own nature. So we say God can't do. God can't become man and stop being God. And see that's the issue with the Islamic position is that if He become a man He had to stop being God, but He didn't stop being God.

He adopted the human nature without relinquishing the divine nature. Now there is a sense, and we're going to talk about this later, something called kenosis where He set aside His glory, but that doesn't mean He did away with His divinity.

We see Christ's divinity showing itself in many places in scripture. We see Jesus Christ's divinity showing itself in His life and when we get to the life and ministry of Christ we're going to look at some of those times and places where His divinity shone forth.

Where He knew things that no man can know. Where when He did things that no man can do. When the wind and the waves obeyed Him. That's not a normal guy, you know. So there's a sense in which we talk about the incarnation.

God takes on the human nature but doesn't stop being God. That's the key of the incarnation. It's not as if like the the tale of Hercules where the God intermarried with the human woman and gave birth to the half-God, half-human hybrid that was Hercules, right?

And He's not truly God and He's not truly man. You understand that's mythology, but that's the basis of the myth. He doesn't fit on an Olympus with the gods and He doesn't fit on earth with men. That's not what Jesus is and that's not what the church has ever taught about who Jesus is.

You understand what we're saying? Fully God. Fully man. Everything that is the nature of God. In fact, the Bible says that the deity of God dwelt in Christ bodily. All the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily, right?

That's in the book of Colossians says that. So that's the incarnation. The fullness of God indwelling a human man and He's both human and divine. Second and important doctrine related to the incarnation is the virgin conception.

Notice I said conception. I'm going over last week. Notice I said conception and not birth because Jesus' conception was He was conceived in the womb of a virgin but He was born naturally. He wasn't born, as the Roman Catholics believe, through some type of a transfer from the womb to the room.

They believe that He didn't come through a natural virgin, a vaginal birth. They don't believe that that happened because they don't believe that her virginity was disturbed. And so because they don't believe that was disturbed, He couldn't have come through natural means.

Some believe it was a almost as a like a movement of just sort of like Jesus coming out of the tomb. There's nothing that says the rock was moved before He came out. And so some people believe He was out before the rock, that the stone moving away wasn't to let Him out.

The stone moving away was to let people in to see that He was gone. Right. And so some people take that same idea and say, well, in the womb, like the tomb, He simply came out. He didn't. He wasn't born.

Right. I don't believe that. But I'm saying that's the that's the that's the idea. It's more like I hate to be crass, but sort of like Star Trek. He got beamed out. Right. He didn't get birthed. He just sort of got beamed from one location to the next.

We don't teach that. But that's a like I said, that's some do. But the the the virgin conception, we do know. Scripture says he was conceived by the Holy Spirit of God, not by a man. She said it. How can this be?

For I am a virgin. Right. I know, not a man in the sense of knowing in a carnal sense. We got to part three last time and we said there's three facts about the virgin conception that everyone should understand.

Denials of the Virgin Conception

Number one, there are those who identify as Christians who deny the virgin conception. Went over this last week. There are there are liberals. And I hate I thought that word gets thrown around so much.

So forgive me for just, you know, because I don't I don't honestly the word liberal and conservative is so useless anymore because so many people if I disagree with you, you're that. All right. I've been called a liberal.

I don't use the King James Bible, so I'm a liberal. I'm serious. I've been called a liberal because I don't use a King James Bible because I teach from the Greek and the Hebrew. That's what liberals do.

I'm serious. So what I'm saying is I think those words are meaningless in a lot of ways. They are. Touche. Yeah, I probably were. Yeah. If you ain't speaking in the king's English, you ain't doing it right.

So and if it was good enough for Paul and Silas, it's good enough for me. And if you think that's a joke, I've heard it. If the King James Bible was good enough for Paul and Silas, 1600 years before it was written, it was good enough for me.

It's not a joke. They were a joke. Their position is a joke. All right. So getting back, we talk about the virgin conception. There are men and women who claim to be preachers, claim to be pastors who deny the virgin conception.

They say that it's from a time when people didn't understand basic biology. I love it when I hear somebody say, well, they just didn't understand the virgins couldn't get pregnant. I said, Mary understood.

She said, I didn't know a man and I got pregnant. She knew it. She understood it scientifically. It wasn't normal. So that's where we left off last week. There are people who deny it. Now we're going to look at the last two.

Roman Catholic Teachings About Mary

So let her be on your sheet. There are unbiblical teachings connected to the virgin birth. There are unbiblical teachings connected to the virgin birth. How many of you have ever heard the term? I'll write it up here.

I hope this marker works. Immaculate conception. How many of you, when you heard that, thought it was talking about the conception of Jesus? That is not what that is. The immaculate conception in Roman Catholic theology is the teaching that Mary was conceived without sin and that she was sinless.

The immaculate conception is not about Jesus. It is about Mary being sinless. I'm not making this up. This is clearly taught in the Roman Catholic teaching. The immaculate conception refers to Mary herself.

This dogma was proclaimed by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854. Immaculate conception is Mary, not Jesus. Because they call Jesus the virgin conception. Hers is the immaculate conception because though she had an earthly father and an earthly mother, she was born without sin.

Therefore, the nature of Jesus could not be tainted from the father or the mother because his father was the Holy Spirit and his mother was a sinless maiden, virgin, and thus there was no taint to his divinity in taking on flesh.

And the argument from the Roman Catholic goes something like this. How could the sinless Son of God be born in the womb of a sinful woman? I'm not saying I agree. I'm just saying this is what they believe.

They believe that because Jesus needed a sinless womb, that Mary had to be kept from sin, kept from the stain of sin. And so the immaculate conception is not about Christ's conception, it's about Mary's conception.

There's a Roman Catholic priest who was doing a debate, Dr. James White, and he told a joke. And he said, the woman who was brought to Jesus, and Jesus said, let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.

He said, a rock flew and hit the lady. And Jesus said, Mom, I wasn't talking about you. But that is the view of Mary in Roman Catholic theology, is that she is without sin. But you say, but she said, I glorify in God my Savior.

A sinless person doesn't need a Savior. Right? That's Luke chapter one. She glorified in God. That's the magnificent, right? The Song of Mary, where she cried out to God her Savior. And they'll say, well, he saved her by keeping her from sin.

You got to answer for everything, right? They say that he did save her, but not by forgiving her sin, but by keeping her from sin. And again, it's my favorite Greek word, baloney. Yeah, it's baloney. It's not in the text.

There's nothing in the Bible to support this nonsense. Nobody had thought this, taught this for years, for centuries, proclaimed his dogma by the Roman Catholic Church, and now demanded dogma. You must believe it, if you are Roman Catholic.

No cafeteria Catholics. Remember John Paul II? No cafeteria Catholics. You can't take what you want and leave the rest. It's an all or nothing. Yeah, he said that. He said there should be no cafeteria Catholics.

You can't just take what you want and leave the rest. Which I will tell you, I agree. I agree with that, because I say the same thing about Scripture. You can't be a cafeteria Christian, take the parts you like and leave.

That's what people do with the virgin conception. People don't like that idea, so they take everything else and leave that. Or they don't like the idea of hell, so they take everything else and leave that.

So I agree with the cafeteria idea that we don't get to just decide what's true and what's not. But I'm just telling you, if you adopt Roman Catholicism, you are diving into a sea of teaching that is thrust upon you.

And one of the things that is taught is the sinlessness of Mary, and you must believe it. Another teaching that goes along with virgin conception is the teaching of the perpetual virginity of Mary. I mentioned that one already.

The Perpetual Virginity of Mary

The perpetual virginity of Mary. Here's a question. If Mary was a virgin forever, why does the Bible say that she had other children? Does the Bible say she has other children? Well, let us be careful.

The Bible says Jesus had brothers and sisters. Siblings. Matthew 12, 46. If you want to write that down, Jesus' siblings are mentioned in several passages, Matthew 12, 46 being one of them. But here's the issue they will raise.

Mary didn't have to have other children for Jesus to have siblings. All that had to happen was Joseph had to have another wife. Very clear. Go look at, I mean, be not afraid to check me on anything. Especially this stuff.

They believe Joseph had an additional wife, possibly before Mary, possibly after Mary. But the idea was that's where the siblings of Jesus would have come from. So James and the others, Judah, all the other siblings of Jesus, brothers and sisters, were from a different relationship.

Sort of an Abraham-Hagar kind of situation. Can't have, can't Abraham, you know, Sarah's not able to do it. So we take the handmaiden and Joseph, well, I can't have this relationship with Mary, so I'll take second person.

You had your hand up, sir. I haven't heard that, but I'm sure they could make that argument. But yeah, but the sibling argument, it seems so clear. Your mother and brothers are outside. That's the part, you know, the book of Mark.

It seems as if, you know, let me tell you a place where they get this argument from. On the cross, when Jesus was dying, at the foot of the cross is the Apostle John and Mary. The mother of Jesus. And Jesus says to John, son, behold thy mother, mother, behold thy son.

And in that moment, Jesus bequeaths the responsibility of leadership and familial solidarity of the parenthood to the Christian brother, John. And people raise their hand, they say, wait a minute, if Jesus had brothers and sisters and they were Mary's children, then they would have had the responsibility, not John.

That's the argument. And again, not necessarily a bad argument. If you're going to make an argument, make a good one, right? That's the point, you know. But here's my response, in case you're interested.

What I would respond and simply say is this. At that time, the brothers of Jesus were not believers, but I believe Mary was. And so Jesus is bequeathing his mother into the hands of a believer, rather than in the hands of an unbeliever.

Now, later, James and Jude would both become teachers. Both of them wrote a book of the Bible. The book of James and the book of Jude are both written by half brothers of Jesus. We say half because they didn't have the same father.

But at that moment in history, Jesus is bequeathing to the disciple. The only one there, by the way, Peter, wasn't there. The one who was there at the foot of the cross. And I think we have every reason to believe why.

It's because this is a man who, his faith in Christ was steadfast and he needed him to make sure his mom was taken care of. And he wanted a believer, not an unbeliever. Again, we use the text to make those determinations.

The text doesn't say that specifically, but we can deduce from the text what's happening. Matthew 1, I just want, if you want to write down a quick scripture. Matthew 1, 24 and 25. This is the story of Joseph when the angel came to him.

So fear not to take the woman to be your wife for that which is born in her is born of the Holy Spirit. And he says this, it says, when Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded.

He took his wife and knew her not until she had given birth to a son, which says to me that after that he knew her. There's the word until is in there. He knew her not until and after she became to him a regular wife with regular wifely responsibilities in the area of intimacy.

I don't have any reason to believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary. There's nothing in the Bible that would even would even begin to concede that point. It's a form of mythology that's found its home in a system that's based on a lot of false teaching.

Why the Virgin Birth Is Essential to the Faith

All right, last thing, number letter C. There are reasons why the virgin birth is essential to the faith. There are reasons why the virgin birth is essential because people will say this, and you've heard this, in essentials unity.

How's it finished? In essentials unity. In non-essentials liberty and in all things charity. That's actually from the fourth century. It's attributed to St. Augustine. I tease Richard, we go back and forth on that, how to say it.

But it's attributed to St. Augustine that he said in essentials we are to have unity. In non-essentials we are to have liberty or freedom. If it's something that's not essential to the faith and you believe different than me, that shouldn't disrupt our unity in the faith.

All right, because I'm sure there's some things, if we sat down and went through every line of doctrine, I'm sure there's some areas where we might not line up perfectly. But on the essentials we should.

On the non-essentials we have freedom not to. But the last of the three is in all things charity or love. No matter if it's essential or non-essential, there should be love. Because we have faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.

So in regard to that, the question becomes, is the virgin conception of Christ essential? I would say yes. Just in case you were nervous thinking I was going to say no. Some of you looked a little nervous there.

No, I would say yes. But if you say yes, something is essential, you got to have a reason, right? So why do we believe it's essential? Number one, the virgin conception is clearly taught in scripture.

To deny it is to deny the authority of scripture. That's one. We talked about last week how in Isaiah there's the passage about the virgin, the maiden, and there might be a question about how to interpret Isaiah.

But there is no question how to interpret Matthew. There's no question how to interpret Luke. There's no question how to interpret those passages. The Greek word parthenos is not up for debate. It's a very scientific, very clear term.

It means virgin. And so if we deny the virgin birth, that is a very dangerous slope. Talk about a slippery slope? Well you might as well just get out the slip and slide as you're going down. As soon as you start saying something so clear as the virgin birth.

And we can debate other things. And there's a lot of things in scripture. You know, we can have a conversation about baptism and the mode of baptism and who should be baptized. Or we can have a conversation even on the subject of election, predestination.

And while I would hold firmly to what I believe, I think that we could have a debate and still be brothers in Christ. But when it comes to something as clear as the virgin birth, to question that is to question the authority of scripture.

And that's why I say that's the first reason why I'd say it has to be essential. Because if we say it's not true, we're not saying I interpret this differently. We're saying the Bible is wrong. That's, that's, it's not an interpretative issue.

It's a Paul and Luke and Matthew just were wrong. They either lied or they misheard the spirit. I don't know. Maybe they had, you know, a bad dream and they woke up and who knows, you know, it's okay.

It's just too clear. And by the way, this is why, this is why appealing to the virgin birth is so appealing or denying the virgin birth is so appealing to liberals because they know it's like this. You ever see dominoes, right?

And there's this one domino here and you hit this one and it, you know, the dominoes just start. Virgin birth is like the first domino. We get people not to believe in that. And next thing is the miracles.

Next thing is the resurrection. Next thing is the, the whole concept of salvation by grace through faith. Then, I mean, all, all the way down. By the end, you're left with a semi-relevant God who may or may not be there.

He certainly didn't speak. And if he did speak, he certainly didn't speak with any clarity or any authority. I'm saying that's, that's, that's, that's the end of the domino line. No, that's not what I said.

I'm saying that's the end of the domino is, is you start by denying something so clearly taught in scripture by the end, you know, because somebody says, I don't believe there's something clearly taught in the Bible.

Somebody says, I don't believe it. I asked this question. Can you tell me what parts of the Bible are true and what parts aren't? You understand? If you tell me, I don't believe that it's in the Bible.

I don't believe it. Okay, get out your pen and let's go through and circle the parts that are true. My circle is pretty easy. It just goes around the whole book. It's not hard, but, but there are people, I don't believe that.

Well, when did you become the judge of God and his word? That's the point. Who gets to be the judge? Right? So, so that's, that's, that's an important thing. So the virgin conception in scripture, the virgin conception is essential because it's clearly taught in scripture.

It's not, it's not, you know, it's not something really up for debate. Number two, the virgin conception is clearly linked to the deity of Christ. I want to, you say, well, what do you mean? Well, Jesus Christ claimed to be the son of God in a unique way, right?

Do you know that some people teach Jesus Christ didn't become the son of God until he was baptized? That's pretty popular TBN teaching. That Jesus Christ was a born again man. In fact, Kenneth Copeland said that.

He said, I can do anything Jesus could do because Jesus is a twice born man. I'm a twice born man and I can do anything Jesus can do. Again, baloney. It's garbage theology. It's absolute garbage. But the teaching is because Jesus was born again, that's when he became the son of God was at his baptism.

I, when I was baptized, when I was born again, I got saved and I became a born again man too. Jesus was twice born. I'm twice born. Bad theology, bad, bad, bad. Don't, don't believe that garbage. It's, but it is taught.

The Bible says the deity of Christ is based on the fact that he was, he was conceived by the Holy spirit of God. There was no intercourse involved. Uh, by the way, the Mormons, I think it's yeah. Mormons believe God came as a man and physically had intercourse with Mary.

Bible doesn't say that book of Mormon is out there and a lot of weird stuff. But the idea that God had to physically have a relationship, intimate relationship with Mary to conceive is unnecessary. God simply produced in the womb of Mary, the, the implanted seed, the, the, the, there are a fertilized seed which created, uh, the person of Jesus.

So, uh, but, but he's called the son of God in a unique way. He's called our brother, but we understand when we say brother, that doesn't mean in the same type of relationship, right? We're adopted in.

We weren't born in. Jesus is born the son of God. We are born again or adopted into the family of God, much different, right? We can call him our brother. Even in some of our songs at Christmas time, you know, God, our father, Christ, our brother, you know, we say those things because we are born into the family of God by regeneration, not because we were born the same way Jesus was.

He was born of a virgin. All right. Last thing we'll say about this. The virgin conception also relates to the sinlessness of Christ, the sinlessness of Christ. Now here, we're going to get into, and I won't, I won't take too long on this just because of time, but we're going to get into the idea of original sin very quickly.

And I'm going to, from the outset, I'm going to tell you, this is not something that the Bible clearly teaches. This is what we would say is an inference drawn from Scripture. You understand what an inference is?

An inference is not something that is explicitly stated, but it's something that's based on things that are explicitly stated, thus we infer something. Here's the, here's what is explicitly stated. Every man born of Adam is a sinner.

Romans chapter 5. Therefore, as sin entered the world through one man and spread to all men, because all men sinned, and Adam, all die, and Christ are all made alive. We know that there's a sinful nature that's given by our relationship to Adam.

And here is the theological concept which is derived out of this. I think it stands, but it is an inference. Because Jesus Christ was born without an earthly father, the father is the one who transfers the sin nature to the child, not the mother.

Because we don't believe that Mary was without sin, but we also don't believe that Mary's womb was sinful for him to be in. You understand what I'm saying? He wasn't sinful by being connected to Mary.

He would have been sinful by nature being connected to Joseph. And so the argument simply, the inference is this. The sin nature is transferred from the father, and because Jesus was kept from an earthly father, he was kept from the sin nature.

Okay, so that's the inference. I think it's a logical one. Again, I wouldn't stand here and bet the house on it. I think it's true, but I would say if somebody came up with a better way of understanding it, I would listen.

But I don't think I don't understand how there would be a virgin birth important for the sinlessness of Christ, because had he come through the normal means of man and woman, he would have carried the taint of Joseph, who was the son of Adam, his sin.

You are born in this world a fallen son of Adam. You are by nature a child of wrath. Ephesians chapter 2. Romans 5, Ephesians 2. The book of Hebrews talks about it. There's several places in the New Testament that talk about the fact that the sin is passed on, this responsibility.

We call it federal headship. Most of you are familiar with the word federal because of the government. We have a federal government. What does the word federal mean? Huh? Corrupt. I love you, but not.

Tell me a second to hear what he said. He registered. Federal doesn't mean corrupt, but it is, but that's not. The word federal means representative, right? We have a federal government, which is a representative government.

We vote our representatives in and they have the responsibility to represent us in the presidency, in the House, the Senate, and even the lower courts and all those different things. They're supposed to represent the will of the people.

They're supposed to represent. That's the federal government, right? Well, in theology, and we're going to talk about this when we get to anthropology, which is the study of man, in theology, federal headship refers to Adam acting as a federal or representative of all mankind.

When Adam sinned in the garden, he sinned on behalf of all of us. He sinned as a representative of all man. This is why the Bible says, in fact, let me just show you this before we leave. Turn to Romans 5 and I promise I'll let you go.

I know some of you are ready to go home and I'm tired too. Sometimes I get chatty when I get tired, so be careful. It's a dangerous place to be. Romans 5, beginning at, let's see, we could start at verse 12, but verse 12, I already mentioned, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned, for sin was indeed in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law, yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

Here's what that text is saying. It's very simple. People died from Adam until Moses, but there wasn't a law to break. Why did they die? Because they were still sinners. They were sinners in Adam. They were fallen creatures, sons and daughters of Adam.

They didn't have a law to break, and yet they still died because they were sinners by nature. That's that whole section, but it goes on. Verse 15, but the free gift at what's come through Christ is not like the trespass, for if many died through one's man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by that grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many, and the free gift is not like the result of the one man's sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification, for if because of one man's trespass death reigned through that one man, much more those who received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reigned in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

What reigned through the one man? Death. His one trespass brought death. And why do we blame Adam and not Eve? She ate it first, because it's a man's world. No, don't say that. She was not the head. She was not the representative.

Adam was. Consider this every one of you men who has a household. You are the head of your house. You will represent your house before God, not just for how you ran your life, but how you ran your home.

Elders will give an account for how we run the church, because we're a representative. We're placed in a position of authority within the church, and we have to give account for that. That's why the book of Hebrews says, obey your leaders and submit to them, because they're going to have to give an account for your souls one day.

Everybody who's ever been a member of this church, I'm going to give an account for how I shepherded their soul. Right? Representative leadership there. But headship, I just want to finish this. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men.

For by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So by one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. I mean, I honestly don't see how anyone can deny original sin based on just those verses.

One man's trespass led to condemnation. The condemnation was there before the law came. The relationship to Adam matters, and Jesus is born without that sinful nature. He is born without that condemnation.

The whole idea of the Immaculate Conception was the Roman Catholic Church says, yeah, but Mary had condemnation, so they had to protect her too. Because even if they said Mary never sinned in her life, which would be wrong, but even if they said she never sinned in her life, she still would not be a sinner because she is fallen daughter of Adam.

Now, I said tonight was going to be a short lesson. I think I lied. I didn't mean to. I never mean to. But I hope that was helpful. Understanding the Virgin Conception helps us better appreciate Christmas.

We got two weeks off. Merry Christmas. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the truth of it. May we, O God, be moved to a closer conformity to your truth, understanding your son better, and understanding how his sinlessness makes way for him to pay the price for our sinfulness.

He, because he was sinless, could bear the sin of all who believe on him. And he did. And for that, we give you thanks. Amen.