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Chapter V

The Unique Birth of Christ

The Person of Christ

The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is, of course, the greatest proof of His deity and, therefore, of the truth of the Christian faith. However, there are many other aspects of His person and work which also warrant treatment in a study of Christian evidences. As already noted, Christianity is unique in that it is based upon its founder rather than upon its founder's teachings. "For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 3:11). Therefore, it is essential that the believer understand thoroughly the nature of Jesus Christ and the basis for our certainty that Christ indeed is God himself.

In studying this subject, it is assumed that the New Testament portrait of the deeds and words of Christ is authentic and reliable. This assumption is not blind faith, as demonstrated in chapter 3, but rather is based on overwhelming evidence. Entirely apart from the question of the divine inspiration of the Bible, which will be considered later, we can be absolutely confident that the New Testament gives an accurate record of the important events and teachings in the life of Christ, as well as the beliefs concerning Him held by the first Christians. Therefore, we can base our discussion henceforth on relevant biblical statements without further digression to establish their authority.

The Pre-Incarnate Christ

Unlike all other men, the Lord Jesus Christ, according to His own claims, did not begin His life at the time He was born of a human mother. "For I came down from heaven," He said, "not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me" (John 6:38).

He is shown in Scripture as the second person of the triune godhead, and thus as having life from eternity. "As the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself" (John 5:26). In His human career, He still had perfect consciousness of this relationship and could recall all the events of the eternal councils of the triune God. In His prayer in the upper room, He spoke of "the glory which I had with Thee before the world was" and of how the Father "lovedst me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:5, 24).

The New Testament, in fact, teaches that Christ was himself the Creator of all things. "For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him" (Col. 1:16). Note also such Scriptures as John 1:3, 10; Hebrews 1:2-3; Ephesians 3:9; Revelation 3:14, etc.

After the creation of the world and of man, Christ in His pre-incarnate state occasionally came down for direct communication with man. In fact, whenever God appeared to man in any visible form, it was none other than Christ who thus appeared. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him" (John 1:18). He is "Alpha and Omega" (Rev. 22:13), the living "Word" which "was God" and which "was in the beginning with God" (John 1:1-2). He thus has the office in the godhead of direct executive and communicational activity with respect to all of God's created works and beings. "All things were made by Him" (John 1:3), and He now is "upholding all things by the word of His power" (Heb. 1:3). Whenever we read such statements as "the Lord appeared unto Abram" (Gen. 12:7), we may properly understand this to be a theophany, in which the pre-existent Christ was making God and His will known to man by direct manifestation.

When John the Baptist came to announce the imminent appearing of the Messiah, he said: "He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me" (John 1:15, 30). He applied the terms "Lord" (Jehovah) and "God" (Elohim) in Isaiah 40:3, both to Jesus Christ, whose coming he had been sent to proclaim.

A good example of Christ's claims to this pre-incarnate existence is found in John 8:56-58. On this occasion, He confronted the Jews with a remarkable claim: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad." They replied incredulously, "Hast thou seen Abraham?" Jesus answered with an emphatic claim, not to reincarnation, but to pre-incarnation: "Before Abraham was, I am!"

Quite probably this was a reference to Genesis 15:1, in which it says: "The word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision." This is the first use of "word" in the Word, and thus stresses that God's Word is personalized in God himself, the living Word (John 1:1). On that historic occasion, the Word said, "I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward," this constituting the first of the many great "I am's" of Christ.

The Descent from Heaven

Long before it actually occurred, the incarnation had been planned in heaven. Jesus Christ was "foreordained before the foundation of the world" (1 Pet. 1:20). Indeed, He was the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8).

It was promised through the Old Testament Scriptures that God himself would enter the human family in order to suffer and die and rise again, to redeem the lost world and reconcile all things to himself.

The first of these promises was given immediately after man's first sin, concurrently with God's imposition of the great curse on man and his dominion. In Genesis 3:15 (known as the "protevangel" or "first announcement of the gospel"), God promised: "And I will put enmity between thee [i.e., the Serpent, or Satan] and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it [or, better, 'He'] shall bruise [literally 'crush'] thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Since neither Satan nor "woman" could produce literal seed, it is clear that this promise refers to a spiritual seed in both cases. Nevertheless, the "seed of the woman" requires an actual birth into the human family. In some way, therefore, the promised deliverer would be born of woman, but without genetic connection to His human parents. Clearly implied, though in veiled terminology, is the supernatural entrance of God himself into human life, in a great incarnation.

This primeval promise was made much more explicit over three thousand years later, through the prophet Isaiah. "Behold, [the] virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" (Isa. 7:14). The use of the definite article (the virgin) is justified by the Hebrew original and thus implies a very specific virgin, most likely referring to the "seed of the woman" of Genesis 3:15. This primeval promise is seen reflected in the early traditions of many nations, and even in the primeval signs seen by man in the heavens, the zodiacal sign Virgo being a case in point. When Isaiah spoke of the virgin, there is little doubt that his hearers and readers would have tied it in with the ancient Edenic promise, and this, in fact, was exactly the interpretation placed upon it by the Rabbinic teachers of pre-Christian Israel.

As far as the word "virgin" is concerned (Hebrew ha-almah), modern liberal commentators notwithstanding, it means exactly what its King James translation suggests. It is used six other times in the Old Testament, and in every case could mean virgin, and in some cases must mean virgin. In the Septuagint translation of this verse, as well as its quotation in Matthew 1:23, the Greek parthenos is used, which can only mean "virgin." Also, the definite article, "the virgin" appears in the Greek translations as well.

The name Immanuel means "God with us," and clearly refers to a supernatural birth in which God would become one of humankind. The same thought is amplified in Isaiah 9:6: "For unto us a child is born …and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."

Even more specific is Micah 5:2, "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah …out of thee shall He come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel: whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." Note also the striking prophecy of Jeremiah 31:22: "The Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass a man."

In due course, "When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman" (Gal. 4:4). Jesus frequently made reference to the fact that He proceeded "forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father" (John 16:28).

John says, "God sent his only begotten Son into the world" (1 John 4:9), and Paul says that God sent "His own son in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom. 8:3). "Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh" (1 Tim. 3:16).

The Incarnation

In order to redeem man, therefore, God must somehow become man. He must enter His space-time cosmos in a finite, temporal form, yet without ceasing to be the infinite, eternal God. This apparent paradox is resolved in the triune nature of God. God's eternal Son can also become the Son of Man.

"The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). The classic passage on the incarnation of Christ is Philippians 2:6-7, which can be paraphrased as follows: "Christ Jesus, being in the outward form of God, not fearful of losing his deity, divested himself of that appearance, and took upon himself the outward form of a slave, and was made in the physical likeness of men."

This divestiture (Greek kenosis) of His heavenly glory, did not mean that He gave up His essential deity. He was still the infinite and holy God, and continued to manifest His divine attributes when occasion required. At the same time, He now became a man, perfect man. As God, He can do all things consistent with His character, and so He could, and did, become man also.

The importance of the Incarnation is incalculable. Satan had become the ruler of this world when he persuaded the first man to follow him. All men since had become through Adam, "children of disobedience" and "children of wrath," walking according to the "prince of the power of the air" (Eph. 2:2-3). In order for man to be reconciled to God and Satan to be crushed, God must become the "seed of the woman," taking up residence, first of all, in embryonic form in the womb of a prepared woman, and then undertaking His great work of redemption among men.

Not only, therefore, did Satan do all he could to prevent the Incarnation, but even yet refuses to let his hosts acknowledge that it was successfully accomplished. The very touchstone by which evil spirits are to be identified is this: "Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God" (1 John 4:3 — note that the name Jesus Christ is equivalent to "God as Savior and anointed King"). Demons are willing to acknowledge that the one called Jesus is "the son of God" (Matt. 8:29), since they have known Him thus from ancient times, but not that He is truly man — the one Man not in bondage to Satan (note Heb. 2:14-18), and therefore capable of setting other men free from that bondage.

Great, indeed, is this mystery. How could the infinite God enter the family of finite men and become truly "in the flesh"? Since He is the God of absolute holiness, He could not come "in sinful flesh," bearing all the inherent corruption from many generations of sinful ancestors. Even from the biological point of view, the accumulation of harmful genetic mutations that must inevitably have resided in the germ cells of any parents God could choose would preclude His being "made flesh" (John 1:14) by any natural process of human generation.

Yet, in order to really "come in the flesh" (1 John 4:2) and to be "found in fashion as a man" (Phil. 2:8), He must undergo the whole human experience, from conception and birth through childhood, youth, and manhood. He must come altogether "in the likeness of sinful flesh," and then be "tempted in all points like as we are" (Heb. 4:15), and yet remain "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners" (Heb. 7:26).

The Virgin Birth

The only way in which these two conflicting requirements could be met was by a miraculous conception and virgin birth. His human experience must begin, as for all men, with conception, but the embryonic form so generated could have no genetic connection with either mother or father, both of whose heredities were contaminated by both biological defects and inherent sin. The promised "seed of the woman" (Gen. 3:15) could only come by special creation; the "seed" is always of the man under normal conditions. Yet he must also be of the "seed of David" (Ps. 89:3-4), and therefore begin His human life through a mother descended from David's line.

Therefore, by special creative power, God prepared a perfect human body for the incarnation. "Wherefore, when He cometh into the world, He saith …a body hast Thou prepared Me" (Heb. 10:5). Since the body had been prepared by God himself, it was biologically perfect, though embryonic, and must appropriately be placed in the womb of a virgin for care prior to birth and in the home of godly and loving parents for care in infancy and childhood.

The perfect choice for this ministry was the virgin Mary and her future husband Joseph. Accordingly, the angel Gabriel was dispatched to inform Mary. "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). Skeptics have derided the doctrine of the miraculous conception as a biological absurdity, but Mary, who alone really knew the full truth about it, responded in joyous faith, "He that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name" (Luke 1:49).

The angel likewise assured Joseph: "Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 1:20). He reminded Joseph also of the great prophecy which was now to be fulfilled, "Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us" (Matt. 1:23).

The passages describing the supernatural conception and birth of Christ (Matt. 1:18–2:23 and Luke 1:26–2:40) are among the most familiar in all the Bible, each year at Christmastime confronting even those who never read the Scriptures any other time. No part of God's revelation, except His record of His supernatural creation of the world and the body for the first man has been derided and rejected by unbelievers more vigorously than this record of His special creation of the body for the "second man, the Lord from heaven" (1 Cor. 15:47).

The doctrine of the virgin birth has, in recent times, become essentially a watershed for distinguishing modernism and fundamentalism or, more recently, between evangelicalism and neo-orthodoxy. To be more precise, of course, it is the miraculous conception which is the issue, since the birth itself was normal in every way. Mary, of course, remained a virgin until after the birth of Jesus (Matt. 1:25), but it was the supernatural creation of the body in her womb that constitutes the great miracle of the virgin birth.

Note also that the virgin birth of Christ is altogether unique. Some writers have tried to compare it to known instances of so-called "parthenogenesis" among rabbits or other animals (some have even claimed examples among human women), in which the egg cell from the mother is somehow fertilized by artificial insemination or other purely naturalistic (though abnormal) processes. Such comparisons are irrelevant, however, since the body prepared by God for His Son had no connection genetically with either mother or father. It was formed by God himself, just as was the body for the first Adam.

The objections that have been raised by unbelievers against the virgin birth are pointless and trivial and, more than anything else, reveal the spiritual shallowness of these who raise them.

These criticisms are listed and briefly answered below:

The virgin birth is a biological impossibility. It is an impossibility only if there is no God. It is indeed a mighty miracle of creation, as is uniquely appropriate for the entrance of the infinite God into the finite body of His creature, man.

The virgin birth is mentioned only by Matthew and Luke. The fact that neither Mark nor John discusses the birth of Christ, however, does not mean they did not believe He had been born! The primary message of the early Christians, of course, was Christ's death and resurrection, not the details of His birth. The writings of Matthew and Luke are quite reliable in every respect, were accepted as such by the early church, and the information they gave concerning the birth of Christ was all that was needed. Paul also mentioned the supernatural incarnation (Gal. 4:4), and the whole sense of the gospels and epistles is perfectly consistent with the virgin birth, even though specific reference to it was not often required.

The idea of virgin birth came from mythology. Nothing in any way comparable to the miraculous conception and virgin birth is found in any pagan myth or religion. Certain "incarnations" of gods in men or animals, of course, are found everywhere in polytheistic pantheism. Also, there are numerous "demi-gods," supposedly resulting from the cohabitation of gods and men. Such things as these have no similarity to the virgin birth of Christ and could never have given rise to the simple, matter-of-fact histories written, and undoubtedly checked out with Mary and Joseph, by Luke and Matthew. The mythical stories more likely themselves developed as a corruption of the primeval records in Genesis 3:15 and Genesis 6:1-4.

There are contradictions in the birth narratives. The only significant contradiction between Matthew and Luke is in the two genealogies given for Jesus (Matt. 1:1-17 and Luke 3:23-38), and this has nothing in itself to do with the virgin birth as such. As a matter of fact, the two genealogies supplement and confirm each other. Matthew's entire account is written from Joseph's point of view (evidently Matthew had learned these events either directly or indirectly from Joseph himself) and Luke's from that of Mary. Matthew, directly concerned with Jesus' right to the throne of David, thus gives the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, who was his legal (though not actual) father. Luke records Mary's genealogy, also from David, calling Joseph the "son" of Heli (who was actually the father of Mary rather than Joseph) in accord with Jewish custom, which permitted a man to recognize his daughter's husband as his own son. Heli, under the circumstances, aware of Joseph's devotion to Mary and willingness to compromise his own good name for her sake, had special reason to regard Joseph with parental love and gratitude. Furthermore, the two genealogies provide the solution to an apparent contradiction in Old Testament prophecies concerning the Davidic line. The succession of kings of Judah from the seed of David was apparently terminated with Coniah (Jer. 22:30), and yet he is listed in the legal genealogy leading to Joseph (Matt. 1:11-12). Still, God had made a sure promise that David's seed should forever occupy the throne of Israel (Jer. 33:17). Thus, the requirements of both legal succession and divine prophecy were met in the union of Mary and Joseph, and the two genealogies in effect point this out.

Thus, the supposed difficulties with the virgin birth are really not to the point. Although such objections are often hedged about with platitudes about the "incarnation," it is almost always true that those who reject the virgin birth also reject the unique and full deity of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, no other completely appropriate manner exists for the eternal Word to be made flesh. A newly created body was necessary, free both from physical defects and transmitted depravity, "without blemish and without spot" (1 Pet. 1:19). Yet in order to be truly the Son of Man, He must experience the totality of human life beginning from the conception itself. "Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren" (Heb. 2:17). The only way in which these requirements could all be satisfied was by miraculous creative conception and then virgin birth.

Selected books for further study:

Anderson, Sir Robert. n.d. The Lord from Heaven. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications. 118 p.

Hanke, Howard A. 1963. The Validity of the Virgin Birth. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publ. House. 122 p.

Machen, J. Gresham. 1965. The Virgin Birth of Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.

Morris, Henry M. 1993. Biblical Creationism. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House. 276 p.

Orr, James. 1907. The Virgin Birth of Christ. New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Sabiers, Karl G. 1943. The Virgin Birth of Christ. Los Angeles, CA: Robertson Publ. Co.

Smith, Wilbur M. 1944. The Supernaturalness of Christ. Boston, MA: W. A. Wilde Co. 235 p.