Was Jesus Christ Virgin Born?

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, December 21st. In order to be a perfect sacrifice, Jesus had to be virgin born. Learn more about this critical aspect of Christ's nature on today's podcast. There are some things that you and I have heard and have been taught that we have accepted not because we've searched it out for ourselves, but simply because we heard it and we've been taught it. On the other hand, there are some of those things that we have heard and we've been taught, we've rejected. Again, not because we've searched it out for ourselves, but because we heard it, we've been taught it.

It didn't compute with our reasoning and didn't match our lifestyle, so we rejected it. One of those biblical ideas that would fall in the category of either one of these is the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. And so the theme of this message, the title of this sermon is, Was Jesus Christ Virgin Born? And I want us to look at the Scriptures to see what does the Bible really say about this truth.

Luke chapter 1, verse 26. Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph. Now remember that an engagement in those days was just as binding as marriage is today. And so he says this woman was a virgin. That is, she had not had any kind of physical intimate relationship with a man. And if a woman were found to have after she was engaged, she was in real trouble.

And of course, you know that a woman could be stoned to death if she was found to have been improper or if she had been found to be unfaithful. And so if you'll move down to verse 34, and notice what Mary's response to this is when the angel talks about her giving birth to a child. And Mary said to the angel, How can this be since I am a virgin? And then verse 35, the angel answered and said to her, he said, This is the way it's going to take place. The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, will come upon you.

And the power of the Most High will overshadow you. And for that reason, listen, for that reason, the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God. So all through Luke's account here, there's no question in Luke's mind. Remember, Luke was a doctor very detailed in his descriptions. He said that Mary was a virgin. All right, if you'll hold that and go back to Matthew chapter one. And I want us to look at the very first verse of this first chapter of Matthew. Because in Matthew one and Luke chapter three is given the genealogy of the Lord Jesus. Remember this now Matthew is writing primarily to persuade and to convince the Jews that Jesus Christ is the Messiah.

Luke is writing to convince the Gentiles, so therefore, they wouldn't do it the same way. And that is, Matthew goes all the way back primarily to Abraham, whereas Luke traces him all the way back to God. So if you look in verse one of Matthew one, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. To Abraham was born Isaac, Isaac, Jacob, Jacob, Jude and his brothers. And then you go all the way down and then you come to verse 16 of all this list of names. And to Jacob was born Joseph, watch this now, and to Jacob was born Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom was born Jesus who is called Christ. Now, God doesn't miss anything.

I want you to see what this says. When he says, and to Jacob was born Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom. That little Greek word is a genitive feminine singular, which means it could only refer to Mary and not to Joseph.

Otherwise, it would have been masculine. When he says, and to Jacob was born Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom was born Jesus. Now, if Jesus had been born of Joseph and Mary, I assure you, as you read the Old Testament, that it's always the male in the Old Testament, the New Testament back in those days who had the preeminence. And he would have said, just like he'd said in all the rest of these, Jesus was born of Joseph. But he says, Jesus was born of Mary.

Then, if you'll move on down to verse 18, he says, Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When his mother Mary had been betrothed or engaged to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. That is found by Joseph. That is, he discovered she's pregnant. And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, desired to put her away secretly, because it would have been a terrible embarrassment. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. That is, she is still a virgin, a miraculous conception. And she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for it is he who will save his people from their sins. And then he says, I want to remind you that what is happening to Mary is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy by Isaiah that a virgin would give birth to a son. And so he says, Behold, verse 23, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son.

They shall call his name Immanuel, which translated means God with us. And Joseph arose from his sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took her as his wife, and kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus. So in both of these accounts, it's very clear that both Matthew and Luke describe Jesus Christ as being virgin born. Now, I want you to turn back to Luke chapter three for just a moment. And in Luke chapter three, if you will notice, in the 23rd verse, Luke being very meticulous, of course, led by the Holy Spirit, he says, And when he began his ministry, Jesus himself was about 30 years of age, being supposedly the son of Joseph, the son of Eli, and then he goes all the way back and traces Jesus. If you'll notice, traces him all the way back in the 38th verse, the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. Now, if you will notice that in two of these Gospels, it is absolutely no question whatsoever as to the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Very clear. It's not a matter of her being some maiden. It is the fact that she is a woman who'd never had any physical sexual relationship with any man. That is the unquestionable, indisputable fact of the Word of God. So now, how significant is this in light of the other things that you and I believe? Now, first of all, let's think in terms of his deity. We say by his deity that Jesus Christ was God, is God, and forever shall be God. Now, here's what I want us to see as we look at his deity in light of the virgin birth. The virgin birth is that moment when the Holy Spirit hovering over, as he says, the virgin Mary conceived in her the person of Jesus Christ.

When we talk about his deity, we're talking about the fact that he is God. When Jesus Christ was born, he didn't become God. When Jesus Christ was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit brought about that conception. The Lord Jesus Christ, whom eternity passed, had been with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In that brief moment, in that brief moment of conception, the virgin Mary's womb housed the person of God. Listen, Jesus didn't begin, his earthly life began at that moment. And so when we talk about how does it relate to his deity, and you'll notice what the angel said to Mary.

He says, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you. For that reason, the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God. So when you go back to question the deity of Christ, Jesus Christ was not born of an earthly father and an earthly mother, born of an earthly mother, but heavenly, that is the Holy Spirit, heavenly Father. And so therefore, we have no problem realizing that he was both divine and human. And the deity of Christ did not begin at the conception or birth.

He was always God. And remember this now, that in the womb of the virgin Mary, that which was invisible to the naked eye, and that brief moment of conception was God in human flesh. And that which grew within her womb was not that Jesus Christ was that growing into Godhead. It was Jesus Christ who was fully God in her womb. Jesus Christ fully God in her womb was growing in his humanity.

That is in his earthliness. In his sinless humanity, he was growing in the womb of the virgin Mary. So that he did not become God at that point. He did not become God at his birth. He didn't become God at his baptism. He was and is and forever shall always be God. And so the better you and I understand who he is, then the more likely we are going to be to obey him and to follow him and to trust him and to believe his promises.

Then you say, well, that concerns his deity. What about his incarnation? Well, let me define again what we mean by incarnation. And this is what John was talking about in the first chapter when he said concerning Jesus and the Word, calling Jesus Christ the Word the full expression of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld the glory that only begotten of the Father. That does not mean that he ceased to be God. He was always God.

But in that brief moment of conception in the womb of the virgin Mary, the second person of the Trinity assumed humanity in that brief moment. And from that moment on, Jesus Christ was not just deity, but he was God and man. He didn't cease to be God. He was God and man. So that as he grew in the womb of the virgin Mary, he grew like any other child.

Only one thing was missing, and that is absolutely he was sinless. And so he acted like every other child except he was not disobedient. He always did the right thing every single time, even as a child growing up, because he was God clothed in human flesh.

Remember as a small child in the temple talking with the priest, he said to his parents when they found him, must not be about my father's business. Jesus was always God. Now, that does not mean that all of the attributes that he had as God were always exercised as a child. The Bible says he laid aside his glory. That does not mean he laid aside his attributes and ceased to be any less than he was, but that he was God in human flesh as a little child. Now, the father knows how very important that is to you and me.

And so what happens? Jesus could have come in a spaceship if he'd have wanted to. He could have just dropped out of heaven if God had chosen, but he came, listen to me, he came as God conceived by the Holy Spirit, but in his humanity in the womb of the virgin Mary in order to do what? To bring deity and humanity together, to give us a savior with whom you and I can identify. What is it about Jesus we identify?

Here it is. He grew weary and tired. He became hungry. He became thirsty. The Bible says he was tempted in every area just like we are.

And in Hebrews chapter 4, the 15th verse, would be meaningless to us if we did not have the fact that Jesus Christ was both human and divine. That we have one who was touched with our infirmities just like we. He understands our temptations. He understands our weariness. He understands our thirst and our hungers. He understands where we are when the bottom drops out. He knows how we feel when we feel persecuted and rejected and when we feel mistreated. All of these things he fully understands.

Well, put it this way. Suppose there were no Christ and there's just God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit up in heaven somewhere and there was no human Jesus at all. Would you not not have a very difficult time identifying with God? But we have Christ.

Human flesh walking among men, this God, clothed in the humanity like a normal man. And what about the sinless nature concerning his virgin birth? He was born, the Bible says, of a woman conceived by God and by not having a father there was no transfer of a sinful nature. By being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, Mary certainly did not transfer to him any sinful nature. So the Jesus Christ was born sinless because the conception was sinless. The nine months was sinless. He was born sinless. His life was sinless.

You say, what difference does that make? It makes all the difference in God's redemptive plan. For the simple reason that all the prophecies in the Old Testament that talked about the shedding of the blood of those sheep, the sacrificial lamb had to be spotless and without blemish. God's foreshadowing of the Lamb of God who would come sinless in his humanity, sinless in his deity in order to lay down his life for sinful mankind. And so the fact that Jesus Christ had to be absolutely sinless in order to bear the sin of mankind had he not been the virgin born Son of God conceived miraculously by the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary's womb, he would have been born of sinful parents receiving their sinful nature. He could not have died for your sin mind because he would have had to die for his own sin. The only person who could die for the sins of the world and could take the sin dead of the world upon him was the sinless Lamb of God and that's what Jesus was. So his virgin birth was essential and his virgin birth is a vital part of his deity, a vital part of his incarnation, a vital part of his humanity, a vital part of his sinlessness, every aspect of his life. In the coming to live as a human being, clothed in humanity, he gave us a beautiful example.

He did what? He identified himself with mankind. Why do you think he was baptized? Not because he was a sinner. He came to be baptized, listen, in order to identify himself with fallen humanity and as he said, to fulfill all righteousness, the will of God. Jesus Christ was never baptized because he had sinned. He was the sinless Lamb of God. That's the way John the Baptist identified him. He said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The only way the Lamb of God could take away the sin of the world is to be sinless himself. So then the question comes, does it make any difference whether I believe in the virgin birth or not? Indeed it does. It makes a difference in what you believe and how you handle this book.

It makes a difference indeed in your interpretation of the whole life of Jesus Christ because the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, that is his miraculous conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit is a vital part of the whole structure of God's redemptive plan and when you take that particular area out, you have a problem, you have a void, you have a vacuum and it won't add up without the virgin birth. Now here's what I want you to see. Do you think that you can live your life rebelliously toward God or just politely leaving him out and doing your thing any way you want to do it and one of these days you're going to stand in the judgment of God and God's just going to wink and say, well, you weren't so bad and after all, you know, you can't do everything.

No. He had one objective in mind, that you may know the truth of the destructive power of your sinfulness in your life, that you may know the truth of the unconditional love of God for you and that you may know the truth that Jesus Christ came to die for your sins and mine and that you may know the truth that you may have everlasting life and that you may know the truth that one of these days when you pass on from this life because of the truth of this book and because you've applied it to your heart, you'll have eternal life with God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit and every saint who's ever lived and if you reject it, you will be banished, eternally separated from God forever and ever and ever and you will not have one single acceptable excuse in the eyes of God. Father, we love you and praise you for loving us enough to keep it simple, loving us enough to make it work so beautifully for us, loving us enough to forgive us of our sins, loving us enough to give us a whole new beginning in life. We praise you and thank you. I pray that you will convict those, God, who have denied your truth because of their pride, because of their own self-will, because of their rebellion, because your truth contradicts the way they want to live. I pray there might be confession and repentance and the humbling of themselves by faith before you and the confession of sins and their acceptance of Jesus Christ as their personal saving, His death at Calvary, as the full sacrificial, all-sufficient, atoning, sin-debt-paying event of all of history that they might know their sins are forgiven once and for all. We thank you, we praise you and we glory in your name and in your great redemptive plan. And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Thank you for listening to Was Jesus Christ Virgin Born? If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by In Touch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.