The Significance of the Virgin Birth #2

Welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word. Today Don is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time.

So let's get right to it. Open your Bible as we join Don now in The Truth Pulpit. What's the significance of the virgin birth? First of all, let's put it in this statement. Christianity is supernatural. Christianity is supernatural, but not in the way of the imposters that display it here today where they pretend to conduct miracles on stage controlled platforms in order to impress people with, wow, I've never seen that happen before. Or, not in that false way.

Jesus warned us about false prophets who would do false signs and, if possible, to lead astray even the elect. Not supernatural in that way at all. Rather, what we're talking about is the supernatural nature of spiritual salvation. Christianity does not offer to men a system of human ethics by which they may be saved.

A system of ethics that can be achieved through human power. And the virgin birth illustrates that and makes that plain. Scripture says in Romans chapter 3 verse 12 that there is no one who does good. And so that immediately means that if there is to be salvation that it cannot be accomplished through anything that you can do on your own.

That's impossible. God is holy. God is mature.

You're majestic. You're a creature and you're sinful besides. You can't, through your own human actions, jump up to the mountaintop of his great existence. You can't jump the Gulf of the Grand Canyon from your sinful created nature. Your sinful created nature can't jump in your human power to the other side of the Grand Canyon to get to God. That's not possible. And so we have to abandon any hope in our own righteousness.

Any thought that somehow we can do this on our own. If you are going to be saved, and if you are saved, it is only because of the power of God at work in your soul you cannot do anything to save yourself. And it's not until you reach that confession, that heartfelt recognition, that there is nothing good in me. I am spiritually bankrupt. I cannot save myself. I am guilty before a holy God. Only then can you enter into the realm of the supernatural nature of Christianity. Well, why does the virgin birth point us to this?

Let's put it this way and back up just a moment. When the Bible offers salvation to you, it is not commending your ability to save yourself. That's the last thing that it's doing. Saying, hey, I think it doesn't come and present a list of laws and says, you know, if you go out and keep these you can save yourself. It's the exact reversal of that. The law comes and condemns you in your sin and says you are guilty before a holy God. You cannot save yourself. You are spiritually ruined and can do nothing to save yourself.

There's a complete pivot. It's a complete contrast to what is sometimes thought. When true salvation takes place, when God saved you in times past, my Christian brother or sister, God exercised a supernatural act of power on your heart to turn you to Christ so that you would willingly come to Christ in repentance and faith. God, supernaturally, by the power of his Holy Spirit, caused you to be born again.

You no more caused yourself to be born again spiritually than you caused yourself to be born again physically. And the virgin birth helps us to understand that because in the virgin birth what you have is God coming upon Mary in a powerful way to accomplish that which was beyond human means, which was beyond human capacity. A virgin woman on her own cannot generate a child. It's impossible. Mary recognized that and said, this is impossible.

How can this be? And in like manner, what we say to a sinner is, it is impossible for you to be saved through your own efforts. The virgin birth helps us to see that if there is to be salvation at all, it must begin with an act of God on someone rather than that person working his way to God. And so in the virgin birth, in God coming upon Mary, we see an illustration of the fact that sinners must look to God for salvation and not to their own ability, works, or self-righteousness. The virgin birth was supernatural. True Christianity, true conversion is supernatural as well.

It is outside the realm of human ability to accomplish on its own. The virgin birth points us in that direction. Now secondly, what else can we say about the virgin birth? It teaches us that Christ is sinless.

Christ is sinless, and we need to delve into a little bit of theology here to help you understand exactly why this is so important. One of the sad realities of human birth is this, it's that, is that every child that is born into the world is in one sense doomed from the start, doomed in the sense that they are born into sin, and they inherit a sinful nature from their parents. Now, no one, I realize that this isn't the way that we always think about babies, they're cute and they're little and they seem so sweet and innocent, but there is a sinful nature that is resident even in the most newborn child that he has received from his parents, and no one who observes children, no parent certainly, would ever deny that because those little reprobates know how to sin without even being taught to do so, don't they? They know somehow how to throw a tantrum when they don't get their way. They know instinctively how to lie when they think that they're in trouble.

They know how to selfishly grab after their little toys when someone else wants them. The selfishness and the deceit and the anger is inbred in them and no parent has to teach them to do it. In fact, Scripture tells them to do the exact opposite, discipline that out of them, train them in the way that they should go. And so we see children being born with a sinful nature that they receive from their parents. Furthermore, Scripture teaches us that Adam's guilt is a sign to all of his descendants, that Adam's guilt from the garden is a sign to every member of the human race because he was acting as our representative head in that place, in that time, and he failed, he sinned, he disobeyed God and cast the whole human race into ruin as a result. And so by mere participation in humanity and by the nature that is inbred in us from our birth that we then act upon as we develop, we are hopelessly and miserably lost just by being members of the human race. Now, beloved, this isn't a message about original sin, but that does help us to see the dilemma. It helps us to see a really great problem in terms of our salvation. We need a human sacrifice to turn away the wrath of God.

Human guilt must be punished in human form for God's justice to be satisfied for the violations of his law. How is it that Christ could become a man and escape our shared sinful nature and condemnation? How is it that Christ could enter into humanity after the fall of Adam? How is it that he could fully identify with the human race and be completely identified with our humanity, and yet escape the corruption in nature and the assignment of guilt from being a child of Adam?

How can that happen? Well, beloved, even if you're not theologically wired, you need to understand that this is a vital question to be answered if your soul is to be saved. If you are to escape the condemnation that your sins deserve, there must be an answer to this dilemma, because otherwise we're lost and we're still in our sins, because God requires a perfect sacrifice to deliver us. With that in mind, look again at Luke chapter 1 verse 35. The angel answered and said to Mary, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and for that reason the holy child shall be called the Son of God. Beloved, watch this.

This is really wonderful truth. That verse says that the child that Mary would give birth to would be holy. He would be sanctified. He would be set apart. Holy from what? Set apart from what? Set apart from the sinful corruption of man. And here's what I want you to see.

Follow me here. The Holy Spirit, and as we remember the virgin birth, we understand Scripture teaches us that the Holy Spirit, not only performed a physical miracle in the womb of Mary, it's not just that a baby was formed without the contribution of a human father. Oh, that's a great miracle. That's more than we can do by human means, and that's a wonderful reason to celebrate the goodness and the power of God that He did that. But Christ came to be a savior of sinners.

He said, I came to seek and to save that which was lost. Therefore, somehow, the manner of His entrance into the world must somehow be tied to His saving mission. It's not just that God did a cool miracle and gave conception to Mary apart from a human father as if this was just something cool to do. There was a spiritual reason why it happened in this manner. The Holy Spirit not only did a physical miracle in Mary's womb, He also did a spiritual miracle. And in His work in the virgin conception, the Holy Spirit, watch this, preserved the spiritual nature of that baby from inheriting the guilt that belongs to the human race. He gave conception to Mary apart from normal human means, and then in that conception, the Spirit of God, the virgin conception, was the means by which Jesus was spared from inherited corruption that otherwise transmits through human generation. As one writer says, and I quote, The Holy Spirit sanctified the human nature of Christ from its very inception and thus kept it free from the pollution of sin." Beloved, here's the thing.

I realize we're swimming in some deep waters here. But the supernatural birth, the supernatural conception more precisely of Christ, bypassed the natural transmission of sin. Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary in a way that bypassed the normal means of human reproduction, and somehow in that spared Him the reception of inherited guilt and the transmission of a sinful nature.

You say, how did that happen? Well, go back to verse 35. Scripture leads us up to a point and then leaves us behind the veil and does not allow us to look in. Verse 35, the Holy Spirit will come upon you.

The power of the Most High will overshadow you. And for that reason, the Holy Child will be called the Son of God. Somehow, in a way that Scripture doesn't fully identify for us, this creative act, this creative energy by the Holy Spirit, spared the conception of Christ from the ordinary transmission of human sin. That is why He is sinless. His sinlessness was then what qualified Him to be a perfect sacrifice on the cross. Now, Scripture doesn't get into the details of what happened in the womb.

And we don't need to speculate on that, but there's a couple of things that I wanted to say to you about it. Go over to the Gospel of John chapter 3. John chapter 3, this is not a text on the virgin birth, but I think it helps us understand what we're discussing here. There's an element of unrevealed mystery about this that we simply accept based on the fact that Scripture has informed us enough to believe what is true. John chapter 3, verse 8, when Jesus is talking about the new birth for the children of men, He says this, He says, The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Now, here's my point. We don't understand the miracle of regeneration in the heart of a sinner. We don't understand how God works and produces new life in a sinful heart. And yet, we know that it has happened because we see the effects of it. We don't know where the wind comes from, but we see the effects of it as it blows through our hair and wrestles the leaves in the tree. And we say this is undeniable even though I can't explain its origin in precise detail. We see that in the natural realm, we see it in the spiritual realm. I know that I've been born again because things came out of my life after my conversion that were utterly foreign to my experience.

Same thing for you when you were converted. Well, in like manner. When we look at the effects of the fruit of Mary's womb, we see a sinless man walking on the face of the earth. We see enough from Scripture saying that that is attributed to a work of the Holy Spirit.

We see the effects of it. We feel the wind blowing of his sinlessness, even though I don't know exactly how the Holy Spirit did that, biologically. And so, the virgin birth, the virgin conception gives us a sinless Savior who God by a supernatural act that He in His wisdom has chosen not to fully explain to us but has produced in Mary's womb a child who has spared the normal transmission of human sin. If, and this isn't even a problem for those of us who believe in the power of God to believe, if God can speak creation by the spoken word without physical material, we accept that supernatural power. If God can cause a man to be born again and we don't understand, we accept that.

That's the nature of biblical transformation. The supernatural is woven throughout all of Scripture. And so, we see in what happens here that not only a physical birth has taken place but there is a spiritual preservation from inherited sin that is attributed to the Spirit of God as well. The supernatural is woven through and through and by a supernatural birth, Jesus was preserved from the transmission of sin from the bloodline of His mother. And so, Christ is sinless and the virgin birth teaches us that. And because He was sinless, He was therefore in a position to be a sinless sacrifice for you and me.

A baby born by normal human means of transmission could never have done that. Now, thirdly, we said that Christianity is supernatural, that Christ is sinless. What is the other significance that we would consider today of the virgin birth? It is this, is that Christ is the Savior. Christ is the Savior and what I mean by that is this, is that through the virgin birth, God used that means to establish two natures in the one person of Jesus Christ. He is fully God and He is fully man, two complete undivided, undiminished natures residing fully in one person. Mary provided a blood connection to humanity.

Not only that, a blood connection to the royal line of David. The Holy Spirit established the sinless essence of God in her womb. And from the very moment of His conception, Jesus developed with those two natures. So in the virgin birth, God provided a Savior for us who was free from guilt and yet carried the essence of God at the same time, beloved. And thinking about the condescension of Christ, I love to come back and to remind you of this, that Christ who was with God before time began, who was God before time began, who dwelt in eternal glory, stepped down from that glory to enter into the world in this means. He fully identified with our humanity.

Watch this. He fully identified with our humanity down to going through the complete gestation cycle in Mary's womb. That's how complete it was. God did not send down a human being from heaven and he arrived in adult form. No, His identity with you and me is absolutely complete. And just as you and I started in our mother's womb and went nine months, give or take, so also Christ was in His mother's womb from the very beginning. That is how completely He has identified with our humanity. That is how He is able to completely redeem us from our sin. He can even redeem us from the original corruption that was communicated in our conception. David said, In sin my mother conceived me because at that very point, even at conception, Christ was sinless and therefore able to redeem us from it all. It's incredible. And so what we see is that Christ is a Savior in the fullest absolute sense, that our complete humanity has been redeemed by His incarnation, by His death, by His resurrection.

And you know, when I started I talked about jumping the Gulf of the Grand Canyon, whatever else the other spontaneous illustrations were that I used at the time. Beloved, what I want you to see is as we contemplate the virgin birth, that Mary gave birth to God in human flesh, is that this means that Christ alone fully bridges the gulf between God and man. 1 Timothy speaks about how He is the mediator between God and man. And He can mediate for us because He is fully man, fully identified with our humanity, without a moment of exception, and yet He is also fully God.

And those two natures resident in one person mean that God and man can be joined together. You as a sinner can be reconciled to a holy God when you put your faith in Christ. The virgin birth is central to making that happen, a full redemption of your sinful humanity. The virgin birth uniquely established Christ to be the only Savior of the world. The Apostle Paul said that God made Christ who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Christ identified with us, Christ identified with the Father, therefore fit to bring us into the presence of a holy God.

Have you received Christ? There is no salvation apart from Him. If you have received Christ, then understand that He is fully a Savior, that He is completely able to save you to the uttermost because He has identified Himself with our humanity so completely through a virgin birth, through a completely sinless nature that He offered up in sacrifice to God and said, on behalf of my people, I offer my sinless life as a sacrifice on their behalf.

I take their sins. Christ took our sins into His sinless body, as it were, and suffered the strokes of divine justice on our behalf so that a great exchange could take place. Your guilt placed on Christ and punished there completely forever, His sinless righteousness then credited to your account so that you are acceptable under the demands of God's law to be received into God's presence.

None of that happens apart from the virgin birth. And so I invite you, if you don't know Christ, to come to this sinless Savior, to this supernatural Savior, and those of you that know Him, to rest in Him, to realize that Christ has done it all for your salvation. He truly paid it all. He had the essence that enabled Him to do that, and therefore He is a trustworthy Savior for you from your sins. John 1, verses 12 and 13 says, As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Let's pray together. Our gracious Lord, we honor You and we believe the testimony of Scripture about the supernatural nature of Your birth. We acknowledge and confess that we are not able to save ourselves. Indeed, Lord, that we abhor ourselves for our own sins, for our own guilt, and that apart from a God-sent Savior, we would be righteously ruined and subject to eternal judgment in hell forever. That's our lot.

That's what we deserve. And yet, Lord, as we contemplate the testimony of Scripture and the testimony of the virgin birth, we realize that You in grace have acted on our behalf to provide a Savior who can fully redeem us from every aspect of our sinful humanity. We thank You for Christ.

We thank You for sending Him. We thank You for the wisdom that appointed this means of bringing a Savior to the world. We thank You for the divine wisdom that transcends our understanding in such a way that though we can't fully understand how You did this, we know that You did based on the infallible testimony of Your Word, based on what we see in the product of the sinless life of Jesus, He who no one could bring a successful accusation of sin against. Our Lord, we thank You for identifying with our humanity. We thank You for Your perfect obedience to the law throughout Your earthly life. We thank You for going to the cross and offering Yourself, offering that perfect life as a sacrifice on our behalf, that Your blood was truly shed for sinners just like us.

We thank You that You went through the darkness of death. We thank You that You are raised from the dead, that You are ascended on high, that You are coming again to bring us to Yourself, and that in the meantime You are preparing for us a place where You will receive us unto Yourself. How great is this salvation that You've provided to us.

How undeserving we are. How superlative is Your nature and grace. And so, Father, as believers in Christ, we rejoice, we thank You, we humbly acknowledge the truth of Scripture. For those who are here and will one day hear, we ask for Your mercy upon them, that You would open their eyes to the truth of Christ, that they would repent and come to Him in saving faith. Father, we're grateful for all that You've done on our behalf. You alone are gracious. And we see this reflected in our Savior's birth. In His great and glorious name we pray. Amen. Well, my friend, thank you for joining us here on today's broadcast of The Truth Pulpit, where we love to be teaching God's people God's Word.

And I just want to send a special invitation to you. If you're ever in the Midwest area, come to see us at Truth Community Church. We're on the east side of Cincinnati, Ohio. We're easy to find, easy to get to. We have services at 9 a.m. on Sunday and 7 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday evening for our midweek study. You can also find us on our livestream at thetruthpulpit.com.

That's thetruthpulpit.com. But we would love to see you. And if you do happen to be able to visit us in person, do this if you would. Come and introduce yourself to me personally. Fight your way through the people and tell me that you listen on The Truth Pulpit and that you're here visiting. I would love to give you a word of personal greeting. So hopefully we'll see you one day in person at Truth Community Church.

You can find our location and service times at thetruthpulpit.com. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.