What Is the Significance of the Virgin Birth to Our Faith?

The Bible's Answers to Man's Questions

Key Verses:  Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

Romans 5:18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.

Hebrews 9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.

Every human being ever born, except Christ himself, was born in sin, by inheritance.  Adam's curse has been transmitted to us all.  The price of sin is always death (Romans 6:23), so as long as we live under the curse of sin, our fate is always eternal death.  Under God's plan, the only possible escape from sin's penalty was in the shedding of innocent blood, untainted by sin, on behalf of the sinner.  That was accomplished under the old covenant by the shedding of animal blood, but that was only a temporary solution that had to be repeated over and over.  Since no human was free of sin, no sacrifice of human life would have satisfied the requirement.  Even if such a man or woman existed, the sacrifice of their blood would only have served to cover the sins of one person, the one for whom the sacrifice was made.  The reason why Adam's sin affected us all is that all of us are descended from him, and from Eve, who carried the same curse.

The only possible solution to the dilemma of sin, as God knew, was for a man to die who had within him the infinite power of God's own deity.  That way, he would be dying as a man, when the sacrifice was made, but the impact of his death would be limitless and everlasting.  Further, if the sacrifice ended with his death, he could not pass on to others the benefits of his sacrifice, so his life must continue after he died.  All of this could only be accomplished, to begin with, by the entry of this God / Man onto the stage of history as a human child.  The chosen vehicle for his miracle of creation was the virgin Mary, of the line and lineage of David.

Mary contributed none of her genetic material to her son, Jesus.  If she had, the corruption of Adam's sin would have been passed on to her child.  She was a surrogate mother, in today's terminology, a vessel for bearing the child, nothing more.  The Christ child was literally the first born of a new creation, not just in symbolism but it reality.  All of those born of him, in the Spirit, carry within them that same sinless, eternal nature that he possessed.  Because he was man, he was able to make a sacrifice of his life on behalf of men; because he was God, the results of his sacrifice extended to all men for all time, on into eternity.  Without the doctrine of the virgin birth, the birth we celebrate at Christmas, the entire fabric of our faith falls apart.  That's why Satan's agents attack it so vigorously, and why apostates reject it as a symbolic fantasy added after the fact.  As believers, we must be confident that what the Word teaches as truth, or our faith has no basis.

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