The Virgin Birth, and Why It Was Necessary

 Let’s talk about the virgin birth of Jesus. Specifically, two things: Scriptural verses predicting and saying that it will be happening; and secondly, the meaning of it—why a virgin birth was necessary. We’ll begin with Luke 1:26-37, as the New King James Version (NKJV) presents it. Partial verses in some, to reduce the length:

²⁶ Now in the sixth month (ed., of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, as will be explained later), the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!”

²⁹ But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. ³⁰ Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. ³² He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. ³³ And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”

³⁴ Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?” ³⁵ And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. ³⁶ Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren. ³⁷ For with God nothing will be impossible.”

As you can see from v.34 and on, NKJ Scripture emphasizes that Mary was a virgin. Why was that necessary? Let’s begin our discussion with this:  People have had a sinful nature ever since Adam and Eve; we have a natural tendency to ignore, or even do the reverse of God’s commands. His Word tells us not to lie; but we lie frequently when it serves our purpose. I could name many such examples of different sins such as this, but you get the point. All of us; all through time, lean toward sinning. Wanting to be holy, fearing and loving God, should be our first priorities, but we fail on all counts. As Romans 3:23 puts it, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

It’s important to emphasize that God cannot stand sin (Habakkuk 1:13). This means we humans are not reconciled to God, and cannot have access to heaven no matter what we do on our own, because our sin prevents that. We need forgiveness, and for our sins to be expunged. A just God cannot just avert His eyes from our rebellion against Him, which means hell is our destiny for sin. No matter whether we’re “generally good.” But God wanted to make a way for us to escape hell. He provided a way, but only for those who abide with Jesus. Reading Scripture tells Jesus’ exact role in that. Though He had eternal existence, Jesus did not come from heaven to earth to primarily be a moral leader, nor to heal people, nor to be a martyr. He came to save sinners. Consider I Timothy 1:15 and Luke 19:9-10, on why He came:

…Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners... 

⁹ And Jesus said to him… the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Many “theologians” assert that there was nothing supernatural about Jesus or His conception. This would make His birth and life just about another sinful man, though good. But how could Jesus save us from hell, if he was just another guy like us? Even a philosopher, or a super-religionist, when he died, would just be another human death, since all humans sin and cannot enter heaven, for themselves or for others.

It helps figuring it out, to remember this primarily:  Jesus was God, also called the Son of God, which is the same thing—both titles say  He was God. Part of the Trinity. Scripture confirms His deity, in a slew of places. Here’s a good one: Hebrews 1:1-3, 8:

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, ² has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; ³ who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…8 But to the Son, He (God the Father) says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom.

Note the many phrases asserting Jesus’ deity:

1)     God spoke to believers through His Son (Jesus)

2)     God appointed Jesus to be heir of all things

3)     Jesus was involved in original creation

4)     Jesus was the “express image” of His (the Father’s) person. The term “express image” means “the exact representation of God’s being;” and “the visible form of the invisible God.” He was called “Immanuel” three times in Scripture. One is in Matthew 1:23:

²³ “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.” Do not think lightly about “God with us.” While Jesus was on earth, God, who created the vast universe, was truly right there with people. His birth was called the Incarnation—taking on flesh.

5)     Jesus upholds all things (even the universe) by the word of His power. Did you ever wonder, what holds all of this, flying around in space, together? It’s Jesus.

6)    God (the Father) calls His Son, Jesus, “God.”

Finally, the phrases “sat...at the right hand,” and “A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom” are important. In ancient literature, these are symbolic references to equals, to acknowledge their honor and power. To have these bestowed by God the Father upon Jesus, can mean only one thing. Jesus is God.

So the only way to be acceptable to God, as Scripture says, was to believe that we couldn’t do it, being sinful, but Jesus was God-in-the-flesh and did it for us. But if Jesus was a man, how was He also God?

There is a phrase coined by St. Augustine about the New and Old Testaments: “The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed.”  So in the Old Testament, a foretaste of the New Testament, the Jewish priest would, as God commanded, offer up the blood of a healthy innocent lamb, as a substitute (the innocent lamb paid for the sins of the people and for the priest himself). The priest had to do this yearly, since obviously the people sinned often. (Each offer of a lamb only covered sins of the people submitting the lambs to that date—they would have to come each year—if they could). Jesus, being a greater High Priest, had a New Covenant; He offered up Himself—as a Lamb, an innocent substitute, for our sins, not His—and He only had to offer it once, covering all the sins of people.

To explain it deeper for this paper, look at Hebrews 7:26-27, where Jesus is called the High Priest:

For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners…²⁷ who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.

Jesus’ sinlessness enabled Him to be our Substitute Lamb. He offered up His body as payment for our sin—if we are believers in what He did. God the Father accepted that offer, because of Jesus’ sinlessness. That’s the only way Jesus gets His believers reconciled to God. There were no other sinless people.

But how did Jesus remain sinless, if He was also a man? The answer is, in His conception—he was not a regular man. How is that?

The explanation lies in two important facts. First, the curse of the sin nature began with Adam and is passed through the male. Everyone has a father, so everyone has the tendency to sin. Why not through Eve? Two reasons: Scripturally, the male is the head of the wife, and takes the accountability for her actions. Anyone in the hierarchy of the military knows what I am talking about here. Secondly, he is the head of the house, so a child was called “his seed.” See Genesis 9:9, 12:7, 15:13, 19:32, etc.

 Also, because while the curse for Eve in Genesis did not mention disobedience, Adam was accused of disobedience in God’s curse, which can be seen from this partial verse from Genesis 3: 

 ¹⁷ Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’

The women, starting with Eve’s sin, get a totally different curse. Adam, in his curse, carried the sin-nature to the next generation—as all men do, ever since. Therefore, Joseph Could Not have been father to Jesus. Jesus would then have obtained that dreaded sin nature from Joseph, and could not have been God because He would have sinned. The solution was, Jesus’ Father was the Holy Spirit, who also was God, and sinless. Let me repeat again Luke 1:35:

 ³⁵ And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. 

It is obvious that Joseph knew he did nothing to her at that time to be a father. He thought she had lain with somebody else. As Matthew 1:19-20 puts it:

Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. ²⁰ But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, part of the Trinity of God, who obviously did not have a sinful gene, was the father. Only Joseph’s exclusion, coupled with the Holy Spirit’s intervention,  made it possible for Jesus to be Divine (we are not).

You say, Isn’t it enough that He was the greatest moralist, the greatest teacher, of all time? That is not enough. Jesus had to be sinless, or His death would have been an unacceptable offering to the Father to relieve us from our sin. That’s how much He hates sin. Certainly that assures us that no matter how “good” we are, we cannot obtain heaven on our own. If Jesus weer not God, no matter how good Jesus was, with a curse passed onto him like the rest of us, He would be sinful. We would still be on the way to hell. John 1:29 confirms that: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" I Peter 1:18-19 says:

…you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, ¹⁹ but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. 

This blows apart any claim that Jesus is the same as Buddha, or Confucius, or Muhammad, or Ghandi. Jesus alone was sinless, and alone had the “superpower” of substitution—and the power of resurrection, to prove that he alone among men was God, and save us from hell. His followers, I mean.

Hopefully you can see why Mary had to be a virgin, and be impregnated by the Holy Spirit. (This was not a physical act). There are many Old Testament verses suggesting Jesus would have a virgin mother. Such as Genesis 3:15, which is spoken by God to satan:

I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.

Note that Jesus was called her Seed. (Scripture always calls a child “his seed” because a father was the head of the house.  See my references above.)

Note that Seed is capitalized (suggesting the child would be God), and note that it is singular (just one Seed, Christ--we are not gods).

Satan, of course, was the serpent in the temptation of Adam and Eve. God’s prophecy here predicted a battle between satan and a Seed—Jesus—which battle Jesus won at His death and resurrection. Satan would “bruise” Jesus’ “heel” with a temporary hurt--His crucifixion, but He rose from the dead. But Jesus would crush satan’s “head”—a mortal wound administered to satan—which will happen in the last days.

Our desire is to be like Him, and Scripture is pointed that to remain saved, we must crucify our sinful desires, to bear His part in crucifixion; and we must live a new life, a resurrection, as it were, to be seed of our Lord and Master—we must strive to be in His service.

I like the way GotQuestions.org puts it: “The virgin birth is important in that it preserves the truth that Jesus is fully God and fully man at the same time. His physical body He received from Mary as her biological child. But His eternal, holy nature was bestowed by the Holy Spirit. He was all-God and all-man. Thus, He was tempted in every way that we are, yet without sin. Therefore, He is our perfect sacrifice and also able to empathize with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15). Our God graciously revealed His love for us.”

Hopefully that explains how Mary had to be a virgin; so Jesus could, without a sin nature from Joseph, be an acceptable substitute, since He was sinless, paying the price for our sin, enabling us to follow Christ and avoid hell and obtain heaven. Please note: the Holy Spirit is what made Jesus the Holy One—not Mary. Mary had no immaculate conception, and she was not a co-redeemer. She was sinful, but she was a devout person. So Mary’s virginity was part of a pathway for God to enable a way for us to heaven. I have never heard a sermon on this, which is odd, considering its importance.

Now let’s explore a tragically related topic—how some Bibles have attacked Mary’s virginity. The New King James quote I gave you from Luke 1 at the beginning of this paper is in updated English, based from the venerable King James edition of 1611. The King James was the result of an English translation from Greek partial texts, that Erasmus (16^th century Dutch theologian) put together, all 27 books, the New Testament that were earlier acceptable as Holy Spirit-inspired. Since there were insignificant differences among those 5-6000 partial texts of the Bible, they were trustworthy. Erasmus’ Greek Bible was called the “Textus Receptus” (Received Text). The reason I mention all this is that there were false prints of “Bibles” going around then—and there still are. Those false “Bibles” often spread the doctrine that Mary was not a virgin when she conceived Jesus. But word spread among believers as to which ones were false; so if a large portion of a Bible was years past its release, yet in great shape, it was pretty certain to be a false Bible, since not too many believers would read it, since they could tell if it was false. The true Bibles and partial texts, on the other hand, were passed around everywhere and grew tattered, in contrast. Only pieces are found—but there were thousands of them. Erasmus, codifying Scripture over a millennium later, was a master theologian, and did a great job of deciding which texts that crossed his path were real or false. He used this “in great shape” as one of several measures of whether it was a false Bible. We should do the same. But…we didn’t. Every single Bible produced today (except KJV or NKJV) came from the Vaticanus, or Sinaiticus texts, from Alexandria, a city known for its notorious heresy known as Gnosticism. (I have more on another pair of blogs). They were “discovered” in near-perfect shape, but altered to make them look old; and they had that guilty suspicious mark—they were whole volumes of the New Testament together, not pieces.

Let’s dig into the subject of modern, false versions from those questionable texts further, and show how it questions Mary’s virginity. You only have two choices in determining what Bible to buy: the King James or New King James will stress her virginity, thus directing us clearly how Jesus made salvation possible. OR, you can choose ANY OTHER version, since they are based on the two false texts. When they back off her virginity, they are saying they want us to think that Mary was a fornicating slut. And Jesus was not God. And we can’t be saved. All that is satan’s theme for you. I will show this choice clearly for you. Keep in mind, the false versions will only get worse, not better, as time passes. If you have any of the false versions, including the ones I outline below, it would be good advice to throw out the bad Bibles. As Google AI puts it, “the two manuscripts (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) disagree with each other on over 3,000 occasions in the gospels.” That huge number is in only four books—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Well, what are the disagreement numbers on the other 23 New Testament books? That sort of blows the infallibility of Scripture out of the water for their readers, doesn’t it? Textus Receptus doesn’t have significant disagreements like that.

So here we go. Let’s start with Isaiah 7:14, a famous verse predicting that the Messiah (the Jewish Savior) would be born of a virgin—or does it, according to modern “versions”? Our pattern will be, we give you the KJV first, then the false reading after.

a.     King James Version (KJV) says: …Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel

b.     The New International Version (NIV)  (which has sold over 500 million copies worldwide) says: The virgin^[d] will conceive and give birth to a son…(note the handy footnote (d) which, in the bottom of the page, calls her a “young woman”). This may seem OK to you, since the false claim is “only” in a footnote, but they are not expounding clear Truth. The Hebrew word means “virgin.” Isaiah, the writer of his book, says “Behold!” (Which means, “here comes a shocker fact.”) So he definitely means a virgin conceiving. (The NIV conveniently left off the Behold!) No pregnant young woman would deserve a “Behold! A young woman is pregnant—what a shocker.” The NIV writers are copping out, wanting you to make the choice. If you make the wrong choice, and decide that Mary was not a virgin, then she was a slut who fornicated with someone, and Jesus was just another baby--that’s your choice, not theirs, they would say. Joseph thought that, too, until the angel set him straight. (Of course, begging the question: if she’s just a young woman who got pregnant, why all the angelic fanfare for a fornicated birth?)

 

a.     Now let’s try Luke 1:34. In the KJV, it says, in Mary’s quizzical question of the angel about being pregnant: How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? This archaic phrase, “know not,” which means, “haven’t had sexual intercourse with,” was prudent, considering how children read Scripture too. The words are used elsewhere, some very interestingly.

b.     But consider the Revised Standard Version: "How shall this be, since I have no husband?" Well, obviously, women can become pregnant without a husband, so this verse tells us nothing about the uniqueness of Mary’s upcoming birth.

c.     Or consider the “Basic English” Bible: How may this be, because I have had no knowledge of a man? I would say, “Well, read a book.” Knowledge is terribly abused here.

 

a.     Let’s look at Luke 3:23: KJV gives a crowd’s thoughts, giving Joseph credit for the birth: And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli. The “as was supposed” says their thoughts were in question.  Very crafty interpretation to English, and true.

b.     But the New Living Translation (more than 50 million copies sold), says: Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his public ministry. Jesus was known as the son of Joseph. The phrase “was known as” doesn’t suggest that their thoughts were wrong—which they were. The new reader would think that Jesus was the son of Joseph. This is tragic theology.

 

a.     Look at Matthew 1:25. KJV: And (Joseph) knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS. Once again, we have the discreet “knew her not.” Joseph first had sex with her after she had Jesus, making her not a virgin any longer.

b.    Once again, the Basic English Bible founders on modern English: And he had no connection with her till she had given birth to a son; and he gave him the name Jesus. Since when did “connection” necessarily mean sex? Maybe, with the vague word “connection,” they didn’t hold hands? The word “connection” falls under the “Hey, whazzup” interpretation of the Bible. I must remember, never to tell my children after our good conversation, “we have connected.”

 

a.   In Luke 1:26-27, the KV reads: And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.

b. But the bad Good News Translation has Luke 1:27 thus:

…He had a message for a young woman promised in marriage to a man named Joseph, who was a descendant of King David. Her name was Mary. No virginity at all.  This falsity is not even limited to a footnote. The ultimate bad-news for honest theology.

c.     The Weymouth version is hardly better, considering there is confusion over the word “maiden,” in Luke 1:27: to a maiden betrothed to a man of the name of Joseph, a descendant of David. The maiden's name was Mary.

You can see how different modern “theologians” like to play with “virgin.” You can tell, they really can’t stand the word. It’s supernatural—and they were trained in seminary to distrust supernaturalism. Right now, the only version trustworthy is the (New) King James edition.

So that is the end of my paper. There’s a lot of other things you get, if you read carefully and think about it. If Jesus was God, shouldn’t the Gospels be the first place to go for Truth about how to be saved? Get the word on salvation from Jesus, God Himself, since Jesus will someday judge us for heaven or hell. And Jesus was the only person who said much on hell—and He said a lot—most of which are unknown because few pastors will preach on it. So if you need to know more about heaven vs hell, Jesus in the Gospels is the place to go first. Just read those red-letter editions in context. You will be shocked, and might even consider you haven’t been getting the path to salvation from your pastor. That’s what I concluded. And every word Jesus spoke is serious; He won’t change the rules that He lays forth. And don’t even think that His rules are too difficult, so I can ignore Him.  And don’t let any “theologian” tell you that Jesus’ words in some particular verses were for Jews only, or for Gentiles exclusively. Or, telling you that He is speaking about behavior “not for now, but for a specific future time period.” Scripture says nothing about such discriminations. Pray every time you read Scripture, which should be frequently. It is God’s Words for you, for all of us. Be like the Bereans, who checked out what was preached. Your pastor or denomination are not gods. The Holy Spirit can help you to obtain wisdom and judge what you hear. And get a Bible that is untainted with those modern versions where the theme is “avoid supernaturalistic stuff. Like virginity, or angels.” May God bless you.