3. The Incarnation of Christ
“His Son-Made of a Woman”
The Incarnation of Christ
MAN HAS ALWAYS craved a God who is tangible and visible. As he bows to stones and trees, the idolater is mutely expressing the desire of the human heart for a god who can be seen. Job lamented that although he sought for God, he could not see Him. “Behold, I go forward, but He is not there…. I cannot behold him” (Job 23:8–9). Philip shared the same longing when he asked, “Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us” (John 14:8).
God’s answer to this universal longing, the incarnation of His Son, was implied in Jesus’ answer to Philip, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). The clear implication is that in the acts and attitudes of the Son we have a revelation of the activities and attitudes of the Father. “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).
The Mystery of His Birth
The mystery of the incarnation will never be fully explained until “we know even as we are known.” But it is not the only mystery in this mysterious world, and as Lecerf said, “The presence of mystery is the footprint of the divine.” We are daily surrounded by mysterious facts, which are facts nevertheless. We may not understand how Jesus could be at the same time fully divine and yet really human, but that need be no insuperable obstacle to faith. The fact has been believed by many of the greatest minds of the ages.
When we remember that it required four millennia for God to prepare the world for the advent of His Son, the stupendous importance He attached to that event emerges. Is it likely that such an event, unique in eternity as in time, would occur in the ordinary course of nature? The astounding fact is that with all its magnificent system of communications, “the great Roman world remained in absolute unconsciousness of the vicinity of God.” The entrance of the Creator into the world seemed a matter so insignificant as to warrant no notice being taken of it.
If, as science demands, every event must have an adequate cause, then the presence of a sinless Man in the midst of universally sinful men implies a miracle of origin. Such a person as Jesus was demands such a birth as the gospels record. The how of the birth becomes believable when the who of the birth is taken into account. Only in isolation from the unique Person who was born does the virgin birth create difficulties. Would not the pre existence of Christ necessitate some such miracle of birth?
An orthodox Jew once asked a Jewish Christian, “Suppose a son were born among us today, and it was said of him that he was born of a virgin, would you believe it?”
“Yes,” replied the other, “I would believe it if he were such a son!”
In his Cur Deus Homo, Anselm reviewed four ways in which God can make man:
- By the law of natural generation—a man and a woman.
- Without the agency of either man or woman—as Adam.
- A man without a woman—as Eve.
- Through the divine empowering of a man and a woman both past age—as Abraham and Sarah.
If these be admitted, as they must be if the Scripture records are accepted as authoritative and trustworthy, it is but a step to believe that
5. Jesus was born of a woman without a man, that He was begotten of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:35).
If we accept that Jesus was the incarnate Son of God, does not belief in the virgin birth become logically inevitable? Who could be the Father of the Son of God but God Himself?
This doctrine was accepted by the early church and is included in all the great Christian creeds. Justin Martyr included it among the cardinal items of Christian belief. The apologist Aristides accepted it. Ignatius insisted on it, and those three lived very close to the apostolic age and to the documents setting forth the virgin birth.
The Meaning of Virgin Birth
What does the term mean? It does not imply that Jesus was born in a manner different from other children. He was born in exactly the same way as any other baby. Nor does it suggest that there was merely a miraculous conception as in the case of Elizabeth, who was past age. It does not mean immaculate conception as taught by the Roman Catholic Church, for that dogma asserts that Mary was conceived and born without original sin, a claim for which there is not a scintilla of scriptural support. It was a virgin conception entirely without parallel. Contrary to the course of nature, Jesus was miraculously conceived in the womb of Mary. In His case “the ordinary processes of the transmission of the racial heritage were interrupted by the miraculous conception.”
Such a birth was foreshadowed in the Old Testament. The earliest Bible prophecy enshrines and implies this unique event. “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). Only here are the words “her seed” used. Elsewhere it is uniformly the seed of the man. This is a unique conception.
The sign divinely given to Ahaz was that “a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). Words could hardly be more explicit, and Matthew saw their fulfillment in the manner of our Lord’s birth. The word for “virgin” used here—almah—has given rise to considerable controversy, and it is maintained by opponents of the supernatural that the word means simply a young woman of marriageable age, not necessarily a virgin, for which bethulah is the term used. It is unfortunate for this view that bethulah is used of a bride weeping for her husband, while almah is used in this and six other places, but never in any other sense than an unmarried maiden.
Martin Luther threw out a challenge on this point: “If a Jew or a Christian can prove to me that in any other passage of Scripture almah means a married woman, I will give him a hundred florins, although God alone knows where I may find them.”
Alternatives to Virgin Birth
It is conceded that the Bible does not demand belief in the virgin birth as a prerequisite for salvation, but it does indicate that the fact of the virgin birth must be true if we are to be saved. It is possible for a man to be saved without knowing details of the process, just as babies are born without any knowledge of embryology. It is the integrity of the fact, not our knowledge of it, that lays the basis for our salvation.
At the close of one of his services, the late Harry Emerson Fosdick said, “I want to assure you that I do not believe in the virgin birth of Christ, and I hope none of you do.” He was doubtless sincere, but can such an attitude be justified? It is the element of miracle that proves a stumbling block to such men. But if Joseph and Mary, who were sinners by nature and deed, could have given birth to a sinless Man like Jesus, would not an even greater miracle be involved?
Let us consider the alternatives that face us if this doctrine is fiction and not fact.
- The New Testament narratives are proved false and the Book is robbed of its authority on other matters also.
- Mary, instead of being blessed among women, is branded as unchaste, for Joseph asserted that Jesus was not his son.
- Jesus becomes the natural child of sinful parents, which at once rules out His preexistence, with the result that there was no real incarnation.
- We are deprived of any adequate explanation of His unique character and sinless life.
- If He was begotten of a human father—and that is the only alternative to virgin birth—he was not the second Person of the Trinity as He claimed, and therefore had no power to forgive sin.
- If this miracle is denied, where do we stop? Logically we should deny all miracles. The question really is, Are we willing to accept the supernaturalistic claims of Scripture or not?
Objections to Virgin Birth
Before considering some objections, I should state that this doctrine is at variance with nothing taught elsewhere in the New Testament; but on the other hand it positively correlates the preexistence of Christ and His incarnation.
Some contend that Jesus’ having only one human parent would not of itself guarantee sinlessness. That may well be true, but we answer that it was not the mere biological fact of having only one parent that preserved Him from the taint of hereditary sin. A moral fact cannot be explained merely in terms of physical considerations. Calvin maintained that His conception was holy and untainted, not because man had no part in the conception, but because He was sanctified by the Spirit, so that His generation was as pure and holy as it would have been before Adam’s Fall. It was by the special agency of the Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary (Luke 1:35). It was by the direct activity of God that Jesus was kept from the contamination of Mary’s sinful nature.
Others argue that both genealogies in Matthew and Luke trace His descent through Joseph and not through Mary at all. This only appears to be the case. Luke’s genealogy is that of Mary, who was apparently of the same tribe and family as Joseph. Matthew records the genealogy of Joseph, because it was necessary that the Messiah’s right to the throne of David should be established. It is true that Jesus was a lineal descendant of David through His mother, but as a woman had no right to the throne, her son would be similarly disqualified. But as legally adopted son of Joseph, who was also of the Davidic line, Jesus had a legal claim to the throne. From the two genealogies it is thus established that Jesus was of the seed of David by natural as well as legal descent.
In this connection an interesting suggestion has been advanced: “Probably the Matthan of Matthew is the Matthat of Luke, and Jacob and Heli were brothers; and Heli’s son Joseph and Jacob’s daughter Mary first cousins. Joseph, as male heir to his uncle Jacob who had only one child, Mary, would marry her according to Numbers 36:8. Thus the genealogy of the inheritance (Matthew’s) and that of natural descent (Luke’s), would be primarily Joseph’s, then Mary’s also.”
It should be observed that the writers who included these tables in their records were the men who recorded the virgin birth. Obviously they were conscious of no contradiction between their narratives and the genealogies. Note how carefully each was to guard against saying that Joseph was the father of Jesus. “Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom (feminine pronoun) was born Jesus” (Matthew 1:16). “Jesus … being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph” (Luke 3:23).
The Argument from Silence
The peril of pressing too far the argument from silence is illustrated in the old claim of the criminal who maintained that only two men saw him steal, whereas he could bring a hundred who did not, and therefore he should be acquitted!
Because certain New Testament writers, Mark, John, and Paul, do not clearly refer to the event, it is asserted that their silence argues against its truth. It is dangerous to argue from silence to ignorance, for the one does not necessarily imply the other. Actually the argument proves too much. Mark is equally silent on the whole subject of our Lord’s birth. Must we therefore conclude that He was not born at all? His gospel begins with the public ministry of Jesus. Then, too, Mark refers to Jesus, not as the carpenter’s son, but as the Son of Mary.
And what of John? If no such miracle as the virgin birth occurred, how are we to understand this statement—”The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14)? Is that not a hint at incarnation?
In the words of John 1:13 scholars of widely differing schools find a distinct reference to the subject. On this point Samuel Zwemer writes: “Here those who believe the Word are those who were begotten, not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.’ But according to the express testimony of Tertullian there was an early second-century reading of this text which had the singular instead of the plural. It would then read, ‘He was begotten not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.’”
In his de Carne Christi Tertullian wrote: “I shall make more use of this passage after I have confronted those who have tampered with it. They maintain it was written in the plural, as if designating those who were before mentioned as believing on His name. But how can this be when all who believe … are by virtue of the common principle of the human race born of bloods and of the will of the flesh and of the will of man?—as indeed is Valentinus himself. The expression is in the singular, as referring to the Lord. He was born of God…. As flesh, however, He is not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of man, because it was by the will of God that the word was made flesh.”
If this old reading is correct, John denies any human paternity to Christ and asserts the virgin birth in the clearest possible way. St. Augustine in his Confessions quotes this same verse from John’s gospel in the singular and takes it to refer to the virgin birth. “Also I found there that God the Word was born not of blood, nor of the will of a husband, nor the will of the flesh, but of God.”
There is a tradition that on one occasion John left the public baths at Ephesus when Cerinthus, the Gnostic heretic entered. His profound aversion to Cerinthus stemmed from the fact that he taught that Jesus was the natural son of Joseph and Mary. Could not John’s aversion indicate a knowledge of the virgin birth?
In any case, John could not be ignorant of the doctrine, for he had access to the synoptic gospels, and Mary lived with him after the crucifixion. Had he known that the tradition was without foundation, it is incredible that he would have made no reference to that fact.
Although Paul makes no direct reference to the doctrine, if he is silent about the virgin birth, he is equally silent about the human paternity of Jesus. He invariably employed some unusual and significant expressions when referring to the incarnation. This is especially the case in the verse: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law” (Galatians 4:4). In this chapter he uses the word “born” three times, but in speaking of Christ’s birth he uses a different word from that employed when speaking of Ishmael and Isaac (Galatians 4:23, 29). In this connection, Romans 5:12; 8:3; and Philippians 2:7 should also be studied. Nothing Paul wrote in any way casts doubt upon this important tenet of the evangelical faith, but rather he assumed it in his writings.
Our God has sanctified all ages;
He Not for twelve years,
but those long thirty-three,
Dwelt in our world, the ever undefiled;
Loving, obedient, gentle, stainless, mild,
Exemplar He alike to sire and boy.A. M. MORGAN
And yet, I think, at Golgotha,
As Jesus’ eyes were closed in death,
They saw with love most passionate
The village street at Nazareth.EDWARD HILTON YOUNG