Isaiah 7:14 “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son…”

It’s no secret that a virgin birth is not an ordinary one. The very idea has been an object of ridicule. Some feminists have ridiculed the idea as the product of men suffering from deep-seated sexual hang-ups. Some liberal church-men have felt so embarrassed by it that they felt it necessary to interpret it away. “It is nothing more than a symbol, a myth, intended to give Jesus special honor,” they say. That way they can’t be accused of believing in some “freakish intervention in the course of nature.”

Early Christians, on the other hand, recognized the virgin birth of Jesus as a truth so precious, so dear, so important, that when they summarized his life in the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds, they felt it necessary to include this. It rose far above so many truths which could have been stated about Jesus.

Why is it so important?  Think of what it promises us! What kind of a Savior do you need? One who is sinless, perfectly loving, and whose life has infinite value. This means he is qualified to serve as a substitute and sacrifice for all people. At the same time, he has to be mortal and subject to the law of God. More than merely human, he must be a part of this family of mankind God placed on this earth. Only such a man can serve in our place to satisfy God’s demands of us.

Where could such a Savior be found? How could the chain of original sin, passed from every parent to every child through history, be broken? Where could such a perfect person be located? How could a human life ever have such infinite value that it could stand in the place, not just of some people, but all of them? How could God do all of this without some kind of miracle?

In the virgin birth our Lord pulls back the curtain to let us see his saving plans and fulfillments more clearly. He lets us see the miracle. Perhaps there is some other way that he could have done it. But here he shows us how he actually did. With God as his only Father, and a virgin woman of our own human family as his real mother, Jesus is just the kind of Savior that we need: in every way human, one of us; yet in every way God, and able to what is impossible for us. In his virgin birth we discover that Jesus is uniquely qualified to serve as our Savior from sin.