The virgin birth of Jesus is as astounding as it is mysterious. Many people throughout the years have gone to great lengths to try and disprove and deny the legitimacy of Christ being born to a virgin mother. I can’t say I blame them! For a child to be born you need a father (a man) and a mother (a woman). Saying a child can be born to a woman who has never known a man is quite simply impossible based on human means. But, that is exactly what God declared would happen and needed to happen. If Christ wasn’t born of a virgin, then He wouldn’t be the Messiah. And, as we’ll discover, He also would not be mankind’s new representative.

Some Christians might be ok with letting the truth of the virgin birth go. Afterall, as long as you believe in Jesus, what’s the big deal? Just love on them and tell them about Jesus, and everything will work itself out. Sadly, I fear many Christians might have this belief. I want to show you just how important and foundational the virgin birth of Christ is to the Christian faith and redemption itself. 

The virgin birth of Jesus is foundational to the Christian faith because it deals with representation and headship. In Romans 5, the Apostle Paul writes this:

“⁸But God demonstrates His own love toward us; in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ⁹Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. ¹⁰For if while we were enemies we were reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. ¹¹And not only this, but we also celebrate in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. ¹²Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned – ¹³for until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not counted against anyone when there is no law. ¹⁴Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the violation committed by Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come” (Romans 5:8-14)

Allow me to proclaim the greatest understatement of all time: man has a sin problem! But through the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we are reconciled back to God! 

How is this reconciliation possible? As Paul explains above, it’s through representation. In the garden, Adam sinned. Through his sin death entered into the world, and through Adam all sinned. How does that work? Why are all of us guilty because of Adam? As with our reconciliation, it’s all about representation. I think the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith sums it up perfectly:

1. Although God created man upright and perfect, and gave him a righteous law, which had been unto life had he kept it, and threatened death upon the breach thereof, yet he did not long abide in this honor; Satan using the subtlety of the serpent to subdue Eve, then by her seducing Adam, who, without any compulsion, did willfully transgress the law of their creation, and the command given to them, in eating the forbidden fruit, which God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory.
2. Our first parents, by this sin, fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and we in them whereby death came upon all: all becoming dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. 
3. They being the root, and by God's appointment, standing in the room and stead of all mankind, the guilt of the sin was imputed, and corrupted nature conveyed, to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation, being now conceived in sin, and by nature children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal, unless the Lord Jesus set them free. 

(Second London Baptist Confession of Faith – Chapter 6: of the fall of man, of sin, and of the Punishment Thereof; Paragraphs 1-3)

Adam is the representative of all mankind. And because he is the Federal head, all his descendants inherit his sin and guilt. Everyone born by “ordinary generation” is a descendant of Adam, meaning everyone born by natural human means (one husband + one wife = child) is under the representation and headship of Adam. 

So, if everyone represented by Adam is imputed with the guilt of sin when they are born by natural means, how can we be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ? In order for God to reconcile His enemies through the death of His son, Jesus would need to be made like us, as our previous blog stated. But He would need to become a new representative, meaning He cannot be born under the headship of Adam. Jesus cannot be born by natural means; he needs to be born by supernatural means. And, it doesn’t get much more supernatural than a virgin woman conceiving and giving birth.

We can see the evidence of God’s plan, I think, right in the garden of Eden:

“Then the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you more than livestock, and more than any animal of the field; On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life; And I will make enemies of you and the woman, and of your offspring and her Descendant; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel”        

  (Genesis 3:14-15, emphasis mine)

Even in the midst of the fall and the curse, God had planned for reconciliation and salvation! As the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith says: “which God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel to permit, having purposed to order it to His own glory.” Notice that God doesn’t say that Adam’s descendant will defeat the serpent, he says her (Eve’s) descendant. In the Hebrew, the word is translated as “her Seed.” I believe what God is saying is that through the seed of the woman would come the Messiah who would deal Satan the death blow. Ponder with me again the natural means by which people enter the world; do they do that through the seed of a woman? No. So could the seed of the woman be God’s way of saying that Christ would come through supernatural means and bring about salvation? In the first chapter of the gospel of Luke, the angel Gabriel explains to the virgin Mary how Jesus will be conceived through supernatural means:

“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus…. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy-the Son of God” (Luke 1:31 & 35b; emphasis mine)

The Holy Spirit was involved in the conception of Jesus! Don’t ask me how! I have no idea how it worked. But, that’s what makes it so astounding! Through the virgin birth, Jesus was born fully human, yet he was able to circumvent the headship of Adam and be born sinless. Therefore, he stands as a new representative of humanity, as Paul explains:

“So then, as through one offense the result was condemnation to all mankind, so also through one act of righteousness the result was justification of life to all mankind. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners. So also through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous”  (Romans 5:18-19)

Without a virgin birth, this glorious truth is impossible. That is why it is so important to guard and defend it. If Jesus is born of natural means, it would be impossible for Him to be fully God and fully man. But, He wasn’t! He was born of supernatural means, fully God and fully human. He is a new representative, the new federal head for those who put their faith in Him.

“Therefore there is now no condemnation at all for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1)