Why the Virgin Birth of Christ Matters
“The virgin birth is a necessary foundation to Christmas and the believer’s life,” says renowned pastor and seminary president, Jack Hayford.
Tragically,
disbelieving foundational truths has become a normative part of modernity.
Agnostic
Oxford professor Sir William Ramsey, one of the greatest archaeologists of all
time, decided to scientifically disprove the fourth gospel. He skeptically
thought it could not be trusted. Dr. Luke collected his information from a
primary source, likely Mary. Luke references thirty-two countries, fifty-four
cities, and nine islands.
After
several years – and many miles – of diligent labor, Ramsey completely changed
his mind, discovering Luke was accurate in every case where the critics
disagreed. Ramsey wrote, “Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are
his statements of fact trustworthy, he is possessed of the true historic sense;
in short, this author should be placed along with the greatest of historians.”
Much to the dismay of contemporary skeptics of his day, Ramsey spent the next
twenty years proving and publishing the accuracy of the smallest details of
Luke’s accounts.
Another
skeptic turned believer was Thomas Oden, noted Methodist theologian. In his memoir,
“A Change of Heart” (2015), he shared his pilgrimage from theological
liberalism to orthodox affirmation of biblical Christianity. Explaining his
early embracing of biblical skepticism, he admitted, “I loved the fantasies and
I loved the revolutionary illusions. I loved heresy.” After spending years
disbelieving the basics of the Bible, he says the Holy Spirit found him and set
him on a completely different trajectory the rest of his life.
Attacks on
foundational theological truths “emerged in the aftermath of the Enlightenment,
with some theologians attempting to harmonize the anti-supernaturalism of the
modern mind with the church's teaching about Christ. The great quest of liberal
theology has been to invent a Jesus who is stripped of all supernatural power,
deity, and authority” (Albert Mohler, “Can a Christian Deny the Virgin
Birth?”).
The
fountainhead of this movement was the skeptical, German higher criticism of the
19th century, with thinkers like Rudolf Bultmann, who argued the New
Testament presents a fantasy worldview that we cannot accept as authentic. He
pushed a program of thought called “demythologization” to strip Christianity
from any hint of the miraculous or supernatural – including the denial of key
components like the virgin birth and the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus
Christ.
American
Protestant liberalism emerged in the early 1900’s with influencers like Harry
Emerson Fosdick courting the same type of deconstructionism. By the mid 1900’s,
two movements emerged countering theological liberalism. Fundamentalism, as
with Bob Jones, Sr., and evangelicalism, led by figures like Billy Graham, Bill
Bright, and Carl Henry saw the dangers and foolishness of rejecting
Christianity’s foundations.
The Bible
pictures truth as a plumbline. The next time you buy a house, build a storage
shed, or drive across a bridge, ask yourself, “Do I care if this structure was
built true to plumb (meaning exactly vertical or true)?”
Modern
movements, such as the “Jesus Seminar,” however, fully embraced the serpent’s
first tactic in the Garden of Eden: “Did God really say?” (Genesis 3:1). The
abandonment of the full trustworthiness and authority of the Scriptures has led
to fully embracing moral revolutionaries, the sexual revolution, and the
questioning of virtually every standard of behavior.
Among most
mainline denominations, Thomas Oden, said, “the world sets the agenda – it’s
always trying to catch up with whatever is the latest and seemingly, apparently,
the best and most productive form of psychotherapy. I was taught to be
attentive to culture without having a sufficient grounding in the classical
Christian confession.”
Dr. Mohler
warns, “Christians must face the fact that a denial of the virgin birth is a
denial of Jesus as the Christ. The Savior who died for our sins was none other
than the baby who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and born of a virgin. The
virgin birth does not stand alone as a biblical doctrine, it is an irreducible
part of the biblical revelation about the person and work of Jesus Christ. With
it, the Gospel stands or falls.
The
authority of the Bible is almost completely gone where liberal theology holds
its sway. The authority of the Bible is replaced with the secular worldview of
the modern age and the postmodern denial of truth itself. The true church
stands without apology upon the authority of the Bible and declares that Jesus
was indeed ‘born of a virgin.’ Though the denial of this doctrine is now
tragically common, the historical truth of Christ's birth remains inviolate.”
This
Christmas, I’m thankful for Jesus Christ, the embodiment of Truth, and the
Bible, the written revelation of Truth. He is the incarnate and now glorified
Word of God, and it is the written and preserved Word of God.
It was
necessary for Him to come through a virgin so the bondage of sin
would not be
passed to Him. He became the sinless sacrifice – for my sins and yours. He met
God’s demands perfectly.
Pastor Jack recaps,
“obedience to God’s Word allows one to be available for the fulfillment of
God’s life-giving promises and that through the power of the cross, one can be
released from the power of sin and be made righteous and pure before the Lord.”
Images provided with permission by Pexels.
