5  The Virgin Birth:  A Divine Miracle  (Luke 1:34–38)

Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God. And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. (1:34–38)

History has recorded some amazing births. Born near a small town in Ontario, Canada, on May 28, 1934, the Dionne sisters became the first known set of quintuplets to survive infancy. For the first decade of their lives they were Canada’s biggest tourist attraction—bigger even than Niagara Falls—generating several hundred million dollars in tourist revenue. January 11, 1974, saw the birth of the Rosenkowitz sextuplets, the first recorded set of sextuplets to have survived to adulthood, in Cape Town, South Africa. The seven children born to Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey of Des Moines, Iowa, on November 19, 1997, are the first set of septuplets to survive infancy. Another notable birth involved only one child. On July 25, 1978, Louise Brown was born in Oldham, England. What was noteworthy about her, however, was not her birth, but the manner of her conception: she was the world’s first “test-tube baby,” conceived by means of in vitro fertilization. And in 2008 a single woman gave birth to octuplets by means of in vitro fertilization. All are currently alive.

The Bible also records some amazing births. Isaac’s birth was nothing short of miraculous, since his father (Abraham) was one hundred years old and his mother (Sarah) was ninety years old and barren (Rom. 4:19). The Lord also miraculously opened the womb of Manoah’s wife (Judg. 13:2), and she gave birth to Samson. Similarly, God allowed Hannah, who had also been barren (1 Sam. 1:2, 5) to become pregnant with Samuel. Only a few months before Gabriel’s appearance to Mary, the Lord enabled an elderly, barren couple, Zacharias and Elizabeth, to conceive a child (Luke 1:7, 24). That child, John the Baptist, was called by God to be the forerunner of the Messiah, and was the greatest man who had ever lived up to his time (Matt. 11:11).

But the most remarkable birth of all was that of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, incarnate; the eternal “Word [who] became flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14); supernaturally conceived in a virgin without a human father. Jesus’ virgin conception cannot be explained away as an example of parthenogenesis (lit., “virgin creation” or “generation”), which is found in some lower forms of life. Parthenogenesis in humans, even if it were biologically possible, could only result genetically in a female child, since women do not have the Y chromosome necessary to produce a male child.

The virgin birth of Jesus Christ is foundational to Christianity, since it is the only way to explain how He could be the God-man. To deny the virgin birth, then, is to deny the biblical truth that Jesus Christ is both God (cf. John 1:1; 10:30; 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Phil. 2:6; Col. 2:9; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:8; 2 Peter 1:2; 1 John 5:20) and man (cf. John 1:14; Rom. 1:3; Gal. 4:4; Phil. 2:7–8; 1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 2:14; 1 John 4:2; 2 John 7), and to affirm another, false Jesus (2 Cor. 11:4). For if Jesus had a human father, He was just a man. And if He was just a man, He could not be the Savior. And if Jesus is not the Savior, there is no gospel, no salvation, no resurrection, no hope beyond this life. As Paul notes, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins…. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:17, 19). We may as well “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (v. 32). The serious implications of viewing Jesus as a mere man led Paul to pronounce a curse on those who propagate that satanic lie (Gal. 1:8–9).

Highlighting the crucial, indispensable role of the doctrine of the virgin birth John M. Frame writes,

Though fully revealed in the New Testament, the virgin birth is foreshadowed in the Old. In Genesis 3:15, God declared that the seed of the woman (Christ) would crush Satan’s head. Psalm 2 predicts that at a specific time (“today;” v. 7) the eternal second person of the Trinity would be born into the world. The only way for that to happen, as previously noted, would be through a virgin birth. Isaiah 7:14 records the startling prediction that “a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel” (“God with us” [Matt. 1:23]). Some translations render the Hebrew word alma (“virgin”) “young woman.” But the common, everyday occurrence of a young woman becoming pregnant in the normal manner could hardly constitute the sign from the Lord promised earlier in verse 14. Further, “There is no instance where it can be proved that alma designates a young woman who is not a virgin” (R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke, eds., The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament [Chicago: Moody, 1980] s.v., “alma”). Noted Old Testament scholar Edward J. Young agrees: “We may confidently assert that the word ’almah is never employed of a married woman” (The Book of Isaiah [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985], 1:287). Matthew’s inspired translation of Isaiah’s prophecy places the issue beyond doubt; it translates alma using the Greek word parthenos, which can only mean “virgin” (Matt. 1:23; cf. 1 Cor. 7:28, 34, 36–38; 2 Cor. 11:2). The Septuagint (an ancient translation of the Old Testament into Greek) also uses parthenos to translate alma.).

Despite the virgin birth’s solid biblical foundation, there have always been false teachers, purveyors of “doctrines of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1) who, for the purpose of rejecting the deity of Jesus, deny it. In John 8:41, the Jewish leaders scornfully said to Jesus, “We were not born of fornication,” thus implying that He was. Later Jewish writings propagated the blasphemous lie that Jesus’ real father was a Roman soldier who slept with Mary. Others throughout history have maintained that Jesus was the natural son of Joseph and Mary, ignoring the Bible’s explicit statement that Joseph “kept [Mary] a virgin until she gave birth to a Son” (Matt. 1:25). The biblical evidence clearly gives the lie to any teaching that denies the virgin birth.

This passage may be summarized under five points: Mary’s supplication, God’s strategy, God’s sign, God’s sovereignty, and Mary’s submission.

MARY’S SUPPLICATION

Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (1:34)

The astonishing announcement from an angel of God that she was to be the mother of the long-awaited Messiah (1:30–33) left Mary shaken and confused (cf. v. 29). Overwhelmed by the implications of his announcement, and wondering how it would be practically implemented, she asked Gabriel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The thought of having a child without the impregnation of a man was inconceivable. But Mary’s question did not reflect doubt or incredulity (unlike Zacharias’s [1:18–20]); she believed what the angel told her, but did not understand how it could happen.

It must be remembered that miracles were extremely rare in history, as the record of the Old Testament shows. By Mary’s day there had been no divine revelation or miracles for four centuries. No one had seen an angel during that time either, until Gabriel’s appearance to Zacharias (which Mary probably did not know about since the angel had to tell her about Elizabeth’s pregnancy [v. 36]) a few months earlier. Mary realized that the angel did not mean that she would become pregnant naturally, after she consummated her marriage to Joseph. She understood that he was saying she would become pregnant while she was still a virgin; her question was not an expression of doubt, but a request for an explanation of the means for that impossibility.

GOD’S STRATEGY

The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God. (1:35)

In response to Mary’s request for clarification, Gabriel told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you.” The Spirit plays a prominent role in Luke’s narrative of the Lord’s birth (1:15, 41, 67; 2:25–27), and would also be the power source throughout His earthly life and ministry (cf. 3:21–22; Matt. 3:13–17; John 1:32–34). That the Holy Spirit would be involved in the creative miracle of the conception of the God-man is not surprising, since He is God and was involved in the creation of the world. When “the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, … the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). The Holy Spirit, the original agent of creation, would again become an agent of creation, this time in Mary’s womb. There is not the slightest suggestion in this text or anywhere else in Scripture of human sexual activity involved in the conception of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Restating the profound reality of the Spirit’s involvement to underscore its significance, Gabriel said to Mary, The power of the Most High will overshadow you. The familiar Old Testament title Most High (Heb. El Elyon) depicts God as the sovereign, omnipotent ruler of heaven and earth. (See the exposition of 1:31–33 in the previous chapter of this volume.) The God who made and upholds the universe (Ps. 104:30; Col. 1:16–17) through His Spirit (Job 33:4) would create life in Mary’s womb.

The verb translated will overshadow (episkiazō) is also used in the accounts of the transfiguration (Matt. 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:34) when the glory cloud descended on Peter, James, and John. It means “to surround,” “to encompass,” or in a metaphorical sense, “to influence.” The creative influence of the Spirit of God would overshadow Mary to produce a child in her womb.

That divine creative miracle guaranteed that two things would be true of Mary’s Son. First, He would be a holy Child, unlike any other infant ever born. Everyone who has ever lived, with the sole exception of the Lord Jesus Christ, has been born a sinner (Job 15:14; 25:4; Eccles. 7:20; Isa. 53:6; Rom. 5:12; Gal. 3:22; cf. Gen. 3:6–13). David illustrated that truth when he wrote, “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me” (Ps. 51:5). He was not saying that he was an illegitimate child, but that from the time of his conception he was a sinner. But Christ has always been the sinless Son of God (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 7:26; 1 Peter 1:19; 2:22; 1 John 3:5; cf. John 8:46).

Some have erroneously suggested the reason that Jesus was sinless was that He had no human father. But there is no biblical evidence that the sin nature is passed on genetically only through the father. All men and women are born sinners because “in Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22), since “through the one man’s [Adam’s] disobedience the many were made sinners” (Rom. 5:19). In a manner beyond human comprehension, Jesus was fully human, yet completely sinless from conception. The explanation of how that could be is shrouded in the unfathomable mystery of the incarnation.

Jesus had to be the perfectly holy Son of God because His nature is that of the Holy One Himself, God the Father. That rich title is uniquely appropriate for Him, and Jesus Himself (22:70; cf. 2:49; 10:22), God the Father (3:22; 9:35), Satan (4:3, 9), the demons (4:41; 8:28), and Paul (Acts 9:20; 13:33) all applied it to Him. The title has profound implications concerning the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ (cf. John 1:49; 3:18; Rom. 1:4; 1 John 5:20, and the exposition of 2:49 in chap. 16 of this volume). Here, however, the term is used in a more restricted sense, signifying that Jesus is by nature the Son of God manifested in human flesh. In the words of the writer of Hebrews, Christ “is the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature” (1:3; John 1:14; Phil. 2:6).

GOD’S SIGN

And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month. (1:36)

Though Mary did not explicitly ask for a sign to remove doubt, God graciously gave her one to strengthen her faith. That divine sign involved her older relative Elizabeth. Sungenis (relative) is a nonspecific term for a kinswoman or female relative, and the exact relationship between Mary and Elizabeth is not spelled out. According to Luke’s record of her genealogy (3:23–38), Mary was a descendant of David (v. 31) and through him of Judah (v. 33). Elizabeth, on the other hand, was a descendant of Aaron (Luke 1:5), and through him of Levi (Num. 26:59). Hence Mary must have been related to Elizabeth through her mother.

The shocking news (introduced by the exclamation, behold), which Mary was undoubtedly hearing for the first time, was that her kinswoman had conceived a son in her old age. Mary was well aware that Elizabeth was barren and past childbearing age. She must have been amazed and overjoyed to hear that she who was scornfully, derisively called barren (cf. 1:25; Gen. 30:22–23; 1 Sam. 1:6) was now in her sixth month of pregnancy.

The miracle that occurred for Elizabeth was one of conception in old age, not the virgin conception that Mary would experience. Nevertheless, Elizabeth’s conception was a sign from God to Mary that He was still able to perform miracles, that He could do the humanly impossible (cf. Jer. 32:17, 27; Matt. 19:26). God gave the sign, not because Mary doubted the angel’s words, but to provide an anchor (cf. Heb. 6:19) for her faith.

GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY

For nothing will be impossible with God. (1:37)

It is one thing to say something is going to happen, but quite another to make it happen. What Mary heard was, she realized, humanly impossible. Therefore, Gabriel reminded her that because of God’s unlimited power, nothing will be impossible with Him. The proof Gabriel offered, as noted above, was Elizabeth’s conception of John.

But there was another older couple that God miraculously allowed to conceive a child. Mary would have been familiar with the Old Testament account of Isaac’s birth to Abraham and Sarah (Gen. 18:1–15). Like Zacharias and Elizabeth, Abraham and Sarah were well beyond their childbearing years. Genesis 18:12–14 is the key passage of that account:

Gabriel’s emphatic declaration that nothing is impossible for God answered God’s rhetorical question in verse 14. If nothing is too hard for God’s omnipotence, then everything is possible with Him (Ps. 115:3; Dan. 4:35). God, whose power knows no limits (Deut. 3:24; Job 9:4; Ps. 89:13), and who is not bound by the laws of nature that He created, can accomplish anything consistent with His holy nature and purposes. Gabriel’s reminder of what God had done in the past reassured Mary of His power to keep His word to her.

MARY’S SUBMISSION

And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. (1:38)

In addition to the well-known story of Abraham and Sarah, Mary was familiar with another Old Testament account of a miraculous conception that must have come into her mind. First Samuel 1:1–2:10 records the story of Samuel’s birth to Hannah. In 1:10–11 Hannah, who was barren (1:2, 5), appealed to God for a son:

Like Hannah, who called herself God’s “maidservant,” Mary also saw herself as the bondslave of the Lord (cf. v. 48). The Greek word rendered bondslave (doulē, which always should be accurately translated “slave”) is the same one used in the Septuagint version of 1 Samuel 1:11, thus linking Mary’s submissive attitude to Hannah’s. Her humble response demonstrated Mary’s willing submission to God’s unfolding purpose. She saw herself as nothing more than His willing, humble slave, and responded by saying, “May it be done to me according to your word.” She did not ask about Joseph, who obviously would know that the baby was not his. Mary would thus have to face the stigma of unwed motherhood and the appearance of having committed adultery—the punishment for which was death by stoning [Deut. 22:13–21; Lev. 20:10; cf. John 8:3–5].) But in humble, obedient faith Mary willingly trusted God to vindicate her (cf. Matt. 1:19–25).

One of the Roman Catholic Church’s most egregious errors is its turning of this self-proclaimed humble slave of God into the exalted queen of heaven. Such worship of Mary, which would have appalled and horrified her, is nothing less than idolatry. There is no queen of heaven, only the true and eternal King (Pss. 29:10; 47:8; Dan. 4:37; cf. Matt. 11:25; Acts 17:24), the triune God.

Catholicism’s elevation of Mary finds no support in Scripture; the concept of the “queen of heaven” does appear in the Old Testament in connection with ancient pagan religion. The idea derives from Assyrian and Babylonian beliefs and practices prevalent during Jeremiah’s time in apostate Judah. Their idolatry caused God through the prophet to pronounce judgment on His people:

The “queen of heaven” (v. 18) was the pagan goddess Ishtar (also called Ashtoreth and Astarte), the wife of Baal or Molech. Because those false deities symbolized fertility, worship of them also involved prostitution.

Later, God once again used Jeremiah to confront His rebellious people over this issue. Defiantly, they replied,

In response, the prophet solemnly warned them of God’s impending judgment:

To worship Mary as if she were the queen of heaven is to mix paganism with biblical truth and to blaspheme the true King of heaven. To proclaim that Mary is co-redemptrix and mediatrix of saving grace (cf. the discussion of Catholicism’s unbiblical view of Mary in chapter 4 of this volume), only compounds its false, syncretistic view of her.

Mary’s dramatic encounter with the angel Gabriel ended with this short, simple postscript: And the angel departed from her. His mission accomplished, Gabriel returned to the presence of God. The God-man was going to be born; the only begotten Son of God, Jesus, who would save His people from their sins, the divine Redeemer, the holy offspring, the divine King who will reign over a kingdom that will last forever.

This account demonstrates that God’s promises will be fulfilled, as they were in Mary’s life. It also reveals that the sovereign God accomplishes His purposes through His willing and obedient slaves, as He did through Mary. Without regard for the implications and potential risks, Mary faithfully rested in the sovereign purpose of her Savior and God. That is her true magnificence.

God is still doing His work today, if not through visible miracles, then spiritually through His people who trust Him (Isa. 26:3; cf. Prov. 29:25), obey His Word (Ps. 119:17, 67, 101; Matt. 7:24; Luke 11:28; James 1:25), and humbly submit as obedient slaves to His will (Josh. 24:24; Ps. 119:35; Eccles. 12:13; Phil. 2:12–13).