The Virginal Imperative

Luke 1: 26 - 27 (ESV)

26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.

In the prophetic passage of Isaiah 7:14, the Hebrew word "al-maw" is translated "parthenos" by the Septuagint translators. It is "parthenos" that is used here in the New Testament for "virgin". By this we can see that there is no doubt that the early church clearly believed in the virgin birth of Jesus. There is also no demonstrable place in scripture where the Hebrew word "al-maw" is ever translated as anything but a virgin - a girl of marriagable age who has never known a man.

If Jesus was not born of a virigin then He is a son of Adam - rather than being the New Adam - and our faith is in vain. If Mary was not a virgin then Jesus inherited a sinful nature from Adam through an earthly father, and was born a sinner by nature, unable to save anyone. Denial of the virgin birth of Christ is a denial of the faith and a heresy worthy of its perpetrator being put out of the church until and unless he repents.

The Father of Christ is and must be the Heavenly Father by the means of the Holy Spirit. Only the Son of God, perfectly holy and without original sin, could save man. And only if He became a man by being born of a woman. By one man’s sin (Adam) death came, and death spread to all men in that all men sinned. (Romans 5:12) Yet if by one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. (Romans 5:15)

This underlies the doctrine of the hypostatic union in the nature of Christ wherein He is described as being completely human and utterly God. His nature is 100% of each, simmultaneously in the same body. In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Though unimaginable it is nevertheless true. Our minds cannot truly conceive of what it must be like. We can only accept what God says. I think this is a part of the "foolishness" that the world stumbles at, and that believers are given the grace to accept.

To see Christ was to have seen the Father. To see Him now is to see the Father. Back in the day, "seeing" Christ was no different than seeing Him is today. It was not merely a physical perception of his human form. It was about seeing Who it was that was in that human form. Christ was then, and is now, perceived only by the eye of faith. Without the gift of faith only a man can be seen, though all of His words and his demeanour are evidence of the Person of God.

It was not about His appearance at all. He had no comeliness that we should think anything special of Him. No images, sculptures or other representations of Him have survived. This is no accident. It is God’s providence. There are spurious relics such as the rumoured cloth of Veronica upon which the image of Christ’s bloody face was supposedly imprinted; and there is the Shroud of Turin upon which an image of the resurrecting Christ is supposed to have been transferred to a burial cloth by the blinding light of His glory.

But the relic business - especially as it pertains to actual images of Christ seems to me to be in direct contravention of God’s purpose in Christ’s fully human anonymity. We would walk by Him in a crowd. He was unremarkable to look at, and God meant it to be that way. God meant it to be that we have no image of His physical appearance. The focus must be on Christ, the Word. Christ come from heaven. Christ, God’s ultimate communication to man. (Hebrews 1:1-2) Literally, God has spoken to us "in Son". He came as a man, yes - a fully human person - but it was more than His humanity that we are to "see".

...when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.” (Hebrews 10:5-7)

A body was prepared for the eternal Son of God to live in. He became fully human, though He remained fully divine. He took humanity upon Himself then and forevermore. He is the very expression of the invisible God, made visible in humanity. Visible to those with eyes to see and ears to hear. He is not, nor was He ever, hidden by an overt act on God’s part - but only by the wilfull and perverse blindness of human depravity.

The supernatural conception and the virgin birth of Christ are foundational to the gospel and may not be denied by any professor of the faith. If they are then that person’s faith is, indeed, in vain.