“For what human being that ever existed formed a body for himself from a virgin alone?” -Athanasius, “On the Incarnation”
When the angel first told Mary she was going to have a baby, she believed him. But what was her first clue that the Spirit of God had done what the angel promised? Did she wake up one morning feeling nauseous? Did she crave a certain dish? The radiant angel, Gabriel, had convinced her a miracle—a breaking in of the supernatural—was coming. But no timing had been revealed. No “X” marked her calendar to help count the days to the beginning of motherhood.
Mary must have waited, wondered, and watched. Perhaps it was only a few hours after Gabriel’s visit that the great Lion of Judah took on flesh and came to live in the womb of a poor, powerless teenage girl.
Matthew and Luke both mention the fact that Mary was a virgin (Luke 1:26–35, Matthew 1:18–25). Matthew goes so far as to point out that Mary remained a virgin until after Jesus was born. But why did it matter? Why did the gospel writers want us to know about Mary’s virginity?
For Luke, perhaps it was a matter of precision. It’s very possible that Luke interviewed Mary personally as he gathered information for his gospel. He would have honored the mother of his Lord by including whatever details of the story she included. We can imagine him taking notes as he listened, organizing the facts as she told them to present them eventually to Theophilus, the recipient of his gospel.
Matthew included the detail of Mary’s virginity because he wanted his readers to have no doubt that Jesus was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. As Matthew makes clear, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:
‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (Matthew 1:22–23).
The God who condescended to speak through Isaiah was once again condescending to be with his tainted creation. His promise of a blessed virgin was being fulfilled, despite the consistent rebellion of his people.
If we widen our frame a bit, we find more reasons to ponder the virginity of Mary.
First, we need to go all the way back to Genesis, where we start with Adam as the representative of all people. While we moderns think of ourselves as individuals, mostly unattached to the generations before us in terms of responsibilities and identities, the Bible thinks differently about certain people.
Adam is considered a type, or representative, of all future humans, the “head” of the human race. Theologians call this Adam’s “federal headship.” Because of his position, Adam’s sin set off a terrible chain reaction that continues to this day. When he fell into sin, so did all the rest of us, even those who were not yet born. Scripture points this out in multiple places:
- “…in Adam all die…” (1 Corinthians 15:22)
- “…sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…” (Romans 5:12)
- “…one trespass led to condemnation for all men…” (Romans 5:18)
Anyone originating with man would have also come from Adam and would have shared in the same guilt we do. Humans had no way of producing a savior. Our race was marked with the guilt of sin, our line helpless to rescue itself.
The angel told Mary, “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:31–32). This means that instead of being a son of Adam – condemned, hopeless, and powerless to save – the baby growing inside Mary was the Son of the Most High.
A child was being born from outside the line of Adam. He was without sin and was therefore able to become the sacrificial lamb without blemish who would redeem. He was Immanuel, “God with us.” The fourth-century church father Athanasius wrote of this miraculous baby in his treatise “On the Incarnation.”
“Just as one can, therefore, trace the genealogy of David and Moses and all the patriarchs, so no one can tell the generation in the flesh of the Savior from man. For he it is who made the star tell of his birth of his body.”1
But what about Mary? Wasn’t she also from the line of Adam? Just as Adam was a symbol, representing all, so was Mary. She had been chosen to represent a new kind of person, a new Eve —one who lived by faith.
But the most magnificent aspect of Mary’s virginity—and therefore Jesus’s birth—is its supernatural quality. This was no ordinary origin story but rather the transcendent God breaking into space and time. It was the introduction of the upside-down kingdom, where the unthinkable happens on the regular, and the bright light of the eternal God is glimpsed by a worn and weary world.
The virgin birth stands in line with water being turned to wine, the blind man receiving his sight, and the bleeding woman’s flow of blood stopping after only touching the hem of Jesus’ garment. Christ’s birth is a fitting preface to the extraordinary life of the God-man. It sets the stage for a life that culminated in Jesus’s resurrection and ascension.
A supernatural kingdom can only begin with a supernatural king. And a supernatural king required a supernatural conception. Mary’s virginity in the birth narrative tells us God was on the move. The 400 years of silence between the Old and New Testament had been broken. And the rescuer whose entrance into the world brought wise men from hundreds of miles away to worship will bring the entire world to the same posture of adoration.
What does all this mean for us, those who believe in the virgin birth? What does it matter in our everyday lives? It means, first, that the gospel writers were real people, interviewing others or writing their own eyewitness accounts while also writing under the influence of the Holy Spirit. They were not myth makers, hoping to write a story that might last, but truth tellers, testifying to a real God for all of us who would come after them.
It means that God keeps his word. What was prophesied by Isaiah hundreds of years before was finally happening. No matter what God has said, or when he said it, he will do it. He is trustworthy.
It means the new Adam has come from outside our condemned race and won our victory. And though we may inch forward at an alarmingly slow pace toward holiness, our eventual transformation into the likeness of Jesus is guaranteed because his Father is the Most High God. The promises in his Word you read yesterday are true tomorrow. What a balm for our weary souls.
Most miraculously, it means our God is worthy of worship and wonder. He is not confined to our imagined answers to prayer. His kingdom is wide and his mercy surprising. We may not see miracles of healing or even a change in our difficult circumstances. But the virgin birth reminds us what our God can do and how our Father works. This is the hope that sustains us through the dark winter—our God will surprise us again with his glory.
The incarnation of Jesus in the womb of a virgin plays like an overture before the great symphony of God’s kingdom begins. It is otherworldly, everlasting, and worship inspiring.
Christine Gordon is the cofounder of At His Feet Studies and a visiting instructor at Covenant Theological Seminary.
1 Athanasius, On the Incarnation (Yonkers, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 88.
Read the other articles in our Blessed Among Women series here:
Blessed Among Women: A New Series Celebrating the Witness of Mary