“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14).
The virgin birth of Christ is one of the vital truths of Christianity that is being repudiated in many quarters today. Many Christians stand idly by, not being able to defend this basic truth of our salvation because they do not understand it.
We believe that Christ was the Word in the beginning with God and that He was God. The Bible is plain on this. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). But He was made flesh for the purpose of carrying out God’s plan of redemption of man from sin (John 1:14).
God’s method of making the Word flesh was to select a virgin so that she, through the power of the Holy Spirit, might conceive and bring forth a Son who would be God incarnate in human flesh (Galatians 4:4). Thus was Christ born; and because of His miraculous conception and birth, Christ is different from any other human being. Adam was created by God without man or woman. Eve was created by God, not without man, but without woman. All of us were created by God through a man and a woman; but unlike Adam and Eve, we came into life as infants while they were full-grown. Jesus also came into life as an infant and in that respect exactly like us, but He was born without man. His birth was from Mary alone, His conception being directly of God through the Holy Spirit.
Because Jesus had an existence prior to His incarnation, His birth united a new human life with His divine life. He therefore became the God-man, uniting in one person the human and the divine. He, because of His supernatural personality, was indeed perfect God and perfect man.
The virgin birth of Christ gave us a sinless Savior. His sinlessness was due to His holy conception. All other children born into this world may be innocent, but none are sinless. The defects of character and sin soon manifest themselves as the beauty and innocence of babyhood fade away, and they become experienced sinners. Therefore, the innocence of childhood is more apparent than real. It looks like innocence, but is only underdeveloped sinfulness. But Christ was perfectly innocent, the only child born sinless. His holy conception guarantees His sinlessness. His sinlessness guarantees our perfect salvation.
Because He was sinless, He was deathless. But He voluntarily took our sins upon Himself and died for us, that we who believe in Him might live. The value of His substitutionary death is determined by the exceeding great value of His life and His sinlessness. Now some try to make Christ sinless by saying Mary was immaculately conceived, and thus sinless, and therefore could give birth to a sinless Son. This is contrary to Scripture, for Mary could not escape the inherited sin that is common to all mankind. “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). The fact that Mary died proves that she was not sinless. Even though Mary was not sinless, she must have been an upright, pure virgin; otherwise God would not have chosen her to be the mother of Christ.
Now if Mary was not sinless, why did she not transmit her hereditary sin to her babe? We believe that Christ was sinless, but we perhaps don’t know how that could be physically possible. We should know the scientific explanation of this important truth:
- The life of all flesh is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11-14). This is a most important fact. Science cannot explain it, but God’s Word teaches us that there is no life in the flesh without the blood. It does not say the blood is the life, but the life is in the blood. Our lives are dependent on the blood reaching and supplying every part of our bodies with its life-giving power. Any failure in this respect leads to sickness and ultimately death.
- The second fact we need to know is that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden fruit, the deadly poison in that fruit must have entered the blood stream through the digestive system and begun to counteract the life which was in the blood. This ultimately brought physical death to Adam and Eve. (The disobedience brought spiritual death at once.) In Genesis 2:16-17 God placed Adam in the garden that He had planted in Eden to dress the garden and to till the land, and He commanded him not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil–for in the day that he ate thereof he would surely die. Adam and Eve were sinless at that time and of course were deathless. When they disobeyed God, they became sinners. “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (1 John 2:4). Sin separated him from God, and the poison that he received from eating the forbidden fruit brought about physical death ultimately.
- The third fact we need to know is that this poison or principle of sin in Adam’s blood passed to all his children (Romans 5:12). In Acts 17:26 we read, “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” All men are related by the blood of Adam. All have the same life in that blood, but they also have the same sin in their blood which brings death to all. Now with these facts before us, it is easily seen that if Christ was to be sinless, then He must not have a single drop of that blood in His veins, for sin is not transmitted by the flesh, but through the blood. God must therefore find a way whereby Jesus could be perfectly human according to the flesh, and yet not have the blood of sinful humanity in His body. God solved this problem by the virgin birth. But some may ask, “Would not Mary transmit her sinful blood to the babe?” No, she would not. Medical authorities now realize that blood which flows in an unborn baby’s arteries and veins is not derived from the mother, but is produced in the baby’s own body after the male sperm is united with the female ovum. The mother supplies the nutritional elements for the building of the little body, but all of the blood produced in the unborn body is produced as a result of the contribution of the male parent. How wonderfully God prepared for the virgin birth of His Son. When God made woman, He made her so no blood would pass from her to her offspring. The blood in the infant is the result of his father. When we understand these facts, it is easy to understand how Jesus was born sinless and yet possessed a body of flesh without sin. He thus became the seed of the woman who will crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15) and also the seed of David according to the flesh who will some day sit on the throne of Israel and reign forever (Romans 1:3). Jesus did not get His blood from any man, for He was conceived by the Holy Ghost. Luke, the physician, records it thus in Luke 1:35: “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”
Matthew 1:18 says, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.” Thus we see when the angel spoke to Mary, she readily responded to God’s plan by saying, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). And then she apparently knew nothing more until she was found to be with child. This marvelous miracle made it possible for a sinless man to walk upon the earth again. The first Adam was created without sin, but soon fell into sin. Here is the last Adam, who is come to redeem mankind (1 Corinthians 15:45). Because of His supernatural birth, the blood of Christ was sinless and divine. There is none other like it. In 1 Peter 1:19 it is called precious blood. It is called precious blood for there is none like it. Judas, when he confessed his wrongdoing in betraying Christ, said, “I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood” (Matthew 27:4). It was this blood that was shed for the remission of our sins. It is this divine, sinless blood by which we may be justified. Romans 5:9 says, “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.”
Because Christ had sinless blood, He would never have to die; but He voluntarily laid down His life for His sheep (John 10:15-18). Because He had sinless blood, His body did not see corruption (Acts 2:31). No sinful blood flowed in His body, and therefore when He did die, His body did not decay but remained fresh. Because He had sinless blood, His body could be a perfect sacrifice–a perfectly prepared body upon which God laid all the sins of the world (Isaiah 53:6, 1 John 2:2). God did not lay our sins on Christ’s blood, but on His body. Therefore, His blood remained undefiled, and He is able to cleanse all who come unto Him. May God help us to realize that by the virgin birth we have a sinless Savior who by His divine blood can cleanse us from all sin and keep us clean (1 John 1:7).
© 1957 J. W. Whitney
All Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version (KJV).
For clarity and ease of reading, this sermon has been edited and condensed by Barbara Carpenter and Wynona Haun (granddaughters of J. W. Whitney) with special help from Elvin Dillard and Marie Haun. The author’s primary message remains.
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