59. Denial of Virgin Birth Irrational

Denial of Virgin Birth Irrational

Those who deny Christ’s virgin birth do not see the dilemma into which they bring themselves. Christ must either have been sinless and virgin born, or else He was neither, judged by words that came from His own mouth. For He said: “None is good (sinless) save one, that is, God” (Luke 18:19). If He was sinless, therefore, He had to be the virgin born Son of God. And if He was not virgin born, He could not have been sinless, for He was only a man with Adam’s sinful nature. So until some one can lay one sin, error, or even fault to His charge and make men believe it, the only alternative is to believe that He was virgin born, as God’s Word says.

Herein lies the philosophy of the incarnation. This is why the Mighty God tabernacled in the flesh. This is why the Son of God could give His life a ransom for many. For without the virgin birth He never could have answered either to God or for man in meeting the sin of the ruined race of Adam.

Indeed, without a virgin birth, Christ could not have met even one of the requirements of a substitute. But if, by a virgin birth, He is both God and Man, He meets every one of them. For thus and thus alone neither party to the redemptive transaction can possibly suffer injury.

Coming now to the sixth requirement of a substitute, Christ’s work as Substitute was of such intrinsic moral worth as to present to God a value sufficient to cover the moral needs, not only of His own holy Law in bringing it up out of dishonor, but also of the whole sinful world, and even of a thousand worlds like ours, if that were necessary, since it was “God the mighty Maker, in man the creature’s stead.”

Here once more reason demands the deity of the substitute, and Scripture declares it. That is what gave His work its worth, for otherwise it would have been worthless. And such worth did His work have that no injury could ever come to the eternal principles of equity and righteousness inherent in God’s holiness. The suffering of Christ was no quid pro quo transaction. It was the perfect satisfaction given to the justice of God by the infinite merit of the holiness of the selfsame God, who Himself became the Substitute to meet on man’s behalf His own just requirements.

It was no third party coming in between God and the sinner and changing His wrath to love. It was God Himself expressing His love, at infinite cost to Himself, in a way that gave full satisfaction both to the justice and the mercy which must be demanded by a holy and loving God. To say, therefore, that Christ endured on the cross just so much suffering for so much sin is but to lower the very righteousness such a view is meant to uphold. It was the holy merit of Deity, which is infinite, by which Christ became “a propitiation, not for our sins (the saved) only, but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2), that now “whosoever will (though it be the whole world) may come.” It was not the quantity of His suffering but the nature and character of the suffering One whose measureless love the suffering uncovered—not what He suffered but who He was—that met this demand of a substitute.

Here is One, therefore, who meets every requirement reason demands of a substitute, according to the Record whose truthfulness remains unshaken after age-long attacks of ancient and modern unbelievers, and lo, He is God Himself.

None other could meet these demands, and so, for His love’s sake, God freely gave His Son, and the Son freely laid down His life. “He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor (none to interpose), therefore his arm brought salvation unto him, and his righteousness, it sustained him” (Isaiah 59:16). And so in the salvation which came thus to Him, the way was opened to the salvation He so freely offers all men.

Thus as the Son comes forth from the unseen and ineffable glory through the gateway of the virgin birth to tabernacle in a stainless humanity, He becomes both the first and the only One ever born to die. All others are born to live. And so it is not strange, as we watch the mighty and majestic movement of His life as He comes to fulfill His mission among men, that we are forced to feel, at every step of the way, that the one supreme goal toward which He ever moves is His death on the cross. For in no other way can the thwarted purpose of God for man be released, and the enemy of that purpose be forever defeated.