Jesus Had To Be Born Of The Virgin Mary

When you and I read the following chapter of Hebrews about this strange person, Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the Most High God, we are left with a long list of questions about who he was and why the writer to the Hebrews speaks about him in the way that he does. Here's how he starts, after declaring that Jesus is a high priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 6:20).

For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, and to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything. He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever. See how great this man was to whom Abraham the patriarch gave a tenth of the spoils! - Hbr 7:1-4 ESV

We've read about Melchizedek earlier in Hebrews 5 when the author pointed out that the heavenly Father begat Jesus as His Son in the eternal today when He said,

"You are my Son, today I have begotten you" (Psalm 2:7). 

And again we read about David's Lord who sits at the right hand of the LORD,

The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek." - Psa 110:4 ESV

Now, very seriously believing that the Psalms are the revealed Word of the LORD God, the writer begins to explain who this mysterious king of Salem is and why it is so important to realize that Jesus is a priest "after the order of Melchizedek". This priestly king is, after all, only mentioned in Holy Scripture one time. As the writer emphasizes, we know nothing about who he was beyond that. We know nothing about his lineage, his background, who  his parents were, how he came to be the king of Salem (later Jeru-salem)—nothing. We only know that Abraham presented him with a tithe after he returned from the slaughter of the kings (Gen. 14:18-20).

His first point: resembling the Son of God Melchizedek continues a priest forever. Here we encounter the mystery of Jesus as understood and taught by the Christian church. Jesus received His divine nature from His Father in eternity. He was begotten, not made, as our creeds clearly teach. He is not a creature who has had a beginning in time. Indeed, Scripture says of Him,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. - John 1:1-3 ESV

All things came into being through Him and apart from Him nothing—nothing—came into being! He is God. He is the Word! He is the Creator of all things!

But He is also Man, born of the Virgin Mary. Of this wonder the Scriptures also speak.

Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, "Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven." But Ahaz said, "I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test." And he said, "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. - Isa 7:10-14 ESV

The Gospel of Matthew has this about Joseph's dream the night after he learned that Mary was pregnant:

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." 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). - Mat 1:20-23 ESV

Two questions:

1. How could a virgin conceive? 
2. How could a virgin bear a son and remain a virgin? 

Humanly speaking, it is impossible for a virgin to conceive. A human is the product of the union of male seed and female egg. And yet Jesus' conception was from the Holy Spirit. The Spirit spoke about this in a later chapter of the prophet Isaiah.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. - Isa 9:6 ESV

A child is born—this refers to Jesus' birth and His humanity. He was the divine Son of God from all eternity. Now the Father sent His Son from heaven. (Jn. 3:16, 6:39, 12:49). Here we come upon the wonder and mystery of Jesus, true God from eternity and also true Man, born of the virgin Mary.

Did Jesus need the virgin birth to be sinless? No, he was already sinless as the eternal Son of God before His birth. The angel pointed this out to Mary when he told her she was to become Jesus' mother.

And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 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. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." 

And Mary said to the angel, "How will this be, since I am a virgin?" 

And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. - Luk 1:30-35 ESV

Jesus was and is holy and without sin. He was holy before His conception in Mary's womb. He did not need her to be holy and sinless. She was the vehicle by which He entered this world, but His holiness was and is not dependent upon her holiness. That raises, of course, another question. Did the Holy Spirit use Mary's egg to create Jesus' humanity? I'll come back to that question next time.

Part of the answer to this question rests in another strange Biblical prophecy dating all the way back to the Garden of Eden. After Eve and Adam had fallen for the temptation of the serpent the LORD said to the serpent,

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel." - Gen 3:15 NKJV

The Hebrew word for seed is zera, a word that refers both to offspring and to the physical seed that the man passes on. The prophecy is made only of the zera of the woman, as if a woman by herself could have offspring. But this is impossible. No woman can bear a child by herself. She has no zera. She brings rather an egg, not the seed, the zera that fertilizes the egg. No woman ever bore a son alone—until Mary bore Jesus, the Son who destroyed the power of the devil to accuse mankind of sin (2 Cor. 5:18-21; 1 Pet. 2:22).

We need to look at this from the perspective that Adam was

• representative or head of all mankind and 
• bore the physical seed in which mankind's sinful nature is passed on 

Let us start with the representative concept. The Apostle Paul teaches clearly that it was by Adam that sin entered into the world of mankind. As noted, this is the understanding that Adam is the head or representative of the entire human race. He did not reject the temptation of the devil. He ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore when Adam sinned the entire race fell. The Apostle writes about this.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned-- - Rom 5:12 ESV

Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. - Rom 5:14 ESV 

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. - 1Cr 15:21-22 ESV

There are many examples in the Scriptures of one person who is the head of a family or a people making a decision that touches all. So we read of Noah cursing his grandson Canaan.

When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers." - Gen 9:24-25 ESV

Strangely, Canaan wasn't directly involved in what his father Ham had done. Instead of covering Noah's nakedness when he was drunk, Ham went out and told his two brothers, apparently mocking his father. As a result, Noah pronounced a curse on Ham's sons, a curse that fell on Canaan and his descendants.

The same thing happened to Esau when he sold his birthright to Jacob (Gen. 25:31-34). All of his descendants were thus excluded from the blessing of the promise given to Abraham and passed on to Isaac, then Jacob and their descendants (Gen. 28:1-4).

So from this viewpoint no descendant of Adam could possibly rescue mankind from the curse of sin. In Adam all die ! And yet, if mankind is to be rescued it must be that one who is truly a man must bear the  judgment of death for all. But who could do this? And how?

Here we come back to the virgin birth and the necessity of the virgin birth of Jesus. More on this next time.

St. Joseph's Dilemma

In my earlier post I pointed to the fact that throughout his life Martin Luther held to the perpetual virginity of Mary. However, he did not spend much time discussing Mary herself. Of her he wrote, 

[Mary] is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin. God's grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil. God is with her, meaning that all she did or left undone is divine and the action of God in her. Moreover, God guarded and protected her from all that might be hurtful to her. Luther's Works (LW), American edition, Vol. 43:40, ed. H. Lehmann, Fortress, 1968

Concerning the possibility of her having children other than Jesus, he commented,

I am inclined to agree with those who declare that “brothers” really means “cousins” here, for Holy Writ and the Jews always call cousins brothers. (LW-22:215)

Whether or not the Lord had half brothers “neither adds to nor detracts from faith. It is immaterial whether these men were Christ’s cousins or His brothers begotten by Joseph. (LW-45:205-6)

Nevertheless, Luther led the way to restoring the honor and propriety of Christian marriage by marrying the former nun, Katharina von Bora. Both had taken vows of chastity prior to this. In that sense they were spiritual brothers and sisters of Christ in medieval church eyes. That would mean they had both broken their vows and were committing a kind of spiritual incest. But in Luther's eyes marriage was an honorable estate. In a published sermon on the estate of marriage, he writes, 

Because the union of man and woman signifies such a great mystery, the estate of marriage has to have this special significance. This means that the wicked lust of the flesh, which nobody is without, is a conjugal obligation and is not reprehensible when expressed within marriage, but in all other cases outside the bond of marriage, it is mortal sin. In a parallel way the holy manhood of God covers the same of the wicked lust of the flesh (Ps. 32:1; Rom. 5:7). Therefore a married man should have regard for such a sacrament (a sacred sign of something spiritual, holy, heavenly and eternal), honor it as sacred, and behave properly in marital obligations, so that those things which originate in the lust of the flesh do not occur [among us] as they do in the world of brute beasts. (LW-44:10)

The "lust of the flesh" flows from original sin. The second article in Lutheranism's Augsburg Confession on the doctrine of original sin:

It is also taught among us that since the fall of Adam all men who are born according to the course of nature are conceived and born in sin. That is, all men are full of evil lust and inclinations from their mothers’ wombs and are unable by nature to have true fear of God and true faith in God. Moreover, this inborn sickness and hereditary sin is truly sin and condemns to the eternal wrath of God all those who are not born again through Baptism and the Holy Spirit. Rejected in this connection are the Pelagians and others who deny that original sin is sin, for they hold that natural man is made righteous by his own powers, thus disparaging the sufferings and merit of Christ.[41]

Yet no one seems concerned about Mary's husband, Joseph, in the numerous discussions about Mary's perpetual virginity and holiness. He does not utter a single word in the Gospels. None of the church fathers suggest that he was freed from original sin at birth. All I read is that Joseph may have been married earlier and had other children and that those may be the brothers and sisters referred to in the Gospels (Matt. 12:46; Mark 3:31; Luke 8:19). That suggests that Joseph did indeed have a healthy and active sex drive. So what about Mary's duty to protect her husband from the sinful lust of his flesh? Recall the Apostle instructions to married couples:

But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. - 1Cr 7:2-5 ESV

I end this discussion with an invitation for you to ponder Joseph's dilemma of possibly being married to a perpetual virgin.

Persecution Within The Family

We're talking about Christians being persecuted. Jesus certainly was. The world he came to hated him and ultimately murdered him through a manufactured and false accusation of treason. The plot was already brewing, writes John, but it was not time for Jesus to die. Jesus told his brothers to go on to the Feast without him.

Now the Jews' Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, "Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world." For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, "My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come." After saying this, he remained in Galilee. But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly but in private. - Jhn 7:2-10 ESV

How it must have pained Jesus to know that even his brothers did not believe in him. What brothers? Has not a significant portion of the historical church taught that Mary was always a virgin, that she and Joseph never had sexual relations? The English translation of the Latin Mass has these words as part of the confession of sins:

I confess to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary ever Virgin, to Blessed Michael the Archangel, to Blessed John the Baptist, to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the angels and saints, and to you, brethren, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, deed: (here he strikes his breast three times) through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault, and I ask Blessed Mary ever Virgin, Blessed Michael the Archangel, Blessed John the Baptist, the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, all the Angels and you, brethren, to pray to the Lord our God for me. 

Notice Blessed Mary ever Virgin. Why is this so important to Christians who place themselves under the oversight of the Bishop of Rome, those known as Roman Catholics, as well as most of the Orthodox Churches? Here's what Orthodox teachers say about the doctrine.

When the heretics and simple blasphemers refuse to acknowledge the Ever-virginity of the Mother of God on the grounds that the Evangelists mention the "brothers and sisters of Jesus," they are refuted by the following facts from the Gospel:

a) In the Gospels there are named four "brothers" (James, Joses, Simon and Jude), and there are also mentioned the "sisters" of Jesus—no fewer than three, as is evident in the words: and His sisters, are they not ALL with us? (Matt. 13:56). 

On the other hand, b) in the account of the journey to Jerusalem of the twelve-year-old boy Jesus, where there is mention of the "kinsfolk and acquaintances" (Luke 2:44) in the midst of whom they were seeking Jesus, and where it is likewise mentioned that Mary and Joseph every year journeyed from faraway Galilee to Jerusalem, no reason is given to think that there were present other younger children with Mary: it was thus that the first twelve years of the Lord's earthly life proceeded. 

c) When, about twenty years after the above-mentioned journey, Mary stood at the cross of the Lord, she was alone, and she was entrusted by her Divine Son to His disciple John; and from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home (John 19:27). Evidently, as the ancient Christians also understood it, the Evangelists speak either of "half' brothers and sisters or of cousins.

The article continues at some length to provide evidence from various early church fathers and concludes that this teaching is securely based upon Apostolic Tradition handed down to us in a mystery and preserved in the church's worship. Such a statement places Tradition on the same level as Holy Scripture and leaves most of us Lutherans, as well as other Protestants, with a blank stare on our faces, because we do not and cannot accept Tradition on the same level of authority as the Scriptures. And yet Martin Luther accepted the perpetual virginity of Mary! In his writings on The Christian In Society, Luther said,

Scripture does not say or indicate that she later lost her virginity . . . When Matthew [1:25] says that Joseph did not know Mary carnally until she had brought forth her son, it does not follow that he knew her subsequently; on the contrary, it means that he never did know her . . . This babble . . . is without justification . . . he has neither noticed nor paid any attention to either Scripture or the common idiom. —Luther's Works, v.45:206,212-3 / That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew (1523).

But so very many, many battles have been fought over the place of Mary in the church and in the teachings of the church! These things the Bible does make clear about Mary:

• She played her part in the birth of our Lord Jesus and is rightly honored as The Mother of God (properly understood). Even Luther agreed to such a title since God worked this wonder in her to bring about so many good things that pass human understanding. 

• She is not, however, Co-Redemptrix: the idea that she gave free consent to give life to the Redeemer, to share his life, to suffer with him under the cross, to offer His sacrifice to God the Father for the sake of the redemption of mankind, and to bring about all particular post-assumption graces by way of intercession. The latter concept is included in the concept of Mediatrix which is a separate concept but regularly included by faithful Catholics who use the title of co-redemptrix.

• Nor is Mary or any other saint to be worshipped and prayed to. Jesus made it quite clear that we are to honor the First Commandment to have no other gods and that no man comes to the Father but through Him (John 14:6). 

Whether Mary did or did not have children by Joseph following the Savior's birth must remain an open question. My own church body, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, has no objection to the teaching that Jesus had actual brothers and sisters (John 7:1-10 and Luke 8:19-21).

I mention these things because we within the church have persecuted one another across the centuries. Wars have broken out between Catholics and Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox, and between one group of Protestants and other Protestants. All this is part of the plan of the dark powers to divert our attention away from the Gospel of Christ.  With that in mind we must all ponder these words of our Lord. 

So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. - Mat 10:32-39 ESV