Virgin birth. It’s a bit of an oxymoron, isn’t it? Everyone knows it takes a man and a woman to produce a child…normally. But in today’s passage, we are told that a virgin—a person who has never engaged in sexual intimacy—was going to have a baby. We would ask the same question Mary asked, “How can this be?” The answer is found in the last four words of this verse, “from the Holy Spirit.”

Matthew 1:18
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

The virgin birth certainly defines history. If Jesus was simply the product of a man and a woman, his life and death were no more significant than yours and mine. We could not even call him a good teacher. In his classic work, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis says,

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic— on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg— or he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. 

Years ago, a talk show host named Larry King was asked, “If you could interview anyone, who would it be?” He answered, “Jesus Christ.” He was then asked, “What question would you like to ask Jesus?” King replied, “I would like to ask him if he was indeed virgin-born. The answer to that question would define history for me.” Indeed, it does!

 Father, our eternity depends on the birth of your Son—fully God, fully man. Thank you for the promise and the fulfillment of the virgin birth. In Jesus’ name. Amen.