Why Was the Virgin Birth Necessary?

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14).

  

December is the month the world celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. Without the virgin birth, we would be doomed to spend eternity in the lake of fire. The very foundation of our redemption from sin and its catastrophic effects on all of creation is in the virgin birth.

  

The reason for the virgin birth is something we all need to understand. When Adam and Eve sinned, the entire human race was immediately severed from fellowship with God. Satan, God’s arch-enemy, became the temporary god of this world.

  

The “lease” that God gave Adam over the earth to take care of it and “keep” it was transferred to Satan (see Luke 4:5). He became the “prince of the power of the air,” and set up a system of control over this planet and over humanity. Satan was kicked out of heaven because of a desire to control God. When Adam sinned, Satan took advantage of his failure and fulfilled his desire to control by dominating this planet.

  

Satan may have thought that he had finally done something here that God was helpless to change. He may have thought that his control over the earth and over humanity was beyond God’s ability to reverse, but Satan underestimated the love of God for the human race.

 

The only way for us to be redeemed was through a virgin birth. You see, a man got us into sin, and a man must pay our sin penalty for us. Satan knew that God was just, and that sin’s penalty must be paid. And he knew that humanity was now a fallen race, and that every human born of two human parents would be born under his control. From Satan’s viewpoint, our redemption was not possible.

 

But Satan did not understand the deep love that God has for human beings. His corrupted wisdom never considered the price that God was willing to pay to remove sin and the curse from man. The virgin birth was God’s answer for man’s sin from His heart of love.

  

God’s wisdom before the creation of Adam and Eve was that if they failed the test of Eden and sinned, God would incarnate Himself in the body of a human, and pay man’s sin penalty for him.

No person born of two human parents could pay man’s sin penalty because that person would likewise be a fallen, sin bound, Satan dominated being. But the virgin birth meant that Jesus was not born according to the laws of natural generation. He was a human because Mary His mother clothed Him with sinless flesh. The sperm that fertilized the ovum in Mary’s womb came from God Himself! That made Jesus Christ the God-man! He was 100% God and 100% man. That meant that Jesus was born as the first sinless human since the creation of Adam before the fall; the last Adam as He is called in 1 Corinthians.

  

And since Jesus was born sinless and free from Satan’s rule, He could legitimately pay the sin debt of mankind! Without the virgin birth, this would not be possible!

 

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16).