BORN OF A VIRGIN

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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. ¹⁹ And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. ²⁰ 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. ²¹ She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” ²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:¹

18. Matthew has a kind of subheading to let the reader know that he will now tell us about the birth of Jesus Christ (see on v. 1; this seems to be the probable reading, though some MSS have “Jesus” or “Christ”). The formal name and title are suited to the opening of the narrative proper, and the unusual use of the article points back to the Jesus Christ already referred to. He does not tell the reader who Joseph and Mary were; evidently he can presume that they will know this. Similarly, he does not speak explicitly of the virginal conception; that, too, he evidently presumes is known. The word I have translated engaged³⁰ indicates a firm commitment, normally undertaken a year before marriage. During that year the girl remained with her own family, but the tie established was a strong one and was really the first part of marriage. A betrothed woman could be punished as an adulteress (Deut. 22:23–24; the punishment of “a virgin who is not betrothed” was different, vv. 28–29). The second part took place when the man took the woman to his home (cf. v. 20; cf. also 25:1–13). That Mary became pregnant before they came together was thus very serious, as Joseph’s attitude makes clear. Some translations read “she found out” (GNB, REB), but the passive more likely refers to Joseph’s becoming aware of the situation. The whole story is written from his point of view. But before speaking of Joseph’s attitude Matthew explains that the pregnancy was due to an activity of the Holy Spirit. He speaks with reverent reserve and says no more. The Spirit is called “Holy,” an adjective not applied to him in Philo or Josephus (so BAGD, 5c). The idea that the Spirit is holy is distinctively Christian. Matthew often has the expression without the article (as here).

19. Joseph, Mary’s husband, is called just, which probably means that he was careful in his observance of the law. The passage that covered the situation was that of the betrothed woman who has had sexual intercourse (Deut. 22:23–27). Where the woman is a consenting partner, both are to be put to death (vv. 23–24); where she has been violated, only the guilty man is to be executed (vv. 25–27). But the violation has taken place: the girl is no longer a virgin. Angelo Tosato cites evidence that she is no longer eligible to be married to her betrothed; she must be given a bill of divorce. Joseph, being just, saw that he was unable to consummate the marriage, but he did not want to be harsh. Perhaps we should say that for Joseph being just before God included an element of mercy (the “just man” is compassionate, Ps. 37:21). Probably also he preferred to act in a way that would avoid an open scandal. He could have made a public display of his indignation by taking Mary before the law court and making an example of her. But his concern for the law did not lead him to the conclusion that he must humiliate the young lady who, he thought, had offended. He preferred to divorce her secretly. Divorce was no great problem for an Israelite man: he simply had to give the lady “a bill of divorce” before two witnesses and send her away (the procedure is given in Deut. 24:1).

20. But he did not go through with it. He gave the matter thought, and the aorist indicates that he apparently came to a conclusion: he had made up his mind⁴¹ (despite GNB, “While he was thinking about this”). Look is a favorite interjection of Matthew’s (62 times out of 200 in the NT); it enlivens a narrative and makes what follows more vivid. An angel appeared. The word means a messenger: occasionally in the New Testament it is used of a human messenger (Luke 7:24), but more often it refers to a messenger from God, as is made clear here by the addition of the Lord. Curiously, when it is used in the singular in the New Testament it almost always lacks the article, as here (though cf. v. 24), but the plural form “the angels of God” invariably has it except in one quotation from the Old Testament (in Heb. 1:6). Matthew specifies that this angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, an expression used 6 times by Matthew and by no one else in the New Testament. Nothing is said about the appearance of the angel or anything he did; attention is concentrated on his message. He addresses Joseph as son of David, an expression used of Jesus in verse 1 (where see note). The expression is one of dignity, and Matthew perhaps records it as emphasizing the royal line of Jesus. Don’t be afraid does not necessarily indicate fear; the word may be used in the sense “shrink from doing something,” and it is this sense that is required here (cf. BAGD, φοβέω, 1.c). We might have expected the present, giving the sense “Stop being afraid,” but the aorist may give the sense “Never fear.” Take is used of receiving one’s wife into one’s home a number of times (BAGD), and this is obviously the meaning. Notice that Mary is called Joseph’s wife. Davies and Allison observe that throughout chapters 1 and 2 “It is Joseph who does what needs to be done.” They think that this can be explained “by a christological interest: by his actions, Joseph, the Davidid, proves that he has made Jesus his own.” The angel gives a reason for Joseph’s reception of Mary: the Holy Spirit has brought about the conception. The verb is that normally used of the action of the male parent (= “that which was begotten”), but it is sometimes used of the female, so that there is nothing very unusual about the expression. For Holy Spirit see on verse 18.²

THIS NEXT PART SHOWS ME THIS IS TRUE. WHY IS GOD GOING TO PICK A PERSON WAITING TO BE MARRIED

The Mosaic Law was very specific at this point. It said that a woman who was guilty of being unfaithful should be stoned to death—that was the extreme penalty. But this man Joseph was a remarkable man. We devote a great deal of attention to Mary, and rightly so. Protestants should not let themselves be deterred from giving Mary a great deal of credit. She was a remarkable person. Remember that she was the one whom God chose to be the mother of our Lord, and God makes no mistakes. He picked the right girl. While all of this is true, we need to remember that God also chose Joseph. God made no mistake in choosing him either. A hot–headed man would immediately have had her stoned to death or would have made her a public example by exposing her. But Joseph was not that kind of man. He was a gentle person. He was in love with her, and he did not want to hurt her in any way, although he felt that she had been unfaithful to him.³

Now let’s look at this a moment because it is very important. The liberal theologian has, of course, denied the fact of the virgin birth of Christ, and he has denied that the Bible teaches His virgin birth. Very candidly, I suspect that the Revised Standard Version was published in order to try to maintain some of the theses of the liberals. In fact, I am sure of this because one of the doctrines they have denied is the virgin birth. In the New Testament of the Revised Standard Version, which was copyrighted in 1946, Matthew 1:23 reads thus: “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel’ (which means, God with us).”

In the Old Testament of the Revised Standard Version, which was copyrighted in 1952, Isaiah 7:14 reads like this: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Notice that in Isaiah they substituted “young woman” for the word virgin, even though in Matthew 1:23 they had used the word virgin, which is a fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14!

The prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 was given as a sign. My friend, it is no sign at all for a young woman to conceive and bear a son. If that’s a sign, then right here in Southern California a sign is taking place many times a day, every day. They translated it “young woman” to tone down that word virgin.

Let us look at Isaiah 7:14 in the original Hebrew language. The word used for “virgin” is almah. The translators of the RSV went to the writings of Gesenius, an outstanding scholar who has an exhaustive Hebrew lexicon. (I can testify that it’s also exhausting to look at it!) Gesenius admitted that the common translation of the word is “virgin,” but he said that it could be changed to “young woman.” The reason he said that was because he rejected the miraculous. So this new translation and others who have followed him, have attempted to say that almah means “young woman” and not “virgin.”

Let’s turn back to Isaiah 7 and study the incident recorded there. This was during the time when Ahaz was on the throne. He was one of those who was far from God, and I list him as a bad king. God sent Isaiah to bring a message to him, and he wouldn’t listen. So we read: “Moreover the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord” (Isa. 7:10–12). May I say, it was pious hypocrisy for him to say what he did. God had asked Isaiah to meet Ahaz on the way to deliver God’s message to him that God would give victory to Ahaz. However, Ahaz wouldn’t believe God and so, in order to encourage his faith, Isaiah tells him that God wants to give him a sign. In his super–pious way Ahaz says, “Oh, I wouldn’t ask a sign of the Lord.” Isaiah answered him, “God is going to give you a sign whether you like it or not. The sign isn’t just for you but for the whole house of David.” Now here is the sign: “… Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14). Obviously, if this refers to a young woman, it would be no sign to Ahaz, or to the house of David, or to anybody else; but if a virgin conceives and bears a son, that, my friend, is a sign. And that’s exactly what it means.

When the word almah is used in the Old Testament, it means a virgin. Rebekah was called an almah before she married Isaac. I asked a very fine Hebrew Christian, who is also a good Hebrew scholar, about that. He said, “Look at it this way. Suppose you went to visit a friend of yours who had three daughters and two of them were married and one was still single. He would say, ‘These two are my married daughters, and this young lady is my third daughter.’ Do you think he would mean a prostitute when he said ‘young lady’? If you would imply that she was anything but a virgin, he would probably knock your block off.” May I say, I would hate to be those who deny the virgin birth of Jesus Christ when they must come into the presence of the Son of God. I’m afraid they are going to wish they could somehow take back the things they have said to malign Him.

The fact that the word almah means “a virgin” is proven by the Septuagint. During the intertestamental period, seventy–two Hebrew scholars, six from each of the twelve tribes, worked down in Alexandria, Egypt, on the translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into the Greek language. When they came to this “sign” in Isaiah, those seventy–two men understood that it meant “virgin,” and they translated it into the Greek word parthenos. That is the same word which Matthew uses in his Gospel. My friend, parthenos does not mean “young woman”; it means “virgin.” For example, Athena was the virgin goddess of Athens, and her temple was called the Parthenon because parthenos means “virgin.” It is clear that the Word of God is saying precisely what it means.⁴

His nature

The conception of this baby is declared to be ‘from the Holy Spirit’ and therefore without human father. The genealogy of Jesus concludes with a reference to, ‘Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ’ (1:16), thus detaching Joseph from any direct biological relationship to the baby.

The virgin birth generally carries little theological weight in our thinking, but is in fact crucial to everything else that is true of Christ. If the deity and work of Christ is being undermined by a theologian or church leader, they usually begin with an attack on the historicity of the virgin birth. We who believe otherwise often fail to respond adequately at this point, because we consider it to be not as essential as other details in the life of Christ. The reality is, to destroy the virgin birth of Christ, is to destroy his ability to accomplish what he came to do. It is argued that the gospels of Mark and John make no reference to the virgin birth and that Paul never alludes to it in his writings, and therefore it is not a serious issue. The exclusion of any fact from some of the New Testament writings does not in any way invalidate its positive inclusion in other writings, and what must be recognised are the unambiguous statements of Matthew and Luke, confirmed by Matthew in his quotation of Isaiah 7:14, ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son’ (1:23).

Why is the virgin birth of Christ essential to his function? To say, ‘Jesus Christ was born to die,’ is not just to state the obvious! The nature of the death he was born to die was not physical alone, but spiritual. The death he was born to die was the same death Adam experienced in the Garden of Eden, when he was forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil on the grounds that, ‘… in the day you eat thereof, you shall die’ (Gen. 2:17). Together with Eve, Adam ate of the tree, but did they die that day, as God had forewarned? The answer is that he did, for God does not threaten in vain. But the death he died was spiritual and not physical. Physically he lived for many more years, but the day he acted in independence of God he became, ‘separated from the life of God’ (Eph. 4:18), which is the nature of spiritual death. Physical death was not the immediate consequence of sin, though it is an inevitable result due to the decay and perishing process instigated by the entry of sin into the world, but the ‘wages of sin’ (Rom. 6:23) paid in the Garden of Eden is spiritual death. This sentence was not only imposed on Adam and Eve but became the state of all their descendants, for the Apostle Paul states, ‘In Adam all die’ (1 Cor. 15:22). This is the condition into which we are already born. The Scripture never declares that any person will die for their sin, for the reality is, it is too late—they are already dead. The ‘wages of sin’ were paid in the Garden of Eden, and every human being since then is born in the state of death (see Eph. 2:1). Paul’s statement is in the present tense, ‘The wages of sin is death’. It is already part of our experience. The option open to us is not to die for our sin, since we are already dead, but to die in our sin. We may continue in our state of alienation from God and live beyond the grave with its eternal consequences. The issue the gospel presents to us involves the choice of either remaining for ever in the state of death into which we were born, or of coming alive, by receiving the life Adam forfeited in the Garden of Eden—the life of God.

There is only one prerequisite for death—and that is life. This is true spiritually as it is physically. To die one has first to be alive! If Jesus Christ was born to die the death Adam died in the Garden of Eden, then the one prerequisite to qualify him to die was life! Only two men have been qualified to die for sin—Adam and Christ—for only two men have themselves been fully alive—Adam and Christ. Hence Christ is described by Paul as the ‘second man’, when he writes, ‘The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven’ (1 Cor. 15:47). Christ is ‘the second man’ in contrast to Adam, ‘the first man’. Earlier Paul made the same contrast when stating, ‘so it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit’ (1 Cor. 15:45). As the ‘second man’ and the ‘last Adam’, Christ was not born as a result of procreation, but of creation—he was the second human being in the sense of being the second original. It is this that enabled him to accomplish as our substitute for our sin, what Adam did in his own right for his own sin—to die. Take away the virgin birth and regard the conception of Christ as normal procreation, and we have robbed Christ of his ability to deal with our sin, for we have robbed him of the ability to die the death required as penalty for sin. Paul has in mind more than the physical death of Christ as atonement for sin, when he wrote, ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us.…’ (2 Cor. 5:21). He was made to be sin! He would cry from the cross, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me’ (Matt. 27:46), experiencing for our sin the separation Adam endured for his own sin the day he ate of the tree—and died.⁵

1 The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2001). (Mt 1:18–22). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

2 Morris, L. (1992). The Gospel according to Matthew (pp. 26–29). Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press.

3 McGee, J. V. (1991). Thru the Bible commentary: The Gospels (Matthew 1-13) (electronic ed., Vol. 34, pp. 30–31). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

4 McGee, J. V. (1991). Thru the Bible commentary: The Gospels (Matthew 1-13) (electronic ed., Vol. 34, pp. 32–34). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

5 Price, C. (1998). Matthew: Can Anything Good Come Out of Nazareth? (pp. 26–28). Fearn, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications.