Historically, Christians figured the virgin birth—the belief Jesus’s mother Mary was a virgin both when she conceived him, and when she gave birth to him—is so important, we put it in our creeds. The Apostles’ Creed refers to being “born of the virgin Mary”; the Chalcedonian Creed, agreed upon in 451, expands this to “in these later days, for us and for our salvation, born of the virgin Mary, the God-bearer, just as humans are.”
The basis for this belief comes from the birth stories of Jesus. In Matthew, Joseph discovers his wife-to-be is pregnant, and reasonably decides to end their engagement. An angel instructs him otherwise:
Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
—The angel, Matthew 1.20-21 NLT
Matthew caps this by quoting the Greek translation of Isaiah 7.14 to point out how Jesus fulfills the virgin-conceiving-a-child language.
Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
which means “God is with us.”
In Luke, when Gabriel informs Mary she’ll have a son, her first objection is, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.” (Lk 1.34 NLT) Gabriel’s response doesn’t really explain how Jesus’s birth worked; it was more of an affirmation that God was behind it.
The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. … For nothing is impossible with God.
—Gabriel, Luke 1.35, 37 NLT
Why was this belief a big deal?
It has been asked, by people who are skeptical of the virgin birth, “Do we really need to believe this?” Did God need to arrange Jesus’s birth in this particular way in order to become human? He’s almighty, after all. Joseph and Mary could have made a baby the usual way, and God could have become that human, no problem. He didn’t need to take a human father out of the equation. Especially since he directed Joseph to raise Jesus—and put a human father back into the equation.
Theologians have argued a virgin birth is necessary because Jesus had to be uncorrupted by original sin, our natural tendency to be selfish instead of selfless, to follow our own desires instead of God’s: Somehow or other, dropping a human father from Jesus’s DNA means he isn’t tainted by original sin. And in order to explain how he didn’t just inherit the sin problem from his mother, Roman Catholics came up with the idea of the Immaculate Conception—the belief that Mary was miraculously born sinless, because a sinful human wouldn’t be able to give birth to the sinless Son of God. (No, the Immaculate Conception doesn’t refer to Jesus.)
I should point out none of these theories come from the scriptures. They come from Christians trying to explain why God decided upon a virgin birth. But God doesn’t say why he went this route. He just chose to do it this way, and we just have to be fine with that.
From a historical perspective, there are two main reasons why the ancient Christians insisted on emphasizing the virgin birth.
Jesus is not a demigod. The pagans believed if a man didn’t have a human father, it likely meant he had a divine father—one of the gods had sex with his mom, and the result is a demigod, a half-human-half-god hybrid. Perseus, Hercules, Achilles, Theseus, and all sorts of demigods litter Greco-Roman mythology. Of course, the very idea that Jesus is the product of sexual relations between the LORD and Mary is nasty, and not just because she’s his daughter. So in order to make it crystal clear that Jesus is not a demigod, the Christians emphasized virgin birth. It was to preserve the LORD’s honor just as much as Mary’s. And it was to point out how Jesus isn’t any hybrid, any half-god: He’s God. Fully God, just as much God as God is.
Which means—though it bothers Protestants to say so—that Mary is the mother of God. She’s not God’s mother in that she made God; nobody made God. She’s his mother in that she gave birth to, and raised, Jesus—who is God. Orthodox Christians like to refer to Mary as the Theotókos, the God-bearer, because she did carry God in her womb: God at his most vulnerable, entrusted to her. That’s a big deal, and she should be greatly honored for it.
Jesus is not a bastard. Nowadays, most of us understand that if your parents aren’t married, that’s not your fault; you shouldn’t be penalized or embarrassed by it. But that’s a very recent belief. The word “bastard” offends people because for the longest time, in Western cultures, an “illegitimate” birth was considered dishonorable and shameful, to both parents and the child. Being known as a bastard was always something people could throw in your face.
It seems some Pharisees couldn’t accept that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, and they certainly wouldn’t accept the virgin-birth story. So in some of their writings, they invented Jesus’s “real father”—Pantera, a Roman soldier. What better insult than to claim he was the son of one of the hated Romans? So some ancient writings refer to Jesus as “ben Pantera,” a magician and false Messiah. We have no idea how widespread this rumor was, but it might be the reason for certain passages in John—where Jesus’s opponents claim they don’t know where Jesus comes from, (Jn 9.29) or when they emphasize they aren’t illegitimate (Jn 8.41) and call him a Samaritan (Jn 8.48) —Samaritans, of course, being the descendants of Hebrews and pagans.
In any event, legitimate birth was a big deal back then, and in order to defend Jesus’s honor, the ancient Christians emphasized he was born in a legitimate way—an unusual way, to be sure, but entirely legitimate.
Why is it still a big deal?
What’s obvious to people of the present day is that these two main concerns are ancient concerns. Not present concerns. Next to no one believes in demigods, or think there’s something offensive about you if your parents are unmarried.
But the present concern is just as big a deal: People are skeptical of the supernatural. They can’t accept the idea that God interacts with the universe. They can’t believe in miracles. They can’t believe in this miracle—that a human was conceived and born in ancient times, yet his mother never had sex. Such a thing can happen in the present day—doctors can implant an embryo in a virgin’s uterus, no problem—but certainly not 20 centuries ago.
If you can’t believe this miracle, you’ll find it hard or impossible to accept the other miracles. Such as Jesus and his followers healing the sick and raising the dead. Or Jesus being raised from the dead himself. There are those who claim they can believe Jesus rose from the dead, yet not in the virgin birth. But when you interview them, you find out they don’t actually believe in the resurrection: They believe Jesus only spiritually rose from the dead; that he was just a better-than-average ghost. The virgin birth is, so to speak, a litmus test for how far you’re willing to trust God and the scriptures: Do you really believe God can do the impossible, or not?