Monthly Archives: April 2010

Is the Virgin Birth Doctrine Really All That Necessary?

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How important is it that Christians believe in the virgin birth? This may seem like a strange question, as most reading this probably wouldn’t dream of doubting the miracle of the virgin conception. It’s clearly taught in Scripture (Matt 1:18, 23; Luke 1:34–35), consistently believed throughout church history, and once we’ve accepted miracles like the resurrection of Jesus or the splitting of the Red Sea, it’s really not all that hard to believe that God could pull off a virgin conception. In fact, our understanding of the physiology of human procreation—especially in light of modern developments in reproductive technology—makes the miracle of a mother having a child without a father seem less, well, miraculous.

Nevertheless, the contemporary minimalist focus on things “absolutely essential for salvation” has pushed the virgin birth to the margins of what are often called “primary doctrines.” Now, it’s not that evangelicals are eager to abandon the virgin birth. Rather, almost all retain the doctrine “as is,” but some are now allowing for less conservative (let’s avoid the label “liberal” for now) Christians to redefine the doctrine and still claim to be heaven-bound believers. The argument goes like this: all that’s necessary for salvation is belief that Jesus is God and man who died for our sins and rose from the dead. According to some, that’s the sum of the tightly-packaged “simple gospel message” in the key New Testament passages (Romans 1:1–4; 1 Corinthians 15:1–4). There’s no clear mention of the virgin birth outside the Gospels, and only two of those, Matthew and Luke, bothered to include it. So, some less strict evangelicals, still regarding the doctrine as true, don’t make it an indispensable part of the Gospel message. And if it’s not a necessary part of the Gospel, then it’s not necessary for salvation. At least that’s how the argument tends to unfold with the “minimalist message” approach to the Gospel. For fear of adding too much confusing (or unbelievable?) content, the so-called superfluous elements are stripped away, leaving such secondary items to be handled after initial conversion.

So, three tendencies emerge when dealing with the doctrine of the virgin birth—1) rejecting it (flat out disbelief); 2) redefining it (finding the spiritual meaning of the mythical metaphor); or 3) re-categorizing it (demoting it to a secondary doctrine, true and good, but unnecessary for salvation).

My question to those who reject or redefine the doctrine of the virgin birth is always the same—why? What’s so offensive about the miracle of a virgin conception that would force us to regard it as either a loony legend or a meaningful myth? If a person reads a passage like Matthew 1:18 and says, “That’s ridiculous” or “That can’t possibly mean this,” I wonder what that same person does with the miracle of Christ’s bodily resurrection. (That’s a rhetorical question. I know what they do with it.) I have no patience for this kind of rejection or redefinition of the virgin conception. Those positions have no place within the Christian tradition. Never have, never will.

But is the miracle of the virgin conception of Jesus necessary for orthodox theology? Is it best to re-categorize it from “dogma” to “doctrine”? From “central” to “peripheral”? From “primary” to “secondary”? Often evangelical theologians and pastors argue for retaining the centrality of the virgin conception for a soteriological reason related to the work of Christ—His atoning death on the cross. The argument is that if Jesus had been the natural child of Joseph and Mary, then He would have inherited the stain of Adam’s sin. Jesus would have then been born a sinner who was Himself in need of redemption and therefore unable to pay the price for other sinners. Sounds reasonable enough, doesn’t it? But it assumes that sin and guilt are passed down only through the father’s seed, a doctrine not clearly taught in Scripture.

Another reason often cited for keeping the virgin conception primary is a bibliological reason. The argument goes like this: the Bible clearly teaches the virgin birth of Christ. In fact, it even prophesies the virgin birth in Isaiah 7. So, to deny the virgin birth is to deny the truthfulness of the Bible. And to deny the truthfulness of the Bible leads to potential doubt about everything it teaches. Such doubt undermines what the Bible says about sin, Christ, and salvation. So, every clear doctrine—and especially the virgin birth—becomes a primary issue for the Christian faith. Okay, I get it. But is an unbeliever really expected to believe everything in the Bible before he or she is regenerated by the Spirit? Would we need to convince a person that Peter literally found a coin in a fish’s mouth before we regarded that person’s confession of faith to be genuine? Would we check our new convert’s salvation pulse if she thought the story of Jonah might be a parable? Probably not. Most of us would likely say that a proper understanding of the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture comes early in the process of discipleship, not as a pre-requisite for conversion.

Yet there’s more important reason for retaining the centrality of the virgin conception—a christological reason. For me the necessity of the virgin birth relates primarily to the person of Christ—one of the fundamental pillars of the Gospel message itself. You see, the miracle of the virgin conception is not so much a miracle of a woman becoming pregnant without the contribution of a man. There are scientists alive today who could pull that off! The real miracle of the virgin conception is the incarnation of God the Son. The fact is, without the virgin conception, there could be no incarnation. There could be a Jesus of Nazareth possessed by a divine being, but not the God-man, two complete natures in one unique Person. Rather, He would be a complete human person who was adopted by the divine Person, an “indwelled” human being, no different from the way the Holy Spirit indwells a believer in Christ. In short, rejecting the doctrine of the virgin conception results in an adoptionist—not incarnational—christology.

When God the Son took on humanity, He did not adopt a human person. Yes, He took on full humanity—with body and soul, with human mind, human emotion, and human will. But to accomplish true incarnation (rather than adoption), there could be no personhood in the womb apart from incarnation. When the person, Jesus of Nazareth, began to grow in the womb, He had to already be divine and human, two natures in one person. Had Mary become pregnant the natural way, the divine Son would have descended upon a human being who was already a person. This would have resulted in two natures and two persons, the opposite of incarnational Christology. What would have been the result? A radically different Jesus than the One who died and rose again. Paul warns against those who preach “another Jesus” other than the One He preached (2 Corinthians 11:4). A different Jesus quite clearly constitutes a “different gospel, which is really not another” (Galatians 1:6–7).

So, Christians should not only take a stand against rejecting or redefining the doctrine of the virgin conception of Christ. We should resist the trend to re-categorize it as non-essential, or we’ll lose the essential truth of the Gospel—the Person of Jesus Christ, who alone, as fully God and fully man in one Person, is able to accomplish the work of redemption for us.

[Originally posted April 20, 2010 at www.retrochristianity.com]

Beyond the Preference-Driven Church: Revisiting the Marks and Works of the Church, Part 6—EDIFICATION

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Having completed our examination of the three essential Marks of Orthodoxy, Order, and Ordinances, we began a survey of the second pillar of the church’s essential Works with a discussion of Evangelism. In this current essay, the sixth in a seven-part series on the essential Marks and Works of a local church, I want to add the second essential Work of a local church—Edification.

Edification is best defined as “building up” believers in the faith, including teaching, discipleship, the means of sanctification, and discipline. Unlike the Work of evangelism, edification is directed toward the Church, not the world. That is, only those who have been converted to Christ can grow in Him. Edification is included in the second part of Jesus’s command in the Great Commission. The Savior charged the apostles to “go and make disciples, baptizing them [that’s the result of evangelism] . . . and teaching them to observe all I have commanded you [that’s edification]” (Matt 28:19). In the Work of edification, the disciple-maker’s role is to teach and model. The disciple’s role is to learn and follow.

Edification Requires Practical Teaching

As a child I once tried putting my schoolbooks under my pillow at night, hoping that by mystical osmosis the information from the books would pass into my brain and I wouldn’t have to actually study. The result? A stiff neck and a bad grade! Sadly, this is how some Christians live their spiritual lives. They believe that by some mystical, supernatural hocus-pocus the Holy Spirit will simply grow them toward maturity apart from any actual teaching, instruction, or active participation in the life of the church. They think that spiritual growth will “just happen” through their passive presence in a church building for a few hours. Strangely, they spend the other 99% of their week wondering why they’re living a defeated Christian life.

The truth is that we all need to develop an “Ezra” complex. When that great Jewish leader re-discovered the long-lost Scriptures, he “set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances” (Ezra 7:10). Did you catch that? Study it . . . practice it . . . teach it. That takes some effort! Oh, and as you work hard at studying and practicing, don’t forget Peter’s stern warning against the “untaught” who “distort” the Scriptures to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16). Learning God’s Word was never meant to be an “independent study” or “correspondence course.” Rather, God gave teachers to the churches to equip the saints. Ephesians 4:11–13 says, “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”

Thus, a major emphasis in a healthy local church must be the unapologetic preaching, teaching, and application of God’s inspired Word. Clearly this aspect of edification requires a robust order of qualified leaders and mentors as well as a clear sense of biblical orthodoxy (see previous essays on these two essential Marks of a church, hyperlinked in the first paragraph above).

Edification Requires Persistent Prayer

If teaching engages the mind of the local church, prayer engages the heart and soul. Without prayer, edification is impossible. Notice what Paul prayed for in Philippians 1:9–11—“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” What a request! When was the last time you prayed for the edification of your fellow believers in the church? In Ephesians 6:18 Paul urges his readers to “pray at all times in the Spirit” as the essential key to perseverance in the midst of spiritual warfare. In fact, just a brief survey of the book of Acts reveals how vital prayer was for the growth of the infant church (Acts 1:14; 2:42; 3:1; 4:31; 6:4; 10:2; 12:5; etc.).

But Jude most explicitly ties prayer to edification when he writes, “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith [that’s edification!], praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life” (Jude 20–21). Clearly, prayer is the spiritual lifeblood of the local church.

Edification Requires Consistent Discipline

Edification also includes discipline, which we might call the “negative” aspect of applying God’s Word. Sometimes when believers have hardened their hearts against the truths of Scripture, discipline is required, just as a child requires discipline from his parents to learn and grow. Jesus describes in Matthew 18:15–17 how this discipline is to be formally applied in a local church: “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault when the two of you are alone. If he listens to you, you have regained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others with you, that at the testimony of two or three witnesses every matter may be established. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen to the church, treat him like a Gentile or tax collector.”

The notion of “excommunication” comes from the biblical concept of church discipline. God has charged the leadership of a local church with the task of maintaining proper discipline among the congregation. This includes protecting the sanctity of the ordinances, which may mean preventing unruly saints from participating in the Lord’s Table as the rite of fellowship (see 1 Corinthians 5:9–13). This may seem harsh in our “anything goes” culture, but anything less than proper discipline threatens not only the Work of edification in the local body, but also damages the Marks of order and the ordinances.

Practical teaching. Persistent prayer. Consistent discipline. These things may not be on your list of favorite activities. Taking them seriously might actually mean rearranging your priorities, shuffling your schedules, or renewing your commitments. But only when we devote ourselves to edification of the local church through teaching, prayer, and discipline will we rise above the languishing preference-driven church.