“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
The genesis of the Bible’s promise of the virgin birth is actually located in its opening pages. In Genesis 3:15, God tells the Serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” God promises that Jesus would be born from a woman. This is unusual because the rest of Scripture speaks of children as being born from their father. Here, however, no father is mentioned for Jesus, which implies that he would not have a biological earthly father. Paul speaks in the same manner, saying in Galatians 4:4, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman…”
Some seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus, Isaiah 7:14 further illuminated Jesus’ virgin birth: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
The Old Testament both quietly implies and loudly prophesies the virgin birth of Jesus. The writers of the New Testament go to painstaking detail to emphasize that in every way, Jesus’ mother, Mary, was a virgin woman who conceived Jesus solely through a miracle of God the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, some have extended Mary’s virginity to the rest of her life, including the Catholic school teachers I had as a child.
Arguments for the perpetual virginity of Mary arose as early as the second century, became more popular in the fourth century, and culminated with the Second Council of Constantinople, which convened in 553 and declared Mary “ever virgin.” Some early church fathers (e.g., Origen), some Catholic and Protestant theologians (such as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Wesley), along with the Second Helvetic Confession and the Geneva Bible say that Mary was “ever virgin,” or semper virgo.
The implications of the perpetual virginity of Mary are important. Practically, this would mean that not only was Mary a virgin when she conceived Jesus, but that following his birth she never had intimate relations with her own husband, Joseph. This teaching is inaccurate for three reasons.
First, God designed marriage to include sexual consummation (Genesis 2:24) and said that depriving marital intimacy is a sin (1 Corinthians 7:3-5).
Second, Matthew 1:25 says that they did have relations following Jesus’ birth: “But [he] knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.” The language here clearly implies that they did in fact have normal marital relations (as are celebrated in the Song of Solomon) after Jesus was born.
Third, Scripture repeatedly states that Mary had other sons and daughters (Matt. 12:46–50; 13:55–57; Mark 3:31–35; 6:3–4; Luke 8:19–21; John 2:12; 7:3, 5, 10; Acts 1:14; 1 Cor. 9:5; Gal. 1:19).
In no way are we ever led to believe that Mary produced a Suburban full of kids through a succession of virgin births. Jesus’ conception was unique, whereas the conception of his siblings was via the ordinary way of a husband and wife having a healthy marriage. Therefore, Scripture states that Mary was a virgin until the birth of Jesus, as was also taught by the church fathers Tertullian and Irenaeus.
Do you truly believe that Jesus was born of a virgin?
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