There is an amazing statement in the book of Isaiah in the Old testament of the Bible, which reads “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. Recently I have been giving some thought to those four extraordinary words “the virgin shall conceive”. When you think about it, it becomes quite clear that this is completely impossible. Virgins cannot conceive. So I thought I would look at this statement and see if I could make any sense of it.
There can’t be many people who haven’t heard of “The Virgin Mary” but how many people have really tried to find out what it is all about and to see what the truth of it is. In this short essay I hope to help people including me to find out the implications and ramifications of this ancient statement. So it seems to me that the best place we can look for an explanation is in other parts of The Bible.
A short search of the Bible reveals that there is one event, recorded twice, which suggests that the prophecy has been fulfilled. Firstly is the account in Luke’s first chapter which starts with a visit from an angel to a Virgin called Mary. Luke writes “And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
So Mary replies to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”. And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.
Well that seems to take us to another level, so let us just look back for a moment at the original statement from Isaiah “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
Immanuel, the name the angel told Mary would be the name of her son, means God with us. So Isaiah seems to be saying the Son born of a the Virgin Mary will be God!
Now in The new Testament account of this ordinary young woman called Mary the angel said to her “the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God”
So now we are beginning to see something even more interesting, not only will the child, a boy, be born, but He will be holy and called the Son of God. Why is it important for us to see that he will be holy and what does that mean?
Humanity as a whole, people in general inherit sin and have always done from our father Adam. The Apostle Paul explains it like this “sin came into the world through one man” and that tells us that our sinful natures are inherited from the male line.
So even though the child Jesus had a human mother, His Father God the Holy Spirit, is God. Thus He is a human being is born from a human mother without the inbred inheritance of Adam’s sin, so He is called Holy because He is Holy and without sin.
But why a virgin? Because birth from a virgin is impossible, therefore only God could achieve it because “nothing is impossible for God”.
Secondly as a sign that the Scripture was being fulfilled.
Thirdly to reinforce the fact that The Lord Jesus Christ did not have a human father.
The Lord Jesus called himself The Son of Man over 80 times in the New Testament and this teaches us that Jesus identified with man and with God. Two separate personalities together in one being, Immanuel, God with us, not just with us here on Earth but with us in humanity, in a body.
The Lord Jesus Christ said in John 3 “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” But in Christ both live in perfect harmony, can this be true of the rest of us?
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Sinless Son of God, and this is the secret.
The Lord said “You must be born again” and explained “that which is born of The Spirit is Spirit and that which is born of the flesh is flesh”. But here’s the thing, He was born of the flesh through Mary but was begotten of God and God is Spirit. The Bible says that He is both flesh and spirit, The Son of Man and the Son of God.
So when The Lord said “You must be born again” He was talking to us, to all people. We of course are already flesh, so we need to be born of The Spirit. This is the amazing free gift of God. All through the New Testament we are shown how this can be. This very famous verse tells us.
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.
Remember when the people of the time said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”
Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”
The Apostle Paul said “Repent and believe the Gospel”, What is The Gospel? Firstly it is what is written above, then it is the fact that The Lord Jesus took upon Himself the sin of the world and paid the price by dying on the Cross of Calvary.
That was not the end however because after he was brutally killed and buried in a tomb, He rose on the third day, walked and talked with his followers and showed himself to hundreds of people. He was taken up to Heaven and there He lives, The Son of Man, The Son of God Our Saviour.
So we come to that word repent, what does it mean? It basically means to turn around but in the context of The Lord Jesus it means to switch your allegiance from the world of the flesh to the Kingdom of God. From going your own way to the ways of Christ, to seek forgiveness of your sins and to follow the commands of Jesus Christ.
A Jailer who asked Peter the Apostle “What can I do to be saved?”, was told by The Apostle, “Believe on The Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”
Saved from what? From an eternity without God which the bible calls Hell.
So this is the key, turn to The Lord Jesus Christ, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.
