Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall call his name Immanuel

Throughout the centuries the doctrine of the virgin birth has been one of the key tenets of the Christian faith. And this rightly so. Matthew certainly takes time to explain exactly how the conception and birth of Jesus Christ came to pass, and exactly what the reactions of Joseph and Mary were through the whole unfolding of events. As selective as Matthew and the other gospel writers are in their choice of events to record out of the life of Jesus, every event must be seen as significant to the purpose of their writing.

It has been said that Matthew particularly is recording the life of Jesus with an eye to the cross. He recognizes that nothing in the life of Jesus will make sense if it is not understood as a preparation for his passion.

Now we know that the virgin birth is crucial to understanding the cross in that in order for Christ to take on the sins of the world he had to be both fully man and fully God. One might still ask: “Could this not have been the case if Joseph had been Jesus’ biological father? After all, was not Mary his biological mother? If not then we could not say that he was truly a descendent of Abraham!”

From my understand of God’s interactions with people, he does not do what he does in order to fulfill some technicality of divine mechanics. In other words, God’s hands weren’t tied to make Christ be born the way he was in order to fill some “fully God–fully man” equation.

What God does in his infinite wisdom is consistently done because it fulfills his will for his relationship with humanity. And it fulfills his will in a way that satisfies himself and infinitely satisfies the person who delights in him. So when we look at the virgin birth we should do so with an eye to the practical implications that this has on our faith–our walk with Christ. Why were we told about this?

Let us look to where Matthew points us: to the cross. Though Christ died at one point in time for the salvation of all, by virtue of being the Communication of God (or the Word) all that he is continually reflects God’s character of loving sacrifice. And if this life of God, this dying to the self, is always demonstrated in Christ, then those who have the spirit of God in them will exhibit faith in Christ even before he has died for them in time. Indeed this is seen all throughout the New Testament. On more than one occasion Jesus healed a person from a physical illness and said “your faith has made you well.”

Faith in what? Could we argue that they had faith in Jesus’ healing power but not in his spiritual saving power? Or can we even separate the two? The reason Christ healed physically is because it is consistent with his character which provides for the needs of his creation–both physically and spiritually. He is physical just as he is divine. As God’s Communication to humanity ever since the very creation of the physical world, his ‘role’, if you will, assumes that what he does will include the physical. Just as his sustenance of the earth is indicative of his spiritual providence, so his miraculous healing of our sins when he was on earth in the flesh assumes that he will also exhibit miraculous healing of the body during that time.

When, during the life of Christ, one was said to have faith in Christ, perhaps this faith was primarily in his ability to heal, but it was more importantly a faith that Jesus was what he had revealed himself to be, and had the power to do what he claimed he could do–and not just in the abstract, but in relation to his people. Since no one can have more faith that what God gives them, to the degree to which God reveals himself to them, this is faith that is no less salvific than the faith that we believers are given when we believe in the death and ressurection of Christ for the forgiveness of our sins.

The same can be said for the virgin birth. It is not a faith of total comprehension that God looks for, but a child’s faith. This is the faith exhibited by Mary and Joseph. It is the faith of the only two people who knew at the time of Christ’s divine conception, and so it can be said that it is representative of the kind of faith that God desires of his entire people.

This is much in the same way that Abraham, the sole witness to the institution of the first covenant, was said to be the father of faith. He did not understand all that was promised. But that was completely beside the point; he believed in what had been revealed to him in God’s care and promise.

In this way, when we glorify God for the physical miracle of Jesus’ conception just as Mary did through her obedience and her song of praise, and as Joseph did through his obedience and care of Mary, we are experiencing the blessing of resting transparently in the miraculous spiritual truth whose essence is all that is given through Christ’s death and eternal life. Then he is truly Emmanuel for us.