Could We Have Been Saved Without the Virgin Birth?

Tony Cooke

The following article is excerpted from my book, Magnificent Jesus: Unmatched, Unrivaled, Unparalleled. https://tonycooke.org/product-category/books/

The virgin birth of Jesus is inextricably woven into the story of redemption—of God purchasing our forgiveness, delivering us from the penalty and the power of sin, and bringing us back into his family. Anti-supernaturalists may try to discount the virgin birth as mythical or unimportant, but it is absolutely essential to the completeness and cohesion of Scripture.

One of my favorite verses in all of Scripture, one that communicates God’s infinite wisdom, reads, “So the Word became human and made his home among us” (John 1:14). So just how did the Word, who pre-existed with God and was himself God, become flesh—become human? The bold answer from the Bible is that “the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’)” (Isaiah 7:14).

Isaiah’s prophecy, given around 700 years before the birth of Christ, was not the first indication of a special offspring of a woman. Immediately after the fall of man, God informs the serpent about the future work of the Seed of a woman:

“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15 NKJV).

The Seed of woman—and we believe this to be a prophetic description of Jesus—would be the one who would bring complete destruction to the kingdom of darkness, just as the serpent had brought great harm to the human race. This promise of the triumph of the “Seed of woman” has long been called the protoevangelium, the first gospel.

When Charles Wesley penned his magnificent hymn, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” he recognized Christ as the Seed of woman in the lyric, “Rise the woman’s conquering Seed, bruise in us the serpent’s head.” Not only does Paul refer to Christ as “the Seed” in the book of Galatians (3:16,19 NKJV), but John writes that “the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).

As a believer, I embrace the plain teaching of Scripture and of the Apostles’ Creed regarding Jesus, “Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.”

The apostle Paul comments, “But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children” (Galatians 4:4-5).

Jesus’ conception was anything but the norm. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary without a natural, biological father. He was “born of a woman” and was “manifested in the flesh.”

Had Jesus not been miraculously conceived of the Holy Spirit, he would not have been qualified to be our Savior. To represent God in the work of redemption, he had to be fully God. To represent man in the same transaction, he had to be fully man. This is what the virgin birth made possible.

There will certainly be people who simply accepted Jesus—put their faith in him—without ever hearing detailed doctrine about the virgin birth, and they no doubt were born again when they put their faith in Jesus who died on the cross for their sins and was raised from the dead. In that sense, an uninformed person might not believe in the virgin birth, and yet they are saved.

However, had Jesus not been born of a virgin, nothing he did could have produced our salvation. A regular, sinful man could not effectively die vicariously on behalf of others. I appreciate the brilliant insight reflected in Oswald Sanders’ statement:

“It is conceded that the Bible does not demand belief in the virgin birth as a prerequisite for salvation, but it does indicate that the fact of the virgin birth must be true if we are to be saved. It is possible for a man to be saved without knowing details of the process, just as babies are born without any knowledge of embryology. It is the integrity of the fact, not our knowledge of it, that lays the basis for our salvation.”

Consider the great insights from outstanding Christian leaders through the ages:

“He was truly born of a virgin… He is God existing in flesh, true Life in death. He is both of Mary and of God.”
—Ignatius of Antioch (?–117)

“Christ Jesus, the Son of God, because of His surpassing love towards His creation, humbled Himself to be born of the virgin. Thereby, He united man through Himself to God.”
—Irenaeus of Lyon (125–202)

“This ray of God, then, as it was always foretold in ancient times, descended into a certain virgin. And He was made flesh in her womb. So, in His birth, God and man were united.”
—Tertullian (160–220)

“The Son of God—He who made the universe—assumed flesh and was conceived in the virgin’s womb.”
—Clement of Alexandria (AD 150–215)

“He enters into a virgin. Through the Holy Spirit, He is clothed with flesh. God is mingled with man.”
—Cyprian (210–258)

“The mystery of the humanity of Christ, that He sunk Himself into our flesh, is beyond all human understanding.”
—Martin Luther (1483–1546)

“For, first, the birth of Christ was the incarnation of God: it was God taking upon himself human—a mystery, a wondrous mystery, to be believed in rather than to be defined.”
—Charles H. Spurgeon (1834–1892)

“Some things strange and tragic have been happening in recent years within Christianity. For one, some ministers have advised their congregations not to be greatly concerned if theologians dispute the virgin birth of Jesus. The issue, they say, is not important. For another thing, some professing Christians are saying they do not want to be pinned down as to what they really believe about the uniqueness and reality of the deity of Jesus, the Christ.”
—A.W. Tozer (1897–1963)

“The virgin birth of Christ is a key doctrine; for if Jesus Christ is not God come in sinless human flesh, then we have no Savior. Jesus had to be born of a virgin, apart from human generation, because He existed before His mother. He was not just born in this world; He came down from heaven into the world. Jesus was sent by the Father and therefore came into the world having a human mother but not a human father.”
—Warren Wiersbe (1929–2019)

The above article is excerpted from my book, Magnificent Jesus: Unmatched, Unrivaled, Unparalleled. https://tonycooke.org/product-category/books/