In conversation with my mother, she reminisced about a time when she was a teenager asking her father how a virgin could have a baby.  My grandfather answered her by saying, “I don’t know.”  Several years transpired before she finally received the answer.  Lots of people today are still asking the same question, referring to the birth of Jesus the Messiah, “How can a virgin have a baby? 

More importantly, the question is not how but why? Why was it necessary for Jesus to be born of a virgin?  You see the first question is simple. The Holy Spirit came upon Mary and overshadowed her.  God is the Author of life and so it was a supernatural act on His part to create a life within her womb.  In the creation account God formed Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.  Immediately he was a fully functionally adult human being.  The virgin birth is no more extraordinary than that.

More importantly though, why did He do it?  Adam and Eve lived in a perfect relation-ship with God until they sinned. Through their sin, they fell into an unfavorable disposition toward God.  This new unfavorable nature toward God was passed on to his offspring so that the entire human race has been afflicted with it. (This is why you have to teach children to be good.  The bad they learn automatically.) Immediately after the fall God promised a Deliverer from this horrible situation.  This Deliverer would come in the Person of Jesus the Messiah.  You see, being born of a virgin, He did not inherit the sinful nature through birth as every human does.  Unlike Adam, Jesus lived a life in perfect obedience to God the Father.  For this reason He is the perfect Lamb of God who  takes away the sin of the world!  His sinless life provided the necessary sacrifice for sin required by God. This was only attainable through the virgin birth.  As the angel told Mary, “For nothing will be  impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37)