The Virgin Birth

Reference:
Torrance, Thomas. "The Virgin Birth and the Unborn." Presbyterian Pro-Life News. Fall 2000

Keywords: Christmas, redemption, Mary, virgin, birth

The virgin birth of Jesus is an essential part of the Gospel of salvation. For through it Jesus was made one of us and one with us in such a way that he healed and sanctified in himself what he had assumed from us--our humanity--thereby recreating, humanizing, and personalizing it.

That is why leading theologians in the early Church, followed by John Calvin at the Reformation, rightly traced the root of our redemption, not only to the death and resurrection of Christ, but to his very conception and birth of the Virgin Mary. Because in Jesus the Creator Word of God was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, Christians came to regard the unborn child in a new light...

The birth of Jesus was of vicarious and redemptive significance. That means that our new birth is to be understood in relation to the birth of Jesus himself.

The doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus and its redemptive significance must be recovered for a proper understanding of the redemptive life and mission of Christ. Moreover, the virgin birth is crucial to our grasp of the nature and status in Christ’s eyes of the unborn child.

The Son of God became a human being for us in the womb of the Virgin Mary, bone of our bone and flesh. He became what we are. Think of the importance of the incarnation, then, for our understanding of and regard for the unborn child.

Every child in the womb has been brothered by the Lord Jesus. In becoming a human being for us, he also became an embryo for the sake of all embryos, and for our Christian understanding of being, nature and status in God’s eyes of the unborn child. So, to take no thought, or no proper thought, for the unborn child is to have no proper thought of Jesus himself as our Lord and Savior or to appreciate his relation as incarnate Creator to every human being.