{"id":5267,"date":"2026-03-04T08:23:49","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T13:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5267"},"modified":"2026-03-04T08:23:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T13:23:49","slug":"born-of-the-virgin-mary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/04\/born-of-the-virgin-mary\/","title":{"rendered":"Born of the Virgin Mary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a>
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Throughout the season of Lent, we’re taking a close look at the Apostles’ Creed – one of the earliest and most concise summaries of what followers of Jesus believe.<\/em>
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\u201cWeekend Update\u201d is a comedic take on national news headlines in every edition of Saturday Night Live<\/em>.
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The British equivalent was Not the Nine O\u2019Clock News<\/em>, a sketch comedy show that ran years ago in the same time segment as \u2013 you guessed it, Britain\u2019s ultra-serious Nine O\u2019Clock News<\/em>.
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One evening the cast presented a satirical Church of England worship service. The congregation was asked to stand and read from \u201cthe new revised version of the new revised version of the Book of Common Prayer.\u201d
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Together they recited aloud, concerning Jesus in the Apostles\u2019 Creed, \u201cwho was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. No, don\u2019t laugh. It could happen. After all, they can do it in a test tube these days.\u201d
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The Virgin Birth tends to make people laugh. Or roll their eyes. Or wince. Even for a number of Christ-followers, the notion that Mary brought Jesus into the world before she ever experienced sexual intimacy is something of a headscratcher.
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Yet there it is \u2013 right in the middle of Christianity\u2019s most widely circulated statement of faith.
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The Apostles\u2019 Creed bristles with theological declarations. No surprise there. But it\u2019s more than a little surprising that the Creed also includes the names of two real-life human beings.
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The first is Mary, the central figure at the beginning of Jesus\u2019 life. The second is Pontius Pilate, who played a brief but crucial role during his last 24 hours.
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New Testament scholar Michael Bird notes that the phrases \u201cborn of the Virgin Mary\u201d and \u201csuffered under Pontius Pilate\u201d are separated by nothing more than a comma. The Creed skips over Jesus\u2019 entire three-year ministry \u2013 his heartfelt teachings, his expressions of compassion, his extraordinary miracles, his confrontations with theological opponents, and his mentoring of a dozen apprentices.
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All of that Gospel wealth is compressed into a single comma.
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A few days from now, we\u2019ll explore why the authors of the Creed thought it vital to mention the name of a corrupt Roman procurator. In the meantime, let\u2019s address a few of the questions that are frequently raised with regard to Mary and the Virgin Birth.
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Isn\u2019t it likely that the earliest Christians merely borrowed pagan ideas to make Jesus look special?<\/strong>
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As we noted yesterday, it\u2019s true that certain ancient figures \u2013 such as the \u201cdying and rising\u201d gods of the so-called mystery religions of Osiris, Mithras, and Cybele \u2013 were thought to have supernatural origins and powers.
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But no one ever tried to make a case that such deities had ever stood on a certain plot of ground during a certain year in the presence of actual witnesses. They were myths, not figures of history. Everyone knew that.
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Jesus was different. He lived in a country that actually existed and walked on paths where actual people could actually walk. The apostle Paul insisted that at least 500 people \u2013 many of whom were still alive in A.D. 50 \u2013 had at one point been in the presence of the risen Jesus, and were presumably available for interviews (see I Corinthians 15:3-8).
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But isn\u2019t a virgin birth simply hard to believe?<\/strong>
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This seems like an odd question, even though it\u2019s frequently asked.
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If God is really there \u2013 a God who is capable of opening the eyes of the blind, healing cancer, parting the waters of the Red Sea, and creating an entire cosmos \u2013 why should it seem particularly challenging to assemble the genetic material to produce a human fetus?
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Isn\u2019t it somehow <\/strong>beneath<\/strong><\/em> the Living God to mess around with the mechanics of human reproduction?<\/strong>
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To be honest, this was one of the objections of many early skeptics and heretics.
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Valentinus declared that Jesus passed right through Mary\u2019s body like water through a pipe, without being contaminated in any way by human physiological yuckiness. Marcion couldn\u2019t even imagine God\u2019s Son coming into the world like everyone else. He preferred the idea that Jesus just showed up one day, fully grown.
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Here we need to say, with sensitivity and not a little joy, that God is apparently delighted by human yuckiness.
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He invented our bodies. Jesus chose to share every bit of our humanity. And that includes the sights, smells, and sensations that we don\u2019t always talk about in polite company.
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Do I have to believe in the Virgin Birth to be a \u201creal\u201d Christian?<\/strong>
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Many contemporary Bible teachers would say this is not a make-or-break issue. Over the centuries, Jesus\u2019 virginal conception has seemed to be of secondary importance.
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After all, it doesn\u2019t rate a single mention in the writings of Peter and Paul. Nor does it appear in two of the four Gospels, Mark and John.
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But it does lead off the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. And the earliest Christians thought it to be of such significance that they included it in the Apostles\u2019 Creed.
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We can truthfully say that the Christmas story doesn\u2019t make much sense unless we embrace the biblical idea that Jesus\u2019 birth wasn\u2019t merely an out-of-wedlock \u201caccident,\u201d but God\u2019s gracious way to ensure that Immanuel, \u201cGod With Us,\u201d would come into our hurting world and experience the actual ups and downs of being a real human being.
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So, if the Virgin Birth actually matters, why does it matter?<\/strong>
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God made a promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3. He would richly bless Abraham, whose descendants would richly bless the world.
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But the people of Israel failed, again and again, to faithfully represent God\u2019s good news to the rest of the world. That world-transforming mission would fall to the Messiah, who would have to be an Israelite. Jesus needed the DNA of the family of David, which came via Mary, as well as the divine nature of God Almighty, which came via the Holy Spirit.\u00a0
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The Virgin Birth thus provided the essential dual nature of Jesus the Messiah.
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The Apostles\u2019 Creed regards Mary as someone special. How special is she?<\/strong>
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Different believers have come to different conclusions.
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Catholics have elevated Mary to places where Scripture clearly does not go. That includes the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception \u2013 declared by papal bull in 1854 \u2013 which asserts that Mary herself was born without sin. Catholic theologians have reasoned that Jesus\u2019 mother needed to be sinless in order to give birth to a sinless Savior. Nothing in the Bible leads us to think this must be so.
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In some cultures \u2013 in Latin America, for instance \u2013 Mary is regarded almost as a co-redeemer with her son. Jesus may be the designated mediator between God and humanity, but Mary is our mediator with Jesus. Again, there is nothing in the New Testament to suggest such an extraordinary role.
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Protestants, in their eagerness to distance themselves from the perceived excesses of \u201c\u2019Mariology,\u201d have typically gone in the opposite direction. They value Mary too little, failing to honor a young woman who was asked to surrender, for God\u2019s sake, all the plans she had for her own life.
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And who bravely said yes.
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So, where\u2019s a good place to land?\u00a0<\/strong>
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Here\u2019s how Michael Bird sums up the importance of this doctrine: \u201cThe virgin conception is not a Christianized version of pagan mythology, nor an odd tale of God\u2019s onetime enterprise at running a Galilean fertility clinic for teenage girls.\u201d
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Instead, it\u2019s all about \u201cIsrael\u2019s hopes coming true, about God\u2019s Son made flesh, about the Spirit\u2019s power in Jesus\u2019 life, about a new world dawning, and about God\u2019s victory over Satan through the offspring of Eve.\u201d
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Or, to put it more simply, ours is a Christmas faith every day of the year.
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All because God\u2019s Spirit overshadowed an incredibly courageous teenage girl.

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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0Throughout the season of Lent, we’re taking a close look at the Apostles’ Creed – one of the earliest and most concise summaries of what followers of Jesus believe.\u00a0\u201cWeekend Update\u201d is a comedic take on national news headlines in every edition of Saturday Night Live.\u00a0The British equivalent was Not the Nine O\u2019Clock… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1080,115,1084],"class_list":["post-5267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-apostles-creed","tag-mary","tag-virgin-birth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5269,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5267\/revisions\/5269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}