Born of a Virgin: Meditations on Matthew 1

Virginity is a quaint idea in our time, nearly as outdated in the public mind as rotary telephones and carbon copies (those of you under the age of 20, ask your parents what these are).  Old fashioned ideas like virginity are often snickered at by those who find it ridiculous or unnecessary, particularly in our modern and enlightened age.  While it’s often not said directly, the world’s modern ideal is formed by the conviction that since we’re all just the product of evolutionary animals in a meaningless universe, why not gratify our desires and get all we can before we die?  Indeed, what is the value of virginity, when people are just hormone driven animals, clawing out their own passions upon a merciless globe, fretting every moment that they won’t get what they want before someone takes it from them?  The image of a pack of hyenas around a rotting antelope carcass comes to mind…

Of course, this is not what people are.  The illusion of our time, a strong delusion to be sure, has caused the hearts of many to grow cold, selfish, and hateful.  Even Christians, swooning under the neon advertisements that sell “please me now” wares, begin to doubt the need and usefulness of ideas like virginity and chastity.  Christian schools, like public schools, are full of baptized teenagers, who see their peers chasing the spirit of the age, and ask why they shouldn’t do so, too.  They see throngs of their friends following after the Pied Piper, pursuing sex and pleasure and vice, and wrestle with whether or not to join the throng.  What they don’t see, is where the Piper is leading them.

With all our modern thoughts and values, we continue to forget the eternal truths God revealed to the world through His Word.  To live after the flesh, is to die.  That Piper, the spirit of the age, is always calling and wooing people to their eternal demise; to share his fate in the lake of fire forever.  We would be stupid and naïve to think that the Piper is not very talented at what he does, or that he hasn’t been practicing for thousands of years, refining his call to perdition.  Naturally, he doesn’t show you the pit of hell that yawns wide to receive you at the end, and he is happy to slake your lust and pride for a few measly decades, knowing that your ruin and destruction will last forever.  That wicked Piper calls to every person, in every age, to dance and frolic away from the God who made them and gave them life, into a death and hell prepared for the devil and his evil angels.  His song seems sweet and pleasant, appearing wise in the world’s eyes, but the end of that path is death.  And of course, none of us know exactly how quickly that path may end…

In the midst of this wicked Piper’s call, the Word of God continues to call all people to faithfulness and repentance, to virtue and peace.  The Piper may call you to animalistic death, but God calls you to the fullness of human life.  God knows exactly how and why He formed humanity, and He knows how those good gifts He has given, are best to be exercised.  He knows that in our fallen state, our ears are much more attuned to the diabolical strains of the Piper, and our passions disordered into lust and covetousness.  Knowing our weakness, He put before our eyes His holy and righteous Law, that we might have an eternal guidepost in determining good and evil in every age.  No matter how disorienting and unnerving the call of the Piper, we know what our Lord has spoken simply, clearly, and directly to all mankind.  It is a Law which both instructs and condemns, since it shows us to be broken and wicked people, unable to live the lives of purity and righteousness He has called us to.

But in addition to His holy Law, God has also set forth His blessed and eternal Gospel.  This Gospel is more than the Law, in that it fulfills what the Law could not do.  While the Law could show us what is holy and pure, and call us to personal holiness and purity, it could not in fact make us either of those things.  While the Law remains holy and good, it also remains a mountain un-scalable to broken people, showing us a life and salvation outside our natural grasp.  His Good News, however, brings that life to us in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ.  From the unassailable heights of God’s righteousness, the Son of Righteousness descends, with healing in His wings for all who will believe in Him.  The Son of God comes to seek and to save we poor, lost, and miserable sinners, caught in the thrall of the Piper and dancing ourselves to death at the base of His holy mountain.  Jesus comes to us, when we could not climb to Him, bringing to us His grace, mercy, forgiveness, and life.

The Son of God comes to us, in a way that stands out for all humanity of all times and places to behold:  born of a Virgin.  Rather than taking a strange and unnatural flesh, Jesus takes our own flesh from His mother, making her the Theotokos, or God-bearer… the Mother of God.  The Blessed Virgin Mary, by the grace and mercy of Jesus her Son, becomes the means by which the Son of God comes to us, and the Ark of a New Covenant.  She brings forth in purity and righteousness, the very Son of Righteousness, who has come to give us His righteousness in exchange for our sins.  The Blessed Virgin Mary stands forever as a sign of the love of God for mankind, devoted and set aside to the task of bringing forth the Messiah.  As the Scriptures proclaim, all generations shall call her blessed, for what is accomplished in her is the reconciliation of the world to God through her Son.  She is a sign of purity and faith, of holiness and righteousness, for the sake of her Son who will save the world from the deadly song of the Piper.

While virginity is not a model set forth to all people, it is set forth as a sign of the purity all are called to in Christ.  Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, points to the holiness of her Son, who is the Lamb of God.  Jesus’ own eternal virginity, points to His holy and righteous mission to take away the sins of the world.  While people of all times and places are called to be pure and holy, keeping their gift of sexuality in accord with God’s Eternal Word, it is the purity and holiness of our Savior that we rest in.  His Gospel of Salvation, His forgiveness of our impurity and unrighteousness, calls us to rest in Him and to reflect Him to the world.

We are no longer left powerless, under the spell of the devil’s Piper.  We are alive in Christ Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Mary.  We are given His holiness and purity in exchange for our unworthiness, and called to live in Him by grace, through faith and repentance.  Our sexuality, like all our passions and gifts, are called to be used righteously, in accord with God’s design and Word, whether that is in Godly marriage, or in chastity and abstinence.  And in case the siren song of the Piper would confuse us in our day, God leaves the indelible image of His Son before our eyes, born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and calling all the world to a faith and repentance which brings life instead of death.

May our ears be opened to hear the call of Jesus, that we may turn, believe—and live.  Amen.