Years ago, as the holidays approached, the senior pastor of my church asked me to preach the Christmas Eve message. Being the creative type, I didn’t want to just talk from behind the pulpit. Then it hit me: Christmas is about a Baby. I would find a child to help me preach my sermon.

Fortunately, our church had plenty of young families. I called a woman who had recently given birth and shared my idea. She readily agreed — what mom doesn’t want to show off her little darling?

On Christmas Eve, at the end of my message, I stepped out from behind the pulpit, gently lifted the infant from her mother, and held the baby up for the congregation. Reverent silence fell. For a moment, the truth of Christmas felt tangible: Jesus, God in human flesh, had once been like this small, helpless child.

An utterly new event

But there’s more. I went on to say that the baby in my arms came into the world through ordinary means, but the Nativity of Christ pointed to a far greater miracle: the Virgin Birth.

Jesus didn’t enter the world like any other child. He is the pre-existent God, taking on humanity in a way that left the commonplace far behind. David Guretzki of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada called the event a novum — something unprecedented: “The eternal Word enters history and creation by the Spirit in a brand-new way to become human.”

The sign that birthed Christmas

The Gospel writers make it clear: Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father. Matthew and Luke trace Jesus’ lineage to King David, but Joseph’s line carried a curse (Jeremiah 22:30). Jesus’ human life came through Mary, empowered by the Holy Spirit, fulfilling the prophecy of the “seed of the woman” in Genesis 3:15.

Critics sometimes argue that the Hebrew word almah in Isaiah 7:14 means merely “young woman,” not “virgin.” But Biblical usage shows otherwise. Almah often implies virginity: Rebekah drawing water at the well, Moses’ sister Miriam as a preadolescent, and the young maidens of Solomon’s court. When Jewish translators rendered the Isaiah 7 prophecy into Greek in the Septuagint, they chose parthenos, explicitly meaning a woman who had not experienced sexual relations. This was not a casual choice — it signaled a miraculous, divine conception.

The ordinary Hebrew word for “virgin” is bethulah, yet that term isn’t always clear-cut either. In Joel 1:8, a bethulah laments her husband’s death, clearly indicating she had been married. In Esther 2:17, a bethulah has already spent a night with the king. It becomes clear, then, that almah in Isaiah 7 was intended as a supernatural sign — a young woman, untouched, chosen to bear God’s Son.

Isaiah calls this child a “sign.” Signs are never ordinary; they point beyond themselves to something extraordinary. A normal delivery could never convey the magnitude of what was happening. Only a miraculous virgin birth could reveal that God Himself was entering human history.

The Historical Church Confirms the Sign

From Ignatius to Justin Martyr, from Irenaeus to the creeds of the historic church, the Virgin Birth was affirmed as a core truth. The Nicene Creed, Luther’s Small Catechism, and the Apostles’ Creed all acknowledge it. Theologians across the centuries understood that the Incarnation — the Word made flesh — was not an invented tale, but history itself.

Why it still matters

The Virgin Birth is more than dry theology; it’s a potent reminder that God acts in ways beyond human expectation. This Christmas, as we remember a baby in a manger, we celebrate Immanuel — God with us. That tiny child held in my arms on Christmas Eve represented the helplessness of all babies. But in the Babe of Bethlehem, we see not only God making Himself vulnerable but also the miracle-working power of the Almighty, the fulfillment of prophecy, and the dawn of salvation for the world.

This is the sign of Christmas: God coming near, not in grandeur, but in humility — transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. In the manger, we glimpse a truth that still astonishes: the Creator of the universe entered His own creation as a cooing infant. And in that small, vulnerable Baby, we find the bold promise that God is still at work, breaking into our world, offering hope, and making the impossible possible.

This is Christmas — God with us, now and forever.