Daily Bible Reading 7th March 2026 // Luke 1:26-38
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favoured one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. 36 And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
In this passage we come to what has been called the Annunciation, the announcement by the angel Gabriel of the coming birth of the Son of God. It is easy to see that structurally there is a parallelism here between what is said to Mary and what was earlier said to Zechariah; and the lessons we drew from the supernatural visitation to the latter are true also with regard to Mary. The child of Zechariah and Elisabeth was to be born to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. That coming is now described by Luke. For He came in the coming of His Son. The birth, life and ministry of Jesus was the promised coming or visitation of God; and this is Luke's point in recording it.
Let us consider first of all the implications of Gabriel's words in relation to what we know as the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ. Many modern commentators consider the idea of the virgin birth as a wrongful, legendary accretion, originally compiled to safeguard the idea of the sinlessness of Christ, ordinary conception being somehow unworthy, and leading to the inevitable taint of sin. And they point out that that taint would pass to Jesus just as much by one parent, Mary, as by two. This is, of course, true; and this is why, inevitably, the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary developed in the Roman Church. But an infinite regression of immaculate conceptions would be needed to deal with this problem! This, however, is not the point that is being made. The sinlessness of the Son of God is not the question at issue. Nor does the reality of the Incarnation depend on a virgin birth, as such. God could, we suppose, have done it otherwise. But He did not. He did it this way.
Further, it is sometimes said that the large part of the New Testament does not even mention the virgin birth. Paul makes no mention of it, etc., etc. But what is this supposed to prove? Is it not rather naive to speak in this way? The doctrine is mentioned twice, in Matthew and Luke. How often has God to say a thing in His Word before we are prepared to believe it? And consider this: it would be perfectly possible for an evangelical preacher to preach for a year or more without mentioning the virgin birth in what he said. But would this have to mean that he did not believe in the truth of that doctrine, or even think it unimportant? Of course not. The critics have often a remarkably unrealistic understanding of the practical, day-to-day issues of life. More on this doctrine in tomorrow's Note.