‘Behold, the Lamb
of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
94th teaching
11.30.2014
“Shots Fired: the
Marian Debate”
Review:
Last week we took the title for
our study from an ancient Greek title for Mary, do you remember what it was?
Theotokos. What does that mean? We’ll learn more about it tonight.
How
should we think of the ancient people around the first century:
unsophisticated, superstitious idiots? Or as intelligent, civilized human
beings? Remember Luke, who is writing this account here, is far from
unintelligent. He is a doctor and a learned man. So in relaying this
information about the miraculous virgin conception, we have no reason to
believe that he thought this happened all the time. Luke didn’t believe in
magic. Being a doctor, no doubt he knew where babies come from, even in his
ancient time, and thus this story of Mary bearing the child Christ is an
overriding of the natural laws, a miracle, not magic or superstition.
What’s
an indication in Zacharias’ day that the Temple of God had become a place of
meaningless ceremony? How about the fact that after he was struck mute, he could still serve out the days of his
service as priest. But what use could a priest be to the people in the Temple
if he could not speak?
What
are some indications that Luke is telling a real, historical story in telling
of the virgin conception? Remember that we discussed how Christianity is a
fact-based and not a fundamentally feeling-based religion. Sure, feelings are
involved, but Christianity stemmed out of real, historical events, not out of
people wanting to invent a religion that would make them feel good. Don’t miss
that point: there are thousands today who come to Christianity expecting God to
make them happy, when that happiness is found in serving God, not as a free
hand-out. What’s more, Christianity conveys some hard truths to us that don’t
make us feel good at all, and if we ever strip away those truths that are hard
and leave the feel-good truths in their place, then we’ve left historic Christianity
and concocted a pseudo-religion that can help no one in this life and will help
no one in the next.
Finally,
we touched upon good old Luke 1:28,
the breeding-ground of Catholic dogma. I had promised that we would take up the
subject of Mariology, the development of Mary-doctrines, this week and examine
the biblical understanding of Mary.
End Review
The year is 431 AD. It is a hot July
in Ephesus. Two-hundred and fifty bishops sit sweating under their heavy
clerical robes, frowning in silence there in the aftermath of a heated debate
that has lasted for weeks. They have gathered to seek a consensus on a vastly
important subject to the church: the nature of Jesus Christ. But the
confrontation has not been meek or tender. The battle between orthodoxy and
heresy, and deciding between the two, has produced a charged atmosphere. Tension
rises as a voice rings out, the voice of the Roman Emperor Theodosius II
calling for Nestorius.
Nestorius of Constantinople enters the
church sanctuary. A hushed whisper seethes through the crowd of bishops.
“Heretic” they whisper “Excommunicate. Recant. Heresy.” Nestorius had
previously pleaded with the Emperor to hold this very council in order to prove
the truth of his teachings, but now, his teachings are being rejected as
heresy. But now he is to receive the judgment that has been passed upon him.
Nestorius, an archbishop himself, is to be removed from office and his
teachings are condemned and denounced. Nestorius will spend the rest of his
days in a monastery without ever backing down from his teaching. He will take
several groups of churches along with him and create a schism of theology that
lasted for more than 1500 years. It has been suggested that Nestorius was
simply misunderstood, and that he really did believe that Jesus was truly God.
This was the Council of Ephesus, the
third ecumenical council of the early Christian church. What did they debate?
What was Nestorius teaching? Why condemn him as a heretic?
The condemned doctrine of Nestorius
came to be known as Nestorianism, and what Nestorianism asserted was that Jesus
Christ had two loosely-united natures, divine and human, suggesting that Jesus
Christ is not identical to the Son of God, but is personally united with the
Son. That’s a bunch of theological mumbo-jumbo that at least seems to suggest
that Nestorius thought of Jesus as two persons, since He had two wildly
different natures: divine and human.
In order to emphasize the distinction
between these two natures, Nestorius suggested to the council that the virgin
Mary should be called “Christotokos” (Christ-bearer, or one who gives birth to
Christ) but not “Theotokos” (God-bearer, or one who gives birth to God).
Directly opposing him was Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, a political rival to
Nestorius.
What the Council found consensus upon
was the Hypostatic Union, the theological teaching that Christ is One Person
with two distinct natures: his humanity and divinity existing in one
hypostasis, or individual existence. Because Nestorius’ “Christotokos” seemed
to suggest a separation of the two natures into two persons, they rejected
“Christotokos” and kept the title “Theotokos” for the virgin Mary, since she
gave birth to Christ who is indeed God.
Now that explains a bit of the history
of this term “Theotokos”. It was a super-charged theological term that divided
bishops and churches way back in the day. It was a term that had to do with a
monumental debate that shook the early church, and it is still a debate which
rages and has raged in different arenas of Christendom throughout the centuries
as increasingly bizarre doctrines of Mary were developed and as the nature of
Christ continually came under attack.
But what you should notice about
“Theotokos” is this: it was a Christological term. In other words, “Theotokos”
says more about Christ than what it says about Mary. “Theotokos” or Mother of
God never implied that Mary was the creator of God, but what it asserted simply
was that Jesus is God.
The debate at Ephesus was about the
nature of Christ, not the nature of the virgin Mary. What to call Mary was
important only because it made theological suggestions about the nature of the
Lord Jesus. And that’s what makes this bit of studying worthwhile. We could
discuss and debate the doctrines of Mary until the proverbial cows come home,
but what would it matter ultimately. Rather, we’re taking this approach through
Luke’s first chapter and looking at Mary not so that we may ultimately know her
more, but so that we can better understand Jesus. He is the focus, not Mary.
That
being said tonight’s study is entitled: “Shots Fired: the Marian Debate”.
Realize that in taking up this
discussion of Mary, we are entering into this same debate that has divided
Catholics and Protestants and several other groups for centuries. Don’t expect
we shall resolve every nook and cranny, understand every nuanced phrase, or
know all the theology and all the heresy there is to know about this subject in
our short time tonight. Mariology, or the study of Mary, has built up as a fabrication
for hundreds of years. But I do hope that tonight will better equip you to
understand the Catholic position and to reject that form of theology while at
the same time give you a heart that breaks for the ones who are under the sway
of this fabrication, a heart that yearns to save the Catholic man and woman
from the great Marian delusion.
Let me begin by saying this: I don’t
intend to answer the question tonight of whether Catholics are saved or not.
That’s not our subject. If you want to talk about it afterward, fine. But if
you are convicted enough to say that Catholics are not really Christians, then you should be convicted enough to take them
the real Christ, the real Mary, the real Bible, the real gospel.
Tonight’s study is not just for you, but it’s also for them, too.
Realize that when we come in here on a
Monday night, whenever we study the Bible, it’s not just for yourself, but it’s
to equip you to serve others, to help others, to get a focus on the salvation
for other people. We’re exposing the Marian heresy tonight not so we can sit
tight in our own circle and laugh at Catholics, or shake our heads at them.
They, like ourselves, and like everybody else, need the real living historic
Jesus Christ. Maybe God would have you take some of this information we pick up
tonight to somebody who really needs it. I challenge you to think that thought
every time you sit down to a bible study.
Luke
1:26-38.
“Now
in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named
Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of
David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her,
‘Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among
women!’ But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered
what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to her, ‘Do not be
afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive
in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS. He will be
great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give
Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob
forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.’
“Then
Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I do not know a man?’ And the
angel answered and said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the
power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is
to be born will be called the Son of God. Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative
has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for
her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible.’ Then Mary
said, ‘Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your
word.’ And the angel departed from her.”
Luke’s gospel is a hotbed for
Mary-doctrines. That’s because Luke out of all of the gospels is the one who mentions
Mary the most. More of Mary and of Jesus’ conception, birth and childhood is
spoken of in Luke than in anywhere else in the Bible. Thus Luke is usually the
text that is turned to if a Catholic is pressed for biblical proof for their
Mariology. Mariology of course means “the study of Mary”.
Protestants, on the other hand, have generally
been accused of being “anti-Mary”. Catholics consider the Catholic stance
toward Mary not to be worship, but to be reverence, devotion, veneration and
honor toward the mother of Christ. In contrast, Protestants hardly mention Mary
at all. When was the last sermon you heard on the life of the virgin Mary?
Probably last Christmas. Protestants don’t pray to Mary, invoke Mary’s name,
devote themselves to Mary, name their churches after Mary or do any of these
things toward Mary. But the Protestant position, with its focus on what the
Bible says about Mary, is not
anti-Mary. No way.
Listen to this Catholic prayer of
devotion to Mary: “O Mother of Perpetual Help, thou art the dispenser of all
the goods which God grants to us miserable sinners, and for this reason, has He
made thee so powerful, so rich, and so bountiful, that thou mayest help us in
our misery. Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who
have recourse to thee; come, then, to my help, dearest Mother, for I recommend
myself to thee. In thy hands, I place my eternal salvation and to thee do I
entrust my soul. Count me among thy most devoted servants; take me under thy
protection, and it is enough for me; for, if thou protect me, dear Mother, I
fear nothing; not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of
them; nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell
together; not even from Jesus, my Judge Himself, because, by one prayer from
thee, He will be appeased. But one thing I fear; that, in the hour of
temptation, I may neglect to call on thee, and thus perish miserably. Obtain
for me then the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the
grace always to have recourse to thee, O Mother of Perpetual Help.”
Reformed Baptist Dr. James White said
“I would like to submit that that is
the most anti-Marian thing that I know of… because the true virgin Mary, the
mother of the Lord Jesus Christ would never, ever seek anyone to utter such blasphemous
words to her. She… always directed people only to Jesus Christ. She never would
want someone to entrust their eternal salvation to her. She would never want
anyone to seek her mediation, her intercession, when there is one Mediator
between God and man: the Man Christ Jesus. It is this material that is truly
anti-Mary, because the true Mary is not listening to prayers in heaven. I honestly
feel that the true Mary has no idea that there are millions upon this planet
who seek her mediation, who pray prayers like this in her name, for it would
grieve her to the very depths of her being and I don’t believe that that type
of grief exists for those who have been united with Christ. Mary is in the
presence of Christ but she is absorbed in the worship and prayer of the triune
God not in hearing prayers of people asking for her intercession and trusting
their own souls to her. That is anti-Marian doctrine.”
Could you imagine the real Mary’s
horror if she discovered that people were turning away from devotion to her
Son, the Savior, the incarnate God, and turning in devotion to her instead? For
her sake, I hope she knows nothing about it. I hope she knows nothing of the
various perversions that have arisen over centuries in her name. Catholicism
and the Catholic Mariology is anti-Mary, because it has slandered her by making
her an idol before God.
Here are a few Marian doctrines we’ll
take into consideration tonight. If you’re taking notes, write these down. We shall
see how false these teachings of Mary are in light of what the Scripture
reveals about Mary.
1. Mary’s Immaculate Conception
2. Mary’s Perpetual Virginity
3. Mary’s Assumption into Heaven
4. Mary’s Coronation as Queen
That’s just to name a few. Let me give
a brief explanation of each of them.
The immaculate conception was defined
by Pope Pius IX in 1854 as thus: “in the first instance of her conception, by a
singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus
Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of
original sin.” In other words, Mary was born without a sin-nature, sinless and
without capacity to sin, indeed she is considered to have been immune to sin.
This is theorized to have been necessary since Jesus Christ could not inhabit a
sinful womb or take sinful flesh from his mother.
The Catholic Encyclopedia at
newadvent.org says “No direct or categorical and stringent proof of the dogma
can be brought forward from Scripture.” In other words, the Bible does not
teach the immaculate conception. And you know what? Not only does the Bible not
teach it, but the apostles didn’t teach it, Paul didn’t teach it, the early
church didn’t teach it, and Jesus Christ Himself didn’t teach it. Heck not even
the early church hero St. Augustine believed it! Augustine! How much more
Catholic can you get? But Augustine and even later Thomas Aquinas would write
that they believed Mary was perfect in conduct but not sinless in her
conception. And that’s not the doctrine of immaculate conception!
What Catholic teaching does is grasp
at straws, at shadows, and misreadings, such as Luke 1:28 and take it to say “Hail Mary full of grace” when what we
saw last week was that the word used there, kexaritomene, means “one having
received grace”, not that she is full of grace in herself.
Next, Mary’s perpetual virginity. This
is a little clearer. It is the teaching
that Mary was a virgin at the conception of Christ, a virgin at the birth of
Christ, and that she remained a virgin even and ever after the birth of Christ.
It is the idea that even in the act of giving birth to Jesus that she remained
a virgin, that Jesus passed through her without violating her physical
virginity, as “light passes through glass without harming the glass”. The
Catechism of the Council of Trent took the idea further and said that Mary gave
birth without labor pains, as labor pains were the effect of the Fall, and the
sinless Virgin would not suffer any effects of original sin. So it’s taking the
virgin birth and saying Jesus “beamed” out of her.
Then there’s Mary’s Assumption in
Heaven. This is nothing less than that: an assumption. It is the teaching that
Mary was bodily taken up into heaven without seeing death, along the same lines
as Elijah and Enoch in the Old Testament. Now they’ll tell you the Bible
doesn’t say that Mary died. It certainly doesn’t. But could that possibly be
because Mary hardly figures into the Bible in any significant way after the
birth of Christ. She just sort of fades out as the early church begins and the
last mention of her is in the book of Acts.
Here is what a Catholic writer wrote
of the Assumption: “Regarding the day, year, and manner of Our Lady's death,
nothing certain is known. The earliest known literary reference to the Assumption
is found in the Greek work De Obitu S.
Dominae. Catholic faith, however, has always derived our knowledge of the
mystery from Apostolic Tradition. Epiphanius (d. 403) acknowledged that he knew
nothing definite about it… The belief in the corporeal assumption of Mary is
founded on the apocryphal treatise De
Obitu S. Dominae, bearing the name of St. John, which belongs however to
the fourth or fifth century. It is also found in the book De Transitu Virginis,
falsely ascribed to St. Melito of Sardis, and in a spurious letter attributed
to St. Denis the Areopagite. If we consult genuine writings in the East, it is
mentioned in the sermons of St. Andrew of Crete, St. John Damascene, St.
Modestus of Jerusalem and others. In the West, St. Gregory of Tours (De gloria
mart., I, iv) mentions it first. The sermons of St. Jerome and St. Augustine
for this feast, however, are spurious.”
If you didn’t catch all that, what
they’re saying is that the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary is based on
nothing certain, and that even a guy named Epiphanius who died 400 years after
Christ didn’t know about it, and that it is a doctrine that is founded on
spurious apocryphal writings from the fourth and fifth centuries. How is that
apostolic tradition? How is that a tradition descended down from the apostles,
if nobody knew about it for 400 years and when the doctrine finally appeared,
it appeared in dubious writings that were rejected as heretical?
Then there’s the crème de la crème,
the Coronation of the Virgin. It was a popular subject for depiction in 13th
to 15th century Italian art, but it was unknown in the early church.
The Coronation of the Virgin teaches that Mary is the Queen of Heaven. Pope
Sixtus V said in 1587 that Mary is the “Queen of Prophets, Queen of Apostle,
Queen of Martyrs, Queen of Confessors, Queen of Virgins, Queen of the
Patriarchs, Queen of the Angels, Queen assumed into Heaven, Queen of Peace,
Queen of all Saints”.
So what the church has done through
her long history is layered on fabrication after fabrication, saying first that
Mary is sinless, and that being sinless she remained a perpetual virgin, and
that being a perfect person God caught her up bodily into heaven, and that
being in heaven she was crowned Queen of heaven, and that now she hears your
prayers and intercedes for you. She has steadily been elevated to goddess-hood.
Catholicism has taken this little Jewish virgin and raised her higher than any
simple human being has ever been, placed her at the center of theology. Jesus
is the King of kings. She is the Queen of Heaven. Jesus is the Mediator between
God and man. She is the Mediatrix of all Graces. Jesus was the sinless Lamb of
God. She is immaculately conceived. You see the paralleling to Jesus Himself that
deceptive theologians did when they took a human girl and raised her to the
level of deity.
Of all the shameful acts in the
history of the church, and there are many, the anti-Mary Mariology that
developed are some of the most shameful. There is often the claim made that
Jesus, being a good Jewish boy, obeyed the Ten Commandments by honoring His
mother. But tell me, what is honoring to Mary in making her the center of
attention and not the God and Savior that she wanted attention to go to in her
own lifetime? What is honoring to Mary in placing her as Queen of the Universe?
All of these doctrines dishonor Mary
far more than they honor her memory, because they have taken her, a human
being, and made her like God, the very same temptation that Satan brought to
Eve the mother of mankind, and the very same desire that Satan had in his
heart, to be like the Most High.
But back in our text, we have the full
message that Gabriel brought to Mary. And her response is she was troubled, v.29. The Greek word there conveys
distress, being disturbed or agitated, going back and forth between thoughts
and emotions. This is shocking news for Mary.
v.30,
As with Zacharias, the angel tells Mary “Do not be afraid”, one of the most
often repeated commands in the whole Bible. We human beings are easily spooked.
We’re spooked by changes in politics, society, culture, morality, everything
seems to make us think it’s suddenly the end of the world, and we forget that
the Lord God reigns and says to us “Do not be afraid”.
Look at again at the angel’s words to
Mary: “You have found favor with God.”
Last week I asked you the question,
and I want to make sure you get this down because if you don’t it will affect
your entire Christianity. The question was: Why was Mary highly favored? Let me
extend the question to take this verse into consideration: Why had Mary found
favor with God?
If your answer is “faith” or
“obedience” or “righteousness” than you’re forgetting something: God’s grace.
Grace is defined as “the free, unearned, unmerited favor of God”. If it is unearned,
then you don’t get it because of your obedience. If it is unmerited than you
don’t get it because you’re so righteous. The second you deserve grace, it is no longer grace. The moment you’ve earned
God’s favor, it is no longer the favor of the God of grace. Oh it might be
another little-god you’ve set up in your mind, a theology in which you’ve got a
god who will be impressed by how great, how obedient, how righteous and moral
you are, and will give you due blessings for your “spiritual report card”, but
that’s not the God of the Bible.
Mary was highly favored, kexaritomene, by God not because of Mary
but because of God, not because she was so righteous but because God is so
gracious, not because of who Mary was but because of who God is. Mary is
favored by God just like we are favored by God according to Ephesians 1 not because of us but because of Him. If you don’t get that, then you might be doomed to a
performance-based relationship with God that characterizes your whole
Christianity. God wants to relate to you based on His grace, and not on how
much you can please Him with what you can do, because of course what could we
possibly do that would impress God, if even our righteousness is as filthy
rags?
If you have a performance-based
Christianity you’ll end up in either one of two possibilities: One, the
condescending, self-righteous Pharisee who thinks they’re earned their place in
heaven and who thinks God smiles down on them because of what they’ve done for
God, leading to a miserable, disgusting, others-alienating life, or, Two, the perpetually guilt-ridden,
self-bemoaning sinner who feels ever more and more distant from a God they can
never seem to impress, who they constantly think is out to get them and who
frowns upon their every move.
God doesn’t want to be impressed by
you. He wants you to be impressed by His grace toward you. He doesn’t need you
and there’s nothing you could do to give Him any more than He already has, and
yet, He loves you so powerfully and so graciously that He would give up
everything to save your immortal soul. Mary, like every believer in Christ, is
highly favored not because of herself but because of God’s grace. It is the
very definition of grace that it is unearned and undeserved favor.
This is what Mary has to teach the
Protestant and the Catholic. The Popes, misunderstanding grace, have elevated
Mary to the point that she deserved the favor of God if she was sinless and
perfect. But in making her immaculate, they destroyed the meaning of grace.
Don’t destroy grace, ladies and gentlemen, by thinking that you earn God’s
favor. You don’t. God highly favors you because of His grace and not because of
who you and I are. We are only wretched sinners who can cast ourselves upon His
grace alone.
v.31,
the name “Jesus” is one of the most famous names in human history, and rightly
so: not only has Jesus of Nazareth had more effect upon humanity than any other
person who ever lived, but He was the only person to be God and man at the same
time, divine and human simultaneously, something the world has never seen.
We know His name, but what does “Jesus”
mean? We learned what the title “Christ” meant several weeks back: the Anointed
One, or the Chosen One in our modern terms. But what does the name “Jesus”
mean?
Well the English variation “Jesus”
comes from the Latin “Iesus”. The Greek form is also “Iesous”, but Jesus
Himself bore the Hebrew name Yeshua, a variant of an older name Yehoshua, or
Joshua. At the time of Christ, Yeshua was a popular name. Yeshua means “Yahweh
is salvation”. Yahweh, the LORD, or Jehovah, the Old Testament name of God
formed a part of Jesus’ own name and it’s interesting to me that His name was
“the LORD is salvation” not “the LORD brings
salvation” or “the LORD gives
salvation”.
Jesus came to earth, born of a virgin,
in order to provide salvation through Himself, through His own life. He was to
become the means of salvation. Salvation comes through faith in Christ Jesus,
Yeshua the Anointed One. He is
salvation.
Note next that the angel communicates
to Mary the miracle of the virgin conception. And that is all the angel
communicates to her.
v.31,
“You will conceive in your womb and bring
forth a Son…”
This might come as a shocking
realization but can you prove the words “virgin birth” from Scripture? Or does
all the Bible say have only to do with a “virgin conception”? Where does the
Bible say that Mary remained a virgin at the birth of Christ, through the birth
of Christ and after the birth of Christ? If that’s what you thought the “virgin
birth” means, then you’re biblically mistaken, right alongside several groups
in Christendom that believe that. That’s not what the virgin birth means, and
in fact, “virgin birth” may then be a less useful term than “virgin
conception”.
“Moses!” you may say, “that’s just
semantics!” And it is, in a way. But while we don’t want to just quip over mere
words, we recognize that words carry meaning, and that meaning can be
incredibly important in affecting a person’s theology, philosophy and behavior.
What you believe about God and the things of God will affect the way you think
about the world and the things of the world which will in turn affect the way
you live and the things you choose to do.
Look then at the phrase “virgin
conception”. That’s the biblical phrase. Isaiah
7:14, “Behold, the virgin shall
conceive and bear a Son…” The concept of Mary’s virginity is linked to the
conception of Christ, not necessarily to the birth of Christ. It seems to me
that the idea that Mary remained a virgin during the birth of Christ is
something you can’t really find in Scripture, and that adopting the idea can lead to the definitely unbiblical
concepts of Mary’s perpetual virginity or of Jesus Christ “beaming” out of her
womb painlessly like a ray of light.
So if we are taking Scripture as our
ultimate authority for what we should believe, than virgin-conception is the
biblical truth, and the idea of the virgin birth meaning that she ever remained
a virgin before, during and after Christ’s birth is not to be found. So you can
cross Mary’s perpetual virginity off your list.
v.32-33,
takes us back to Christ. Let’s not forget ourselves that Jesus Christ is in
focus here. Mary was not at the heart of Gabriel’s message, but it was about
Jesus the Savior that the angel came to tell her about.
This verse gave Mary a hint about what
kind of child this would be. He would be THE Child Israel was waiting for. Any
good 1st century Jew who knew their Torah would understand the
messianic nature of Gabriel’s language here. Examine the contemporary writings
surrounding that 1st century land, examine the Septuagint, the
Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the works of Philo
and Josephus, the Targum, the writings of the rabbis and you’ll find that there
was intense anticipation regarding the coming of the Messiah. One website I
found listed 352 references to the Messiah in rabbinical writings on the Old
Testament. You could say that the Messiah was indeed center-stage theology.
At the time of Christ, this
anticipation could take several different forms depending on the school of
thought or group, but the Messiah was generally thought of as the symbol and
agent of the deliverance of Israel, a descendant of David. Next week, we’ll see
how Mary herself was far from ignorant about the Old Testament. Her song down
in v.46 makes numerous Old Testament
references.
All that to say that she would have
known that this Child being promised to her was not only miraculous but also
messianic. This was to be the Messiah, born of a woman, and not just any woman,
but you, Mary. Imagine the thrill of those words! Imagine hearing that the
child she would bear would sit on the throne of David, would fulfill the
promises of God to that great king and that His kingdom would have no end. A
descendant of David would come to sit on David’s throne, but He would be a
descendant of this little virgin girl, Mary.
v.34,
you will have noticed that Mary was not struck mute like Zacharias. Mary’s
questioning of the angel is not met with the same reaction as in the case of
Zacharias. And that is evidently because, as we know, Zacharias asked “How
shall I know this?” in terms of unbelief and doubt, since he and his wife were
very old. But in the case of Mary, she asks “How can this be?” in terms of
technicality.
She’s trying to put two and two
together in her mind. She knows, just like any sane human being, what is
required in order to make a baby. She knew she hadn’t known a man, which is a
polite English-Bible way of saying that she had not yet had any sexual activity
at all. She was a virgin. But since that’s the case, then she’s asking how else this would happen, if not through
the normal means of human reproduction. It’s as if Zachariah’s question was a
question of doubt, while Mary’s question was a question of curiosity.
So unlike Zacharias, Mary apparently
didn’t commit the sin of unbelief here. Now that takes us back to the idea of
the Immaculate Conception. Was Mary indeed sin-less, without a sin nature, free
and immune to original sin? Catholic apologists have issued the challenge often
“You can shut down the teaching of the Immaculate Conception by doing one
thing: Find one verse in the Bible that says Mary sinned…”
Think about that for a moment. Can you
think of any record in Scripture of Mary committing a sin. If you can, then
throw the Immaculate Conception out the window.
Turn over to Luke 2:-45-50. You remember the story. This is during Jesus’
childhood. He and His parents went up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of
Passover and when the festivities were over, His family left the city to return
home. On the way home, they realized that they had forgot Jesus behind! And no,
Mary’s sin is not stranding God at the lost-and-found booth. But check out
these verses:
“So
when they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking Him. Now so it
was that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of
the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. And all who
heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers. So when they saw
Him, they were amazed; and His mother said to Him, ‘Son, why have You done this
to us? Look, Your father and I have sought You anxiously.’ And He said to them,
‘Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s
business?’”
Interesting that Mary His mother is
vocal here, not Joseph. And let me ask you: do you think it is a sin to
complain against God, to complain to God, to reproach and scold God and show
how disappointed you are? This is Mary, however mistakenly, however short of
patience she is, rebuking God the Son, something which the disciple Peter would
later do to the adult Christ and have said to his face “Get behind me, Satan!”
Jude
16 identifies grumbling and complaining as a sin. Paul in I Corinthians 10:10 references the
children of Israel complaining against God in the desert and being destroyed
for it. Mary’s complaining question “Why have you treated us like this? Why
have you done this to us?” could quite possibly be a sin of Mary, a complaint
to the face of God, something which the Bible does not take lightly. Did Mary
forget Gabriel’s words to her that this Child would be incredibly unique, when
here she is complaining to Him for the mistake she made in leaving Him behind
in the first place?
In Mary’s song of praise back in Luke 1, Mary the mother of God says
this “My soul magnifies the Lord…”
She wasn’t magnifying the Lord there at the temple with twelve year old Jesus.
She was scolding Him. She also sang: “And
my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.”
Let me ask you: What of person needs a
Savior? Somebody who needs saving, like, for example, a sinner. What would Mary
need a Savior for if she was not a sinner? Her own words indicate that she
would need salvation provided through her own Son just like everybody else.
Because consider, if God ignored His
holiness and justice and merely “saved” Mary through the immaculate conception
and she was born free from sin, then the cross was useless to Mary. And if God
could do that for a little virgin girl, why couldn’t He do that for everyone?
If God could so preserve Mary from sin in the fullness of His grace, then why
couldn’t He do that for every potential sinner? Why go through the horrible
ordeal of the torturous death of crucifixion if all He had to do was wave the
magical incantation of His grace over every unborn child and immaculately
conceive them?
Listen: if the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception is true, then the cross is worthless. Not only does
Catholic Mariology destroy the concept of grace, but it ends up destroying the
very cross itself on which the Prince of Glory died. He would not have to die
if all He could do the immaculate
conception and ensure it for everybody. St. Bernard, not the dog but the monk,
once said of the immaculate conception that it is “contrary to tradition and
derogatory to the dignity of Christ, the only sinless being.” I find it
fascinating that church history is sprinkled with heroes here and there who did
their best to stand up against the church herself when she erred. The
immaculate conception is indeed derogatory to Christ, it ruins the cross, it
slanders Calvary, it makes the atonement of Christ a hyperbolic cure and a
waste of God’s time and life, if indeed He could just magically preserve human
beings free from sin at any time.
*That’s about as far as we’re getting
tonight. We’ve knocked out the perpetual virginity of Mary and the immaculate
conception in just a few verses. It’s almost as if the people who invented
these doctrines never read the Bible for themselves.
Last week, and with this I’ll close,
one of you asked an excellent question: “How did they come up with these
doctrines?” How?
The answer is they came up with these
doctrines without the Bible. This is what happens whenever you leave the
Scripture as your rule of faith and practice, whenever you substitute feelings
or emotions or hearsay or tradition or the teachings of the church herself over the Bible itself. This is what
happens to a group of Christians who may have started out strong, but who leave
the Bible behind: you end up with the widest array of unbiblical heresy,
whether it’s the vast heresy of Catholic dogma, or the heresies of the Mormons,
Jehovah’s Witnesses, or any of the other numerous “Christian” cults in
existence today.
This is what happens when you abandon
Sola Scriptura. Remember that? It means Scripture Alone as your ultimate
authority for faith. Not the church. Not your friends, parents or pastor nor
even yourself. Scripture Alone.
In every single debate I listened to
in the past few weeks to prepare for this study, the debates between
Protestants and Catholics on Mariology, what it always boiled down to in every
single debate was Protestants stuck to Scripture Alone and Catholics supplement
Scripture with Tradition and with the teaching of the Church. Thus Mariology
became a Traditional Teaching that the Church supposedly always taught, even
though we’ve noted several men tonight who did not hold to this so-called
tradition that can be apparently traced back to the apostles. Nuh uh. St.
Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bernard all disbelieved the immaculate
conception.
But let this be a stark warning to you
and I. There’s hardly anything sadder and more shameful than church history. But
you know what? Amid the power struggles, the inclusion of false teaching, the
conversions by force, the greed, the corruption, the Crusades and the
Inquisition, there’s a lot to be learned. There’s much to be learned from our
spiritual ancestors, from the many, many, many mistakes they made.
This is one of them: they abandoned
the Scripture and began to teach as doctrines the traditions of men. Do you
want to end up in a cult? Do you want to end up in a dead church? Do you want
to end up shamed by the heathen who is living more righteously than you? Do you
want to end up in a bitter religion that has nothing for the poor, nothing for
the world and nothing for you? Do you want to alienate your closest allies? Do
you want to be deceived? Than abandon your Bibles, let them rot and waste and
rust away, let the pages become stale and brittle, let the words become
aggravating and vexing and foreign to your soul, let your Bible sit on your
desk or in your car or bedroom collecting dust and you run the risk of failing
like every Christian heretic through the centuries has failed, because first
they forsook the Bible and then they found that they forsook orthodoxy, correct
doctrine, biblical teaching and ended up believing the weirdest, strangest and
most un-Christian teachings ever, teachings which run the risk of barring you
from heaven.
How much does it matter that you read
this Book of books? It matters tremendously. Just ask church history.
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