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Just for giggles I'll list some of MANY verses that CLEARLY indicate, Mary was just another sinner.

Was Mary Sinless?

by Dr. Ken Matto

One of the most common doctrines taught by the Roman Catholic Church is the tenet of the perpetual sinless state of Mary. In 1854 the Immaculate Conception of Mary was proclaimed and since then it has been taught that she was without sin. Now with any teaching of any church whether it be Catholic or Protestant, it must be held up to the scrutiny of Scripture. The Bible is the final authority and if we are to come to truth, we must consistently compare what is being taught to see if it harmonizes with Scripture and if it doesn’t, then we are refute it and disbelieve it. God is the one who establishes truth and not a church, no matter how long they have been established on earth. Length of time is not a criteria for truth. Judaism has been around since the 5th Century BC which would place it about 800 years older than the Roman church and still denies that the Lord Jesus Christ is both God and Messiah. Let us attend to the words of Holy Scripture to test the teaching of the sinless state or perfection of Mary.

Was Mary Sinless?

When we look at the genealogy of Christ in Luke 3, which is the genealogy from Mary’s side, we see that God takes Mary’s genealogy all the way back to Adam which means she, like every human being, was a descendant of Adam which carries the sinful Adamic nature. Does the Bible bear this out? Let us see how many (pre-salvific) righteous people there are in the world.

(Rom 3:23 KJV) For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

("ALL" INCLUDES MARY)

Notice the term which God uses in this verse, "all have sinned." God is not saying some or a few or even the majority, He is definite in His usage of "ALL." This means that Mary was part of that "all."

Below in 1 John 3:4 we see the biblical definition of sin which is the transgression of God’s law. There is no division of sin into either venial or mortal classifications but only one class and that is sin.

(James 2:10 KJV) For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. Since Mary was part of the human race at that time, she was guilty of sin as every other human being was.

(1 John 3:4 KJV) Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.

Since Mary was born before Jesus (obviously) we should also look for confirmation of the fact of universal sin and how everyone is affected by it, no matter who we are.

(1 Ki 8:46 KJV) If they sin against thee, (for there is no man that sinneth not,) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captives unto the land of the enemy, far or near;

Here we see this verse included in a passage of Scripture detailing Solomon’s dedication of the temple which puts this verse about 900 years before Mary’s birth. God is also detailing the fact that there is not one who does not sin.

(Psa 14:1-3 KJV) The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. {2} The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. {3} They are ALL gone aside, they are ALL together become filthy: there is NONE that doeth good, no, not one.

See also Psalm 53:1-3

Here we have Psalm 14 which is another OT proof that God’s assessment of all humans is the same, that there is none that does any good or no one which does not sin. The Bible has a uniformity on this matter doesn’t it?

(Psa 58:3-4 KJV) The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. {4} Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;

Here is a verse which details when human beings start to sin. It informs us that we begin to sin as soon as we are born. This means that Mary did not have an immaculate conception, rather, she was subject to the SAME sinful nature everyone else was and that right from the womb.

(Rom 3:10-20 KJV) As it is written, There is NONE righteous, no, not one:

{11} There is NONE that understandeth, there is NONE that seeketh after God.
{12} They are ALL gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
{13} Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
{14} Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
{15} Their feet are swift to shed blood:
{16} Destruction and misery are in their ways:
{17} And the way of peace have they not known:
{18} There is no fear of God before their eyes.
{19} Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
{20} Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

(Mary is PART of this group UNLESS she is specifically excluded - which is NOT the situation)

Here is probably the most succinct description of the entire pre-salvific human being. God takes the quotes from Psalm 14 & 53 and brings it into the New Testament because He wants to show that just because we live on the New Testament side of the cross does not mean we are exempt from sin and its catastrophic effects. God re-emphasizes the fact of universal sin but also includes how heinous that sins makes a person in His sight and why salvation is needed so badly. People who think they are good in God’s sight are brought back to reality when they read this revealing passage. Mary too was part of this description of the human race since she was part of the human race.

(Gal 3:22 KJV) But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.

We will take this verse as our final verse in this section showing that the entire human race was plunged into sin because of Adam’s sin. This verse does not reveal any exceptions to the universality of sin.

Mary Needed A Savior!

(Luke 1:47 KJV) And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

(Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm straight from the horses mouth, as to speak)

Here is an extremely revealing verse taken from her magnificat. If Mary was born without sin, then she would have been able to fulfill the demands of God’s holy law without the benefit of a substitutionary atonement. In essence, she would have no sin and therefore would be perfect before God. That is not what the Scriptures are teaching, they are telling us that Mary needed a Savior which means she was under the curse of sin with the rest of the world and had to be atoned for before she could even consider going to Heaven, never mind, carry the Lord Jesus from a Holy Spirit conception.

Mary is not a mediatrix!

(1 Tim 2:5 KJV) For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;

(NOT Mary; NOT dead believers; NOT trinkets and statues: NOT mere fallible mortals; NOT anyone else but Christ is the mediater.)

Those in the Roman Catholic Church teach that Mary is a mediator between Jesus and us. This teaching is erroneous because the Bible teaches that Jesus is the ONLY mediator between God and man. The Bible does not teach anywhere that the redeemed of God in Heaven have any intercessory authority or ministry for those still remaining on earth.

Mary Was not a Perpetual Virgin!

(Mark 6:1-3 KJV) And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him.
{2} And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands?
{3} Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.

(Mat 13:54-56 KJV) And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?
{55} Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? {56} And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?

Another teaching which the Roman Church teaches is that Mary remained a perpetual virgin. The Bible refutes this in the two passages which I have listed here. The Bible teaches that Jesus had brothers and sisters, and if Mary was the mother of Jesus, then these men and women named in these Scriptures were from the same woman, namely Mary. Notice how God specifically names Mary as their mother. The perpetual virginity of Mary is a fallacy which does not exist in history nor the Bible. If someone chooses to believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary, they must do so in opposition of Scripture, a dangerous place to be.

http://www.scionofzion.com/mary.htm

Okay, now you can go about your usual Bible bashing!

Clearly, the Bible, God's Word does not agree with the fallible, mortal you chose to follow. I know, let's twist things and take things out of context to suit the words of another fallible mortal.

Okay time to start the Bible bashing and Protestant bashing!

Okay time to start the Bible bashing and Protestant bashing!

Nonsense ... I don't bash the Bible and only offer clarification to Protestant misunderstandings. Like our Protestant brethren, Catholics embrace Holy Scripture.

In 1854 the Immaculate Conception of Mary was proclaimed and since then it has been taught that she was without sin.

There is biblical support for the Church’s teaching on the Immaculate Conception. One must understand what the Church means (and doesn’t mean) by the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Pope Pius IX, in his constitution Ineffabilis Deus (issued December 8, 1854), taught that Mary, "from 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." The doctrine includes the assertion that Mary was perpetually free from all actual sin (willful disobedience of God, either venial or mortal).

You and several others have pointed to Luke 1:47, Romans 3:10-12 and Romans 5:12. These verses seem to rule out any possibility that Mary was sinless.

The Immaculate Conception emphasizes four truths: (1) Mary did need a savior; (2) her savior was Jesus Christ; (3) Mary’s salvation was accomplished by Jesus through his work on the Cross; and (4) Mary was saved from sin, but in a different and more glorious way than the rest of us are. Let’s consider the first and easiest of the three objections.

The notion that God is the only being without sin is quite false--and even Protestants think so. Adam and Eve, before the fall, were free from sin, and they weren’t gods, the serpent’s assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. (One must remember that Mary was not the first immaculate human being, even if she was the first to be conceived immaculately.)

The angels in heaven are not gods, but they were created sinless and have remained so ever since. The saints in heaven are not gods, although each of them is now completely sinless (Rev. 14:5; 21:27).

The second and third arguments are related. Mary needed Jesus as her savior. His death on the Cross saved her, as it saves us, but its saving effects were applied to her (unlike to us) at the moment of her conception. (Keep in mind that the Crucifixion is an eternal event and that the appropriation of salvation through Christ’s death isn’t impeded by time or space.)

Medieval theologians developed an analogy to explain how and why Mary needed Jesus as her savior. A man (each of us) is walking along a forest path, unaware of a large pit a few paces directly ahead of him. He falls headlong into the pit and is immersed in the mud (original sin) it contains. He cries out for help, and his rescuer (the Lord Jesus) lowers a rope down to him and hauls him back up to safety. The man says to his rescuer, "Thank you for saving me," recalling the words of the psalmist: The Lord "stooped toward me and heard my cry. He drew me out of the pit of destruction, out of the mud of the swamp; he set my feet upon a crag" (Psalm 40:2-4).

A woman (Mary), approaches the same pit, but as she began to fall into the pit her rescuer reaches out and stops her from falling in. She cries out, "Thank you for saving me" (Luke 1:47). Like this woman, Mary was no less "saved" than any other human being has been saved. She was just saved anticipatorily, before contracting original sin. Each of us is permitted to become dirtied with original sin, but she was not. God hates sin, so this was a far better way.

Paul’s statements in Romans chapters 3 and 5 (no one is righteous; no one seeks God; no one does good; all have sinned) should not be taken in a crassly literal and universal sense--if they are, irreconcilable contradictions will arise. Consider Luke 1:6. Common sense tells us whole groups of people are exempt from Paul’s statement that "all have sinned." Aborted infants cannot sin, nor can young children or severely retarded people. But Paul didn’t mention such obvious exceptions. He was writing to adults in our state of life.

If certain groups are exempt from the "all have sinned" rubric, then these verses can’t be used to argue against Mary’s Immaculate Conception, since hers would be an exceptional case too, one not needing mention given the purpose of Paul’s discussion and his intended audience.

Now let’s consider what the Bible has to say in favor of the Catholic position. It’s important to recognize that neither the words "Immaculate Conception" nor the precise formula adopted by the Church to enunciate this truth are found in the Bible. This doesn’t mean the doctrine isn’t biblical, only that the truth of the Immaculate Conception, like the truths of the Trinity and Jesus’ hypostatic union (that Jesus was incarnated as God and man, possessing completely and simultaneously two natures, divine and human, in one divine person), is mentioned either in other words or only indirectly.

Look first at two passages in Luke 1. In verse 28, the angel Gabriel greets Mary as "kecharitomene" ("full of grace" or "highly favored"). This is a recognition of her sinless state. In verse 42 Elizabeth greets Mary as "blessed among women." The original import of this phrase is lost in English translation. Since neither the Hebrew nor Aramaic languages have superlatives (best, highest, tallest, holiest), a speaker of those languages would have say, "You are tall among men" or "You are wealthy among men" to mean "You are the tallest" or "You are the wealthiest." Elizabeth’s words mean Mary was the holiest of all women.

The Church understands Mary to be the fulfillment of three Old Testament types: the cosmos, Eve, and the ark of the covenant. A type is a person, event, or thing in the Old Testament which foreshadows or symbolizes some future reality God brings to pass. (See these verses for Old Testament types fulfilled in the New Testament: Col. 2:17, Heb. 1:1, 9:9, 9:24, 10:1; 1 Cor. 15:45-49; Gal. 4:24-25.)

Some specific examples of types: Adam was a type of Christ (Rom. 5:14); Noah’s Ark and the Flood were types of the Church and baptism (1 Peter 3:19-21); Moses, who delivered Israel from the bondage of slavery in Egypt, was a type of Christ, who saves us from the bondage of slavery to sin and death; circumcision foreshadowed baptism; the slain passover lamb in Exodus 12: 21-28 was a symbol of Jesus, the Lamb of God, being slain on the Cross to save sinners. The important thing to understand about a type is that its fulfillment is always more glorious, more profound, more "real" than the type itself.

Mary’s Immaculate Conception is foreshadowed in Genesis 1, where God creates the universe in an immaculate state, free from any blemish or stain of sin or imperfection. This is borne out by the repeated mention in Genesis 1 of God beholding his creations and saying they were "very good." Out of pristine matter the Lord created Adam, the first immaculately created human being, forming him from the "womb" of the Earth. The immaculate elements from which the first Adam received his substance foreshadowed the immaculate mother from whom the second Adam (Romans 5:14) took his human substance.

The second foreshadowing of Mary is Eve, the physical mother of our race, just as Mary is our spiritual mother through our membership in the Body of Christ (Rev. 12:17). What Eve spoiled through disobedience and lack of faith (Genesis 3), Mary set aright through faith and obedience (Luke 1:38).

We see a crucial statement in Genesis 3:15: "I will put enmity between you [Satan] and the woman, between your seed and her seed; he will crush your head, and you will strike at his heel." This passage is especially significant in that it refers to the "seed of the woman," a singular usage. The Bible, following normal biology, otherwise only refers to the seed of the man, the seed of the father, but never to the seed of the woman. Who is the woman mentioned here? The only possibility is Mary, the only woman to give birth to a child without the aid of a human father, a fact prophesied in Isaiah 7:14.

If Mary were not completely sinless this prophesy becomes untenable. Why is that? The passage points to Mary’s Immaculate Conception because it mentions a complete enmity between the woman and Satan. Such an enmity would have been impossible if Mary were tainted by sin, original or actual (see 2 Corinthians 6:14). This line of thinking rules out Eve as the woman, since she clearly was under the influence of Satan in Genesis 3.

The third and most compelling type of Mary’s Immaculate Conception is the ark of the covenant. In Exodus 20 Moses is given the Ten Commandments. In chapters 25 through 30 the Lord gives Moses a detailed plan for the construction of the ark, the special container which would carry the Commandments. The surprising thing is that five chapters later, staring in chapter 35 and continuing to chapter 40, Moses repeats word for word each of the details of the ark’s construction.

Why? It was a way of emphasizing how crucial it was for the Lord’s exact specifications to be met (Ex. 25:9, 39:42-43). God wanted the ark to be as perfect and unblemished as humanly possible so it would be worthy of the honor of bearing the written Word of God. How much more so would God want Mary, the ark of the new covenant, to be perfect and unblemished since she would carry within her womb the Word of God in flesh.

When the ark was completed, "the cloud covered the meeting tent and the glory of the Lord filled the dwelling. Moses could not enter the meeting tent, because the cloud settled down upon it and the glory of the Lord filled the dwelling" (Ex. 40:34-38). Compare this with the words of Gabriel to Mary in Luke 1:35.

There’s another striking foreshadowing of Mary as the new ark of the covenant in 2 Samuel 6. The Israelites had lost the ark in a battle with their enemies, the Philistines, and had recently recaptured it. King David sees the ark being brought to him and, in his joy and awe, says "Who am I that the ark of the Lord should come to me?" (1 Sam. 6:9).

Compare this with Elizabeth’s nearly identical words in Luke 1:43. Just as David leapt for joy before the ark when it was brought into Jerusalem (2 Sam. 6:14-16), so John the Baptist leapt for joy in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary, the ark of the new covenant, came into her presence (Luke 1:44). John’s leap was for precisely the same reason as David’s--not primarily because of the ark itself, but because of what the ark contained, the Word of God.

Another parallel may be found in 2 Samuel 6:10-12 where we read that David ordered the ark diverted up into the hill country of Judea to remain with the household of Obededom for three months. This parallels the three-month visit Mary made at Elizabeth’s home in the hill country of Judea (Luke 1:39-45, 65). While the ark remained with Obededom it "blessed his household." This is an Old Testament way of saying the fertility of women, crops, and livestock was increased. Notice that God worked this same miracle for Elizabeth and Zachariah in their old age as a prelude to the greater miracle he would work in Mary.

The Mary/ark imagery appears again in Revelation 11:19 and 12:1-17, where she is called the mother of all "those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus" (verse 17). The ark symbolism found in Luke 1 and Revelation 11 and 12 was not lost on the early Christians. They could see the parallels between the Old Testament’s description of the ark and the New Testament’s discussion of Mary’s role.

Granted, none of these verses "proves" Mary’s Immaculate Conception, but they all point to it. After all, the Bible nowhere says Mary committed any sin or languished under original sin. As far as explicit statements are concerned, the Bible is silent on most of the issue, yet all the biblical evidence supports the Catholic teaching.

A last thought. If you could have created your own mother, wouldn’t you have made her the most beautiful, virtuous, perfect woman possible? Jesus, being God, did create his own mother (Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2), and he did just that--he created her immaculate and, in his mercy and generosity, kept her that way.
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