ALL in caps for emphasis. Only Jesus is God come in the flesh. ALL have sinned includes Mary His mother. ____________________________________________________________
Rom 3:23 For ALL have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Rom 3:24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
Rom 3:25 Whom God hath set forth [to be] a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
____________________________________________________________
Mary did not pass down sin to Jesus because sin is passed down through man not woman. The Bible clearly says that sinned came down the generations through Adam, not Eve, even though it was Eve that first sinned. The name Eve means mother of all living.
____________________________________________________________ 1Cr 15:21 For since by man [came] death, by man [came] also the resurrection of the dead.
1Cr 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Very good post, but do note the entirety of Romans 3
[11]There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. [12] All have turned out of the way; they are become unprofitable together: there is none that doth good, there is not so much as one. [13] Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have dealt deceitfully. The venom of asps is under their lips. [14] Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: [15] Their feet swift to shed blood:
[16] Destruction and misery in their ways: [17] And the way of peace they have not known: [18] There is no fear of God before their eyes. [19] Now we know, that what things soever the law speaketh, it speaketh to them that are in the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be made subject to God. [20] Because by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified before him. For by the law is the knowledge of sin.
[21] But now without the law the justice of God is made manifest, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. [22] Even the justice of God, by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that believe in him: for there is no distinction: [23] For all have sinned, and do need the glory of God
Paul’s comment seems to have one of two meanings. It might be that it refers not to absolutely everyone, but just to the mass of mankind (which means young children and other special cases, like Jesus and Mary, would be excluded without having to be singled out). If not that, then it would mean that everyone, without exception, is subject to original sin, which is true for a young child, for the unborn, even for Mary—but she, though due to be subject to it, was preserved by God from it and its stain.
God created Adam, Eve, and the angels without sin, but none were equal to God. Most of the angels never sinned, and all souls in heaven are without sin. This does not detract from the glory of God, but manifests it by the work he has done in sanctifying his creation. Sinning does not make one human. On the contrary, it is when man is without sin that he is most fully what God intends him to be.
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.
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.
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.
Note also John 1:5-6
There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zachary, of the course of Abia; and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name Elizabeth.
And they were both just before God, walking in all the commandments and justifications of the Lord without blame.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.
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.
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.
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.