She became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed on her as pass man’s understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among which she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in heaven, and such a Child . . . Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God . . . None can say of her nor announce to her greater things, even though he had as many tongues as the earth possesses flowers and blades of grass: the sky, stars; and the sea, grains of sand. It needs to be pondered in the heart what it means to be the Mother of God.
(Commentary on the Magnificat, 1521; in Luther’s Works, Pelikan et al, vol. 21, 326)
Evangelicals treat her as if she were the mother of Samuel or of John the Baptist.But that reduces her son to the level of a Prophet, does it not? No accident that the cult of Mary is a response to elevation of Jesus to deity, but as the god-man, not an angel in disguise. Which is why after the Council of Nicaea, they began dedicating churches to the Virgin.