Posted on 07/29/2013 7:55:48 AM PDT by Gamecock
Question:
A non-Christian asked if we teach that Jesus was sinless because he did not have a human father, wasn't his human mother, Mary, sinful? Why wasn't her sin passed on to her son, Jesus?
Answer:
You ask an important question about the sinlessness and perfection of Jesus Christ.
As you suggest, if there is any way in which Christ partakes of sin, he is disqualified from being the only redeemer of God’s elect (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 21). The testimony of Scripture about this is clear. Hebrews says that Christ was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sinning (Heb. 4:15). Christ challenged his adversaries to prove that he had sinned and they could not (John 8:46). As the apostle Paul put it, “For our sake he made him [Christ] to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21, cf. 1 Pet. 2:22, 1 John 3:5). He is a high priest unlike any other who is “holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens” (Heb. 7:26). His title as the Lamb of God (John 1:29) also draws our attention to his innocence.
The early church thought deeply about this as it formulated clear statements about Jesus Christ having two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, yet being one person. Christ unites in himself uniquely and in an unrepeatable way, this union (called the hypostatic union) of the human and the divine. This is the mystery of the Incarnation that the creeds of the church confess.
The way in which God answers your question is in the mystery of the virgin birth. The Scriptures begin from, what one theologian terms, “above” (Donald Macleod). John 1 or Philippians 2 show this movement from the eternal Son of God to the incarnate Son of God. This is how the Westminster Shorter Catechism summarizes it:
Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin. (Q. 22)
As Matthew described it, Mary was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit (1:18), and then the angel explained it to Joseph: “that which is conceived in her [Mary] is from the Holy Spirit” (1:20). The explanation to Mary herself, in response to her “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34), leaves any human agency out of the incarnation in the normal way of conception, for the angel tells Mary, “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” (Luke 1:35). Without further description of how this would occur, the Bible testifies that the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary (the same idea as the cloud which overshadowed the Mount of Transfiguration) in such a way that she indeed became the bearer of the Holy One of God (Gal. 4:4); and her offspring, Jesus Christ, remained without sin. God does not specify in greater detail than this how the conception of Jesus by-passed Mary’s own sinfulness to preserve Christ’s sinlessness, but the rest of Scripture, as I indicated above, affirms that Christ did not inherit our sin nature. He came to be the Second Adam (Rom. 5) who could forgive sins because he himself was both the One offended and himself sinless.
The glory of the grace found in Jesus Christ is that though he was without sin, yet he had pity upon sinners so as to die in their place while we were enemies, ungodly, and sinful (Rom. 5:6, 8, 10). We need a Savior who is fully human to bear patiently with us, yet is able to atone for our sin as the final and perfect sacrifice. The sinlessness of Christ makes a passage like Isaiah 53:9–11 so marvelous in that Christ had no deceit in his mouth and by his death he made many to be accounted righteous.
I hope this is of some help.
The scriptures repeatedly speak of the sins/iniquities of the father being passed on to the children, but I don’t remember reading that the sins/iniquities of the mother being passed on. Paul says Eve was deceived but Adam sinned.
2Cr 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
Rom 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
The idea of Immaculate Conception (of Mary) is non-Biblical and in conflict with the Scriptures (All have sinned and come short . . ). IF God could make Mary sinless in her birth - why not everyone else? Why did Jesus have to come to die for our sins IF God could make us all sinless at birth? The answer is that He cannot. He cannot and be true to His Way and Laws. We have sinned (through Adam)and that requires a blood sacrifice from an unblemished Lamb. The Mary adoration from “Brand X” is also un-Bilical and is a diversion from Jesus.
For those who believe no explanation is necessary. For those who don’t believe no explanation is possible. I believe God is the second person of the God Trinity and his mother was without sin.
So .. Mary’s sins were “spiritual” - So were the sins of every other human being on the earth. Adam and Eve - after eating of the apple - DIED SPIRITUALLY. Therefore, Mary was not sinless (because no human born after the fall of Adam and Eve could be sinless) - it’s that simple.
Mary was pure in the sense that she had never been with a man .. because if she had, no blood would have been shed (by way of the breaking of the hyman). That act, of a husband and wife, is considered a covenant of marriage. Mary’s virginity was important for that reason; God was making a covenant with humanity .. plus, Mary not only believed in God, she loved and trusted Him.
I put these sorts of questions in my basket of questions I hope to ask God one day. I have a hard enough time working on not sinning so much myself that I try to spend little or no time dealing with the sins of others...
As was St. Anne born sinless, to carry the sinless Mary. And Anne’s mother was ALSO sinless, to carry Anne’s sinlessness, as was HER mother before her, and her mother before her, and on down the line to the very beginning, when all of Mary’s female ancestors were born without sin to carry each of their successive sinless mothers, to carry THEIR successive sinless mothers, until Mary.
They didn’t even need Jesus’ redemption, since only SOME of the human race was born sinless!
That’s where that foolish logic leads.
Ed
The Church teaches explicitly that Mary’s sinlessness is in view of the merits of Christ, not apart from it, so your objection falls apart.
The short and true answer is that Mary was selected to be the mother of God before she was born. Her mother St. Anne was blessed by the Holy Spirit in order than the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary be immaculate. Hence the immaculate conception.
Unfortunately many Catholics believe that the immaculate conception has to do with the birth of Jesus Christ.
The physical body (one’s members/the flesh) is not made sinless the moment one receives God’s gift of salvation through Christ. The believer is still capable of sin. Sin is the result of the “old nature” and those sins come about by the actions of the flesh (the physical/mental/emotional state of the believer). Paul, in Romans 7 bewails this fact, “Who can deliver me from the body of this death?”
The one who accepts Christ as Savior is delivered from the penalty of sin (”There is, therefore, no condemnation to them that believe...”, from the power of sin (it can no longer render the believer [eternally] dead), but we are not delivered from the presence of sin (our full salvation) until the day we are “ever with the Lord” in eternity.
Christ, and Christ alone, is the only One ever referred to in Scripture as being “full of grace [and truth]” - John 1:14.
bump for later digestion
The Bible says Jesus was “like us in every way” yet was without sin. So, the fact that Jesus could sin is indisputable; he wasn’t guilty of Mary’s sin because while Mary certainly passed on her human/sinful nature to Jesus HE NEVER OBEYED IT. He was without sin. Therefore no judgement nor guilt.
I really don’t care what errors your church teaches. It is in conflict with Scripture which is the Word of God.
Really? Okay, cite me paragraph and verse of either or both Old and New Testaments (Imprimatur or protestant or Hebrew canonical) prophecy or direct statement that supports this position.
chirp chirp chirp....
“Hail Mary,(Hello, Mary) “Full of grace” (grace- a free gift), “Blessed among women” (Blessed-favored, by one bestowing a benefit on a beneficiary) certainly does not mean w/o sin, natural or purposeful in any sense of the meaning of the greek words.
In fact, there is no Biblical support for such a statement.
If Mary indeed was sinless, then she is not in need of a Savior, she is like God. Jesus the Christ, Immanuel, the Only Begotten Son of God, in fact, would be extraneous to the lost condition of man if there was another way...
This woman, was chosen by God, was over shadowed (as in made to conceive) by the Holy Spirit and was the Husband of one Joseph, mother of several natural sons, so says the New Testament, any version, even your Duay edition.
If “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and “there is none righteous, no not one” is true, then Mary is not was not and could never be “w/o sin, original or purposeful. For Mary to be born w/o sin, so would her parents, so says the Bible.
Jesus, on the other hand, was given the flesh of mankind, through the genetic material of Mary’s ovum (so He could be legally called “son of David), but was and always was the Word of God, made Flesh (In the beginning was the Word, and the was with God and the Word was God, created all things and the Word was made flesh.... (John 1 paraphrase)
“I and my Father are one, no man comes to the Father but by me” applied to Mary too.
Ask God to send His Holy Spirit to guide you in your studies, take no opinion of man for granted, accept only the context and content of the Bible for your proof.
Accept what you find in the breathe of the One who wrote it.....
Best;
Be prepared for indigestion.
“...Christ is the only one ever referred to in scripture as being full of grace ...”
See the bible Luke 1:28 and inform both the Angel Gabriel and St. Luke of this since they don’t seem to have gotten the memo.
Whether the “Bible” is quiet or not about the blood - THAT DOES NOT MAKE THE MEDICAL FACT LESS FACTUAl.
And, as I already stated .. the blood was crucial in that even the blood of animals used for sacrifice under the Old Covenant had to be “pure” to make the animal sacrifice fill the demand for repentence.
The blood of the animals was to take away the sins of the whole family for a year. Jesus’ blood took away the sins of the whole world - FOREVER.
However, if you look up the word “blood” in your Bible, you may find that it clearly states that Jesus “took his own blood and poured it onto the mercy seat”.
Now, please tell me why that was important ..?? could it be that Jesus blood was PURE enough to be our sacrifice .. and if so .. WHERE ON EARTH DID JESUS GET THAT PURE BLOOD ..??
It wasn’t “earthly” .. it was from His Father.
Therefore, Mary’s “sin” condition still existed .. and even she had to repent and receive salvation, and she also entered into the upper room whereby “... they all spoke in tongues”; as evidence of her new birth.
A protestant pastor with a rigorous system of theology, the late Robert Thieme, theorized that the sin nature is passed only by the father to the offspring. I can buy this part of his theology, but little else.
Don’t think the Romans were a roamin there then.
Hard to explain in the days of womens “rights” but Man bears the responsibility, not his woman. Sin is passed down by the seed of man, not woman.
Yes its a loophole in the law, but then God wrote the book on it.
That is why the virgin birth was such and issue, and why Mary did not need to be sinless to have a sinless child.
She may have been the greatest of women in the world, but she still had sin in her flesh from her father. But due to the Grace of God, that turned out to not be an issue.
No... Mary is the New Eve.
This woman, was chosen by God, was over shadowed (as in made to conceive) by the Holy Spirit...
The "overshadowing" is the Shekinah Glory of God notably referenced in the way the Spirit came upon the Ark of the Covenant and the way God's presence manifested in the Temple. There is much to be learned in that understanding.
Ask God to send His Holy Spirit to guide you in your studies, take no opinion of man for granted, accept only the context and content of the Bible for your proof.
Accept what you find in the breathe of the One who wrote it.....
Ironic. The New Testament was written by the Apostles (the early Church) to reinforce (not replace) their personal testimony. What they brought with them was not a book, it was their own experiences. What they wrote after corrected what their listeners had misunderstood. It is the model of the Church throughout the ages and you yourself in pointing to the Bible are listening to the Church inspired by the Holy Spirit.
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