I have tried to not get involved with the current "Mary" conversation and only posted this verse from Hebrews as a response to a statement that Paul never made an exception to the "all have sinned" doctrine. I have learned over the years, that it is not "profitable" to dispute some dearly held beliefs of Catholicism. I think it is a distraction from the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We aren't saved by what we think about Jesus' mother, but what we think about Jesus.
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I have tried to not get involved with the current “Mary” conversation and only posted this verse from Hebrews as a response to a statement that Paul never made an exception to the “all have sinned” doctrine. I have learned over the years, that it is not “profitable” to dispute some dearly held beliefs of Catholicism. I think it is a distraction from the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We aren’t saved by what we think about Jesus’ mother, but what we think about Jesus.
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Now boatbums as long as you are not saying bad things about Jesus’s momma, you may be a-okay.
But if you are thinking or speaking unkind things about the Mother of our Lord, (the Mother of God) you may have some answering to do when you face Jesus in your final judgement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TEL_7TS5FE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUdYeYy3NQA
Just watch and learn why I believe as I do. The first is from the Magnificat in Luke.
The second is from the Old Testament and the New Testament.
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We aren’t saved by what we think about Jesus’ mother, but what we think about Jesus.
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As long as that ‘by’ means ‘through’ I’m okay with that.
Here, to me, is where it gets interesting.
Our discussions on this thread of “spirit”, “physical”, “sin nature”, etc. are bolstering in me the notion that we have a radical yet difficult to express difference in our understanding of the Incarnation and of the involvement of the physical in God’s plan.
Say that, in some ways, God abandoned the earth and what comes from it and dwells on it to chaos in the curse which follows the first disobedience. Then in the Incarnation, in taking flesh from His mother who was made of dust, Jesus invades and occupies creation and begins a redemption for which “the creature” (ktisis) longs and groans, as we ourselves groan.
Stone, wood, paints, sights and sounds are caught up again in the great dance, and after teir fashion can bear and convey a holiness not their own.
In Mary, parturition and parenthood are made holy. (IN, not ‘by’.) In Joseph a father’s care is sanctified.
The very water which streamed over our Lord’s body at the hands of John is made as holy by that contact as the tassels of his clothing were.
This is a difference in emphasis, if not in thought, which reaches into sacramental theology and ecclesiology and into our thought about the will and plan of the Father.
Again, to me that means we should listen to one another more, and debate less. This whole conversation is HUGE, and that maybe why we gain so little ground for all the effort we expend.