He assumed a human nature from her for vast, deep purposes: one of which was to make us partakers in His divinity as He was a partaker in her--- and our -- our humanity.
This makes all the faithful, cooperators in the salvation of the world: even you, dear, Cynical Bear!
But I won't argue with you about this. It is beyond anything I could say to you--- on this forum, especially. Simply: Mary's maternity is the source --- on the human side --- of the Incarnation.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They didn’t really mean what they said.
That, though, contradicts what the Bible teaches.
Are you a good person, would you say?
Doesn’t the Bible teach that Christ died so that we could be forgiven for our sins? But why did He have to die? Why can’t God just forgive us? Because God is just, so sin has to be punished. Jesus therefore took our just punishment for us. He died, and suffered God’s wrath and the separation from His Father in Hell for us. This is a point that Muslims don’t get when they speak of their merciful, forgiving Allah. They have no answer for how God can be just and forgive sin.
And if Jesus had to die and suffer as He did, even if He had to lay aside His Godhead to come here and take the form of a man, and bear with human beings and all their evil, how serious must our sin be against God to require such a sacrifice on the part of His Son. That is sin against a holy God. Maybe our sin can seem understandable to us, so “not so bad,” but so often we can get a glimpse of the wrath of God’s just nature against sin when we see the rebellion against God in others. We are sinners ourselves, so our wrath is hypocritical if we don’t remember that, as we tend not to, but we can gain a sense of God’s just wrath towards sin.
But the long and short of it is that we are absolutely guilty before God, deserving of His eternal wrath, but for His undeserved mercy. If you truly recognize that truth, then you can never credit yourself for recognizing it.
That seems to be a cardinal difference between evangelical and Catholic belief on justification. The evangelical belief, that matches what the Bible teaches, is that we don’t deserve to take credit before God for recognizing our sinfulness and moral poverity. That’s like saying if I have nothing to be proud of, I can at least be proud of being humble. Well, no one should be proud of that. That ceases to be humility.
The Bible teaches that we cast ourselves on God’s mercy out of desperation and self-interest, not because there is some good somewhere in us. We are like the prodigal son. He rescues us out of love despite our being His enemies, as the Bible tells us. It tells us He died for us when we were yet His enemies. It is His love in the face of our hate towards Him that can change hearts and resurrect souls. We are not the sources of it, but the receivers.
Each of being the cause of sacrifice of God’s Son as sinners against a Holy God, we have no claim to goodness. We have no right as sinners against God to eternal life. We all must depend on His mercy, purchased for us by Jesus’ sacrificial death. Paul I believe wrote that we were “bought with a price” so are not our own. Jesus’ death purchased eternal life for us if we accept that gift.
If you look at the parable of the two men who went up to pray, the Pharisee and the publican, the Pharisee acknowledged God but believed God had made him better than others, and reminded God of his works. The publican, though, only pleaded with the Lord, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” And Jesus said that man left justified, rather than the other man.
But imagine if the publican had pleaded with God to be merciful to him as he did, but then added, “but remember, too, God, at least I know I need your mercy. Give me credit for that.” How sincere would have been his initial plea if he added such? Human beings are hardened criminals in God’s eyes, naturally with hearts of stone rather than of flesh, in the spiritual sense, as the Bible says.
Remember too the parable of the man who was in great debt to his master, and his master freely forgave him when he begged for mercy. We owe an unpayable debt to God.
And remember, too, how when Jesus directed the fishermen disciples to where they should put their nets, after making their miraculous catch, Peter responded to Him, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” When coming face to face with God, he was in terror because of his sin. It would be surprising if he hadn’t done a lot of good in his life, but it was his sin that he thought of, and that is the right response if you truly grasp God’s holiness and the magnitude of our sin and rebellion against Him.
With all that said, the Bible is clear from first to last that no one is to approach other people as they do God. That’s God’s first commandment. And the early Church took care to prevent that by not retaining the knowledge of the lives of Jesus’ relatives. According to human nature, it would have been natural to do that, just as people bow before “important people” today, and just as it would have been natural if the Bible had reported more on the disciples and what Jesus looked like and what His life was like between 12 and 30. But God, in His wisdom, not only reveals, but conceals for a time, and that knowledge about Jesus’ family was concealed. The early church apparently was driven to downplay the natural relationships for the sake of glorifying only Jesus and being devoted to His Heavenly Kingdom and family. The natural human tendencies are always there, though, and over time those sorts of fleshly concerns - which then focus on and elevate mere sinful humans - were allowed back into what became the Catholic Church.