Immaculate Conception of Mary

It has to do with the Holiness of God. God cannot tolerate Sin. Mary as the God-bearer in Jesus had to be sinless in order to be in such close proximity to God Himself. The whole Bible teaches that God's presence demands and imparts holiness. (Ex 3:5; Deut 23:14; 1 Cor 3:17; 1 Jn 3:5-6; Rev 21:27). The Jewish high priest entered the Holy of Holies only once a year, under threat of death if God's instructions were violated (Lev 16:2-4,13). The Ark itself was so holy that only a few were allowed to touch it (Num 4:15; 2 Sam 6:2-7). Thus, Mary, due to her physical and spiritual relationship with God, necessarily had to be granted the grace of sinlessness.

In other words, since Jesus took flesh in and from Mary's body, and also obtained His Human Nature from Her, she had to be perfectly sinless. The only question that then arises is when and how Mary was made sinless.

Protestants are quite willing to admit that we are cleansed of our sins at baptism. Yet Mary could not have been baptised at the time of the Annunciation, or even Jesus's birth. For this reason her sinlessness had to come in a special and unique manner. To be pure and free from all sin as God required, she had not only to be free of sin at one point in time, (as one is immediately after baptism,) but to remain sinless throughout her life.

JUST A MINUTE. DIDN'T MARY HERSELF ADMIT THAT SHE NEEDED A SAVIOUR? HOW COULD SHE BE SINLESS?

Mary did indeed agree she needed a Saviour:

Luke 1.46: And Mary said "My soul glorifies the Lord 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,"

But this presents no difficulty. We have seen that Mary needed to be perfectly sinless in order to bear Jesus. Did she attain that sinlessness through her own human efforts? No. She was redeemed by her son - as was all the rest of humanity. She needed God's Grace. And in order to be, and remain, sinless she needed that grace before her own birth.

We can see that in Luke 1.46 Mary speaks of God as her Saviour, but she speaks in the present tense. She does not say "God, who will be my Saviour." She has already been redeemed.

If we look at one of the Old Testament passages that Mary bases her words upon, we see this more clearly.

Isaiah 51.10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

As virtually every educated 1st Century Jew would have recognised, in echoing this passage, Mary clearly considered that God had already clothed her with the garments of salvation, and covered her with the robe of righteousness. Her sin had already been wiped away.

This is supported by the angel's greeting to Mary:

Luke 1.28: The angel went to her and said, "Hail, you who are full of grace (Literally: you who have been and remain filled with Grace). The Lord is with you."

Grace in the New Testament is seen as the antidote to sin.

Rom 3:24, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Rom 5.15 But the gift is not like the trespass of the one man. How much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflow to the many!

Rom 5.20 The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Rom 6:14 For sin shall not be your master because you are not under law but under Grace.

So being filled with Grace strongly indicates sinlessness. And since Mary required the grace of redemption before her own birth, it is quite fitting that this happened at her conception. Is this a problem for God? No. Jesus is the perfect Redeemer. Therefore he must have redeemed one person perfectly. That person is Mary, having been redeemed by Jesus from Original Sin from the moment of her own conception.

BUT I'VE BEEN TOLD THAT "FULL OF GRACE" IS A MISTRANSLATION. MY BIBLE SAYS "HIGHLY-FAVOURED".

I'm afraid that those who translate the angel's greeting as "highly-favoured" have been guilty, for whatever motive, of making a false and rather misleading distinction. The Greek word used by the angel is Kecharitomene. The root of this word is Charis, meaning Grace. The prefix Ke means that the grace was already perfectly present before the angel appeared. The suffix mene means that Mary was the recipient of this grace.

Now Charis can also be translated simply as favour. So Highly-favoured could be a conceivable translation - but this would only be acceptable if the word "favour" were used as a translation for "Charis" everywhere else in the New Testament. But THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN. Even those bibles which translate "Charis" as Favour" when referring to Mary, translate it as "Grace" everywhere else. This is highly misleading because in the New Testament the word "Grace" has a particular meaning distinct from "Favour". In the New Testament "Grace" is a gift of God that saves from sin and its effects. So translating the word any differently is wrong. The correct translation is rightfully "Full of Grace".

BACK TO TYPE

To back this up, let's look again at Adam and Eve as "types" of Jesus and Mary. Paul wrote of "..Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come." (Rom 5.14.) The Church fathers spoke of: "Death through Eve, Life through Mary."

In A.D.155, Justin Martyr wrote,
".. Eve, a virgin and undefiled, conceived the word of the serpent, and bore disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy when the angel Gabriel announced to her the glad tidings that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her" (Dialogue with Trypho)

St Irenaeus wrote:
"the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith."
(Against Heresies 180-199 A. D.)

We know that the First Adam and the First Eve both started their lives in a sinless, immaculate state, there being no Original Sin before the Fall. Both made their decision to disobey God when free of Original Sin. We also know that the Second Adam, Jesus, started his life in an immaculate state -- He had no Original Sin or its stain. Christ made the free decision to do God's will. So what of the Second Eve -- Mary? She had the same choice to make, at the Annunciation, whether to obey God or disobey. With the same choice to make, she too must needs be in the same moral state. If the First Adam and the First Eve were both immaculate, and if the Second Adam was immaculate, then the Second Eve will be immaculate as well.

THE PROTO-GOSPEL

We can see this alluded to in the proto gospel in Chapter 3 of Genesis. This is the prophecy spoken by God to Satan in the Garden of Eden, and which theologians universally agree is a foretelling of the redemption.

Genesis 3:15. "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."

These are the words God spoke to the Serpent. However, some confuse them with the words earlier spoken to Eve, taking Eve to be the Woman mentioned here.

So why does "the Woman" refer to Mary, not Eve?

1. The words "her seed" in the original text are singular, meaning ONE decendant. It is generally agreed that the seed of "the woman" referred to here, the man who will crush Satan's head, is Jesus.

2. In Hebrew terms a Woman was never normally spoken of as having "seed", because this was taken as coming from the man. The only case is which seed is used with reference to a woman, is when the woman's child had no human father. This points to the Woman referred to being the child's SOLE human parent - as was Mary.

3. "I will put enmity between you and the Woman, and between your seed and her seed." This is spoken to Satan. And by this we can see that the Woman referred to cannot be Eve. Was there enmity between Eve and Satan? Not at all. Eve was about to be expelled from Eden for Sin. So, was there enmity between the "seed", or decendants, of Eve and Satan? No. There is no enmity between unredeemed humanity and the devil. The "seed" of Eve were in fact so evil that all but Noah and his family had to be destroyed in the flood. If enmity is prophesied between Eve's "seed" and Satan, then the prophecy has failed.

Mary, however, like her "seed", Jesus, was at enmity with Satan, we see this emphasised again in Revelation 12.17, where Satan is shown at enmity with the mother of Christ and with her spiritual children. So, just as the "seed" referred to in Genesis 3.15 is Jesus. The Woman referred to, is Mary - a Mary who is at enmity with Satan, and therefore with sin. A woman who is sinless.

ANOTHER OBJECTION

It is difficult to see why some Protestants now choose to object to the Immaculate Conception. Martin Luther himself accepted it (see below.) But the following verse is often raised in an attempt to disprove the doctrine.

Rom 3:23: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..."

The verse is normally used out of its context, since it does not appear in scripture with any reference to Mary. Therefore the only way that it can possibly be made to apply to Mary is if the word 'ALL' is an absolute that rules out all possible exceptions. Yet Jesus, the heavenly angels, the newborn, and some in other categories are clear exceptions to Romans 3.23. The key here is that the word 'ALL' in this verse is the Greek word, 'PAS', which can have different meanings to the absolute that we immediately think of - as shown in other verses of Holy Scripture.

John 12:19, "All the world has gone after him!" Did everyone in the entire world really go after Christ?

Mt 3:5-6, "Then went out to Him Jerusalem, and ALL Judea, and ALL the region about the Jordan; and they were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins."
Were all of the people of Judea, and the region about the Jordan baptized?

Luke 2:1 "And an order went out from caesar Augustus that ALL the world should be counted."
Was everyone in the whole world counted?

Rom 11:26, "ALL Israel shall be saved." Will everyone in Israel truly be saved?

Rom 15:14, "...you yourselves are full of love, filled with ALL knowledge..." The only person filled with 'ALL' knowledge is God Himself.

The Greek word 'PAS' in many verses in Scripture simply means a 'great number', 'most of', or 'a lot'. So its appearance in the quoted passage can in no way be used as an objection to the sinlessness of the Virgin Mary.

A final quotation on this subject:
"It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary's soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God's gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin."
Martin Luther: Sermon, 1527