October 9, 2015
This week I received an email (of a blog post) from a Catholic friend of mine. He uses these posts to teach Catholic dogma and has sent copies to me for several months. A couple weeks ago he asked me what I thought of them. I answered that I disagreed with much of what he writes because his views are unbiblical. I have never responded in writing till now. The following is only a portion of his blog. It is the portion where he states that Mary was sinless and therefore able to have a sinless child, Jesus. My comments to him follow his blog.
Does God Cause Sin? [Excerpts]
When God choose the Virgin Mary to conceive Jesus by the Holy Spirit, and then chose Joseph to be a surrogate father, was God in fact condoning this type of conception outside the norm of the typical family? Is this a sinful act, since it is not the biblical tradition of procreation? Doesn’t God, in fact, want man and woman to be joined as one? —- Jesus is the Lamb of God who was chosen to expiate sin from the world.
To make this type of sacrifice, there first must be a vessel that is not separated from God for He cannot be separated from Himself. God chose Jesus, His Son, to be the Messiah to be conceived without Original Sin of Adam. The Blessed Virgin Mary had to be a vessel without original sin for sin is contrary to exist with God or his Son, Jesus. In the Roman Catholic tradition, Original Sin is passed down from father to child. Since Christ’s Father is God Himself, there was no Original Sin to be passed down. Conceived by the Holy Spirit through Mary’s willing cooperation at the Annunciation, Christ was not subject to Adam’s sin or its effects.
God’s plan for family still holds true by establishing His earthly family through Joseph. He was the surrogate chosen to not only protect but to support their needs.
Pastor Kevin’s 1st Response
Hi **,
You say: The Blessed Virgin Mary had to be a vessel without original sin for sin is contrary to exist with God or his Son, Jesus.
God says:
Luke 1:46 And Mary said: “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.
Rom 3:23 – for all (Mary is part of all) have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Who should I believe?
His 1st response to Kevin
Those are two different scriptures. Mary is not part of all [in Romans 3:23] but the special vessel chosen by God. God cannot be begotten in sin since that would be contrary to His nature.
Pastor Kevin’s 2nd Response
Mary knew that she was carrying her savior [Luke 1:46]. You can’t call Jesus your savior unless you know that you were lost in your trespasses and sins and therefore in need of a savior. The idea of Mary being sinless has zero biblical support; it was concocted in the mind of men (in 1854) to support Mary adoration and worship, which is idolatry, which carries its own warning from God’s word.
1 Cor 5:9 I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. 10 Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner — not even to eat with such a person. 12 For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? 13 But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “put away from yourselves the evil person.”
Also, Luke records that Mary in obedience to the laws of Moses went to the temple on the eight day to have Jesus circumcised and to perform A SIN OFFERING for her sins.
Luke 2:22 Now when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord “), 24 and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”
Lev 12:2 “Speak to the children of Israel, saying: ‘If a woman has conceived, and borne a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days; as in the days of her customary impurity she shall be unclean. 3 And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. 4 She shall then continue in the blood of her purification thirty-three days. She shall not touch any hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary until the days of her purification are fulfilled. 5 ‘But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her customary impurity, and she shall continue in the blood of her purification sixty-six days. 6 ‘When the days of her purification are fulfilled, whether for a son or a daughter, she shall bring to the priest a lamb of the first year as a burnt offering, and a young pigeon or a turtledove as a sin offering, to the door of the tabernacle of meeting.
You say:
God cannot be begotten in sin since that would be contrary to His nature
But God was not begotten by Mary (another false doctrine of the Catholic Church to elevate her to the status of being the “Mother of God” – as if God did not exist before her). The scriptures teach that Mary was the mother of the Son of God, and as such, Jesus was fully God (Son of God) and fully man (Son of Man – Mary).
According to God’s word, a person is not born a condemned sinner, but rather with a nature that wants to sin. It is when a person knowingly commits an act of sin that the condemnation of sin (death) takes effect (Romans 7:7-12). Everyone (except Jesus) has given into temptation and sinned against God (Romans 6:23 and 1 Kings 8:46). If Romans 6:23 (all have sinned) was not intended to include Mary as you propose, then why did Paul (under inspiration of God) not make this clear? I propose it is because God was not inspiring Paul to write a lie.
Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus in his humanity was tempted (to sin) in all ways as we are, yet He never gave in to the temptation and was therefore sinless and the only person to ever be sinless. The scriptures are very clear that no child bears the iniquity of his or her parents (Ezekiel 18:20). For you to say that Mary had to be sinless in order for Jesus to be born without the condemnation of sin already on Him creates a very significant problem for you. Because it would mean that Mary’s parents, grandparents, great grandparents, all the way back to BEFORE ADAM AND EVE (impossible) would have had to be sinless also, in order for Mary to be born sinless.
I hope your response to this very big problem is not to say that God miraculously allowed Mary to be born to two human parents free from sin (a miracle that the bible says nothing about), but there was no way Jesus, who was conceived as the Son of God in the womb of a virgin, could be born sinless unless Mary herself was sinless. If this were your argument, then I would fear for your soul because it would reveal that your devotion is toward a sinful (but forgiven by the shed blood of her Son) woman (that your have deified) rather than toward a perfect God and Savior, Jesus.
Time is short **, please compare what you have been taught by man to the Word of God. Men are liars, God’s word is truth!
Love you,
Kevin
His 2nd response to Kevin
Hi Kevin, Thanks for your comments. I will get back to you later because I have other pressing matters right now and your comment deserve my full attention
Blessings
**
Final thoughts from Kevin: Please pray for my Catholic friend, that he will turn away from the decades of deception he has been under from the Catholic Church and place all of his trust in the saving work of Jesus on the cross, by faith in Him, and not His mother.