These are specific passages in the Bible that support the Catholic doctrine that Mary was never a sinner.
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These are specific passages in the Bible that support the Catholic doctrine that Mary was never a sinner.
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Luke 1:
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,
27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.
28 And he came to her and said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!"
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Argument:
Most translations inform us that Mary was "highly favored" by God instead of "full of grace." God's grace is the same thing as His divine favor, so that is not a problem, but there is a difference between being "filled" with God's favor and being favored just to a high degree. The original Greek version indicates that she was completely or perfectly favored by God as the above translation suggests, because the Greek verb for "favor" is in the perfect tense, which indicates perfection or completion. And Mary wouldn't have been so perfectly favored if she had had sin on her soul: God wouldn't have completely favored Mary -- and He wouldn't have seen her as completely full of grace -- if she was at all sinful; but since He did, it follows that she was not sinful. Just as the Catholic Church teaches.
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These are specific passages in the Bible that support the Catholic doctrine that Mary was never a sinner.
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Luke 1:
41 The moment Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe in her womb leaped, and Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit,
42 exclaimed in a ringing voice: "Blessed are you beyond all women! And blessed is the fruit of your womb!"
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Argument:
The Bible says that Mary was more blessed than any other woman. I do not know if the Scripture could speak in more glorious terms of the pleasure that God had found in her. And how would He be so pleased, how could our God find so much favor with this woman, more than with any other, if she was sinful?
For consider this: God was very pleased with Eve before the Fall, when He created her immaculate in Paradise. He said she was "very good" (Genesis 1:31) and He blessed her Himself (Genesis 1:28). If Mary had been created in her mother's womb as a sinner, and sinned after that, then she was less blessed than Eve, who had been created without sin, and only sinned by choice. For who is more blessed: one with original sin and personal sin, or one with personal sin alone? The latter, of course. Protestants say Mary was the former, and Eve was the latter, but that makes Mary less blessed than Eve, and it makes God a liar Who says that Mary was more blessed than any other woman. Therefore Catholics accept what Scripture says where Protestants do not: Eve was created in perfection, but she fell into personal sin; Mary was more blessed, because she was created in perfection too, but did not fall from that state.
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These are specific passages in the Bible that support the Catholic doctrine that Mary was never a sinner.
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Luke 1:
46 And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed;
49 for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
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Argument:
Catholics believe that statements such as "my soul magnifies the Lord" are evidence that Mary's soul was pure before God. For if her soul had been tainted by sin, it would certainly not have magnified Him; it would have diluted His image. And notice that she says this magnificent soul was one of multiple "great things" that God had done for her -- it was a great gift that He had given her. Her soul was made by God to magnify Him!
Compare this to statements about the soul from the Old Testament, like, "My soul melts away for sorrow; strengthen me according to thy word!" (Psalms 119:28) "My soul cleaves to the dust; revive me!" (Psalms 119:24) What a difference there is between "my soul cleaves to the dust" and "my soul magnifies the Lord"! The first reflects a soul in need of salvation, but Mary's soul was pure; it was pleasing to God, and magnified His glory. Just as the Catholic Church teaches.
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These are specific passages in the Bible that support the Catholic doctrine that Mary was never a sinner.
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Genesis 3:
15 And I [God] will put enmity between thee [i.e. the devil] and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall crush thy head, and thou shalt crush his heel.
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Argument:
God promised the defeat of sin in two enemies of the devil: a woman and her child. Now, they are both the victors over sin. Some Protestants may object to this, since the woman isn't named as the one who crushes the devil's head, but that is irrelevant: a general and his army are both the victors over the enemy even if the official report says merely that the general defeated him. The same goes for Gen. 3:15: the woman and her child are both the victors over sin even though it says merely that her child defeated it. Why? because it refers to BOTH the woman AND her child as sin's enemies -- and who would seriously think it teaches that she would share in the enmity but be barred from the victory? May it never be! The mother of this promised child must have been without sin because it is promising the defeat of sin in this woman and her child -- and that woman is certainly not Eve, who was not the victor over sin but the first to ever succumb to it. No, it was not Eve, but the only alternative is Mary: therefore she and her Son were both the victors over sin, and sin found its end in both of them.
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These are specific passages in the Bible that support the Catholic doctrine that Mary was never a sinner.
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I have shown in another place how Scripture likens Mary to Eve, except that Mary was faithful, and it also connects their roles in salvation history, in that where Eve failed, disobeyed God and fell into sin, Mary triumphed, obeyed Christ, and remained sinless.
Why does Scripture parallel Mary with Eve so much? Because in the original Garden of Eden, Eve was tempted, and she fell into sin -- the original sin -- and because of that sin the whole of mankind has fallen from the grace of God; but the New Eve Mary did not fall subject to the devil and sin as Eve did. That’s the difference in John’s re-created picture of the Garden of Eden, which I pointed out in another place: Eve had an opportunity to do God’s will, but failed because of the devil’s pressure. But Mary succeeded in bringing the Son of God into the world, even though she too faced the devil’s opposition. Read Rev. 12:4-5 and see what an important moment for all of history this was:
"And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth." Yet in spite of this, "she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron." Eve fell to the Devil, but Mary stood up against him, and brought to this wounded world the One to save us all!
That is why St. Irenaeus wrote the following words about Mary, in his 2nd century book “Against Heresies,” which was the first systematic defense of Christianity: "the original deception was to be done away with -- the deception by which that virgin Eve (who was already espoused to a man) was unhappily misled. …[T]his was to be overturned…[by] the Virgin Mary (who was also [espoused] to a man). … So if Eve disobeyed God, yet Mary was persuaded to be obedient to God. In this way, the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so it is rescued by a virgin." (Against Heresies 5:19:1)
Such imagery is the root of the Catholic Church’s doctrine that Mary was divinely protected from all sin, including from the "original deception" -- the original sin -- into which the devil tempted Eve. Because, if Mary according to Scripture was supposed to replace Eve in facing the devil, and had to stand firm and oppose him where Eve fell to his temptation -- if Mary was so important in God’s plan of salvation that by her faith in the face of an unspeakable enemy, the Son of God was brought to our world -- then how shall it be that this opponent and enemy of the devil was to face him so squarely, if she was already under his influence? That’s why the Catholic Church teaches that she was not -- she was protected so that she could play that role in restoring humanity, in facing the devil unbiased as Eve did, but to say "No" to him this time, instead of "yes." And that is how Scripture implies Mary's sinlessness in the way it compares her to Eve.
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This is an explanation of why Mary's sinlessness is so crucial to a proper understanding of Christianity.
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Let me explain the importance of Mary's sinlessness by use of an analogy based upon one of the words of Christ. One creates a more perfect vessel the more important its contents will be. With Mary, she was raised up by God to be the bearer of Christ, and how dignified is He in His infinite majesty? Then His vessel must be correspondingly perfect in order to be a suitable vessel. Now consider this Scripture: "No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins." Does this not show that the virtue of the wine retroactively merits for its vessel a corresponding virtue? So with Mary. Jesus is the new wine; then Mary, His vessel, is made correspondingly new in order to be suitable to bear Him. "See, I create a new thing upon the earth: the woman shall compass the man." (Jeremiah 31:22) Did the One who said this, and Who also commanded us to place the new thing in a new and suitable creation, I ask did the Lord God not do the same by making Mary a new creation in which to place His Son? Say it is so, brethren, say it is so! Then we have it on His word that Mary was created as a new thing on earth, a new creation -- and this is to become without sin, as it is written, "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Cor. 5:17)
How perfect is this analogy! Our salvation is at stake in the appearance of Christ on earth; if His arrival is less than perfect, than our salvation is that much in jeopardy. The question, then, is Did God accomplish our salvation perfectly? Manifestly so. Then the vessel which He fashioned to bring us this salvation must have been perfectly suitable to the task. One crack, one fault in this vessel, and we are in jeopardy.
Finally, the spiritual reading of the New Wine discourse, which I outlined above, provides us with a wonderful and Christocentric theme in which to read the story of the Wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11). In that passage, Christ is the new wine, superabundant like the many jars of water which the Lord transformed from old water to the new wine; this was neither known to nor deserved by the carousers, who symbolize humanity, but it was a gift and a mystery which they could not fully grasp because of their stupor, which corresponds to our sin. Yet those who knew Him believed; for by faith we shall become as clean as His mother was, in whom the New Wine was placed as God's chosen and perfectly suitable vessel.
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