In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
Unity within the church is very important but Unity and Uniformity are different words. Heresy and apostasy are real and the church sought and still seeks to reduce the incidence of heresy by the various creeds which were all formulated to combat tendencies to heresy and even more so are against apostasy! There are traditions which are well entrenched in the various ‘denominations’ of the worldwide church. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a saint (in the Bible every believer in Christ is a saint) and obviously she does deserve much honour because of who she was and what she went through. Besides the two passages quoted above the New Testament says little about Mary, the mother of Jesus We know that with some of her other children born to Joseph came with Mary to try and extract Jesus from a difficult situation. Mark 3: 20&21 ‘Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. 21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”’ There is also a well known short reference to her in Jn 2: 3-5 – When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Many Muslims, no doubt because of the importance some denominations give to Mary, have said (and even to me!) that the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity is God the Father, Jesus the Son, and Mary the Mother of God! Some Orthodox priests in countryside Ethiopia would not accept Protestants as Christians because we didn’t revere Mary as much as they expected and required! It is recorded that in the seventh Century AD St Mary was listed in their church calendars for a Feast to be celebrated annually on August 15th. Not until 1950 did the Catholic Pope Pius XII announce that Mary had never died but was taken alive into Heaven. To me this is a nice bit of politicking to justify Mary as being an intermediary between God and man! There is no Biblical or Historical evidence to support this what I will call ‘fantasy’ doctrine.
1 Timothy 2: 5 -(ESV) For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus
Prayer: Thank you Jesus for standing by Your Throne and being my Mediator. Please keep me true to You and Your Word!