Was Mary Sinless?
Jéan Ross: Our next caller is Carolyn listening from New Jersey. Carolyn, welcome to Bible Answers Live.
Carolyn: Good evening, I’m reading the Song of Bernadette and it talks about the Immaculate Conception. It states that Mary was born sinless. How do I as a believer deal with the Immaculate Conception because I know that Mary was not born sinless?
Pastor Doug: Well, there’s a couple of different things. First of all, Mary in her prayer when she hears she’s going to have this baby. I don't know if it's in her prayer or in Luke’s prayer where she talks about Jesus as her savior. If God is her savior, if she needs a savior, she must be a sinner because if you're sinless, you don't need a savior. The idea that Mary was sinless is totally foreign to everything else.
The Bible says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” and the only time in the Bible, and that's of course in Romans. The only time the Bible there's any exception to all of us sinning and fallen short of the glory of God is where it says, “Christ did no sin.” And so, the only one who did no sin is Jesus, otherwise, all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Jéan Ross: Luke 1:47 is the one you’re referring to that.
Pastor Doug: Mary declares, God is my--
Jéan Ross: She says, “My spirit is rejoiced in God my savior.”
Pastor Doug: Everyone else needed salvation from sin. There’s nothing in the Bible, zero, nada that says that Mary was sinless. The reason the Catholic’s developed that Doctrine is because they figured that how could a sinful body give birth to a sinless savior? She would have to be sinless. Then the argument just goes back one more generation. How could Mary's mother be sinless and give birth to a sinful daughter? You keep having that problem. I don’t know why they’re trying to solve it.
You can see a beautiful white lily come out of a brown swamp and God can do it. He can make the Son of God a baby inside a mother, has a whole different blood type than the mother. Not always but in many occasions, a whole different blood type. Something happens between the placenta and the uterus, and the baby in that embryonic fluid. It's just a whole unique creature and Jesus was sinless. It’s not just the biology of sin. Sin is it’s not in the physical, in our DNA. Sin is a choice to do evil and guilt from sinning. Jesus was sinless because he never sinned. Babies aren’t born with a sinful record.
Carolyn: Then there really is nothing to the conception that is false?
Pastor Doug: Excuse me?
Carolyn: As a believer, we would know that the Immaculate Conception is a false concept?
Pastor Doug: Yes. Sometimes we people get confused. I remember as a baby Christian. I thought Immaculate Conception was talking about the sinlessness of Jesus conception and then later on I’ve known, it's talking about Mary, and I was shocked by that. Because we all know Mary was a virgin. Jesus was born in that way, in a miraculous way.
Carolyn: Right, that's how I believe the Immaculate Conception. I believe that it's Jesus being born immaculately through the Holy Spirit.
Pastor Doug: The Catholics are referring to Mary, though. It’s nothing. It’s zero in the Bible that says anything about Mary being sinless. We do have a website that talks about this subject where it's called Mary Truth and we invite you to go there, if you take a look, Carolyn, to Mary truth and you’ll find more information there.