Concerning Mary's Salvation

1. Mary understood her need of God’s salvation. LUK 1:46-50. A. She magnified the Lord, not herself. B. She rejoiced in God her Saviour. C. She deemed herself of low estate, not Second Eve, Queen of heaven or Mother of God. D. She praised God Who had done to her great things, and implies she is the object of His mercy. (1) mercy: Forbearance and compassion shown by one person to another who is in his power and who has no claim to receive kindness; kind and compassionate treatment in a case where severity is merited or expected. (2) Mercy is for sinners, not the sinless. HEB 8:12. 2. Concerning LUK 1:46-47, Catholicism affirms that Mary’s salvation was not from condemnation for sin but that she was pre-emptively saved from sin itself. A. “Mary, too, required a Savior. Like all other descendants of Adam, by her nature she was subject to the necessity of contracting original sin. But by a special intervention of God, undertaken at the instant she was conceived, she was preserved from the stain of Original Sin and certain of its consequences. She was therefore redeemed by the grace of Christ, but in a special way, by anticipation.” (Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians”, p. 270, emphasis added) B. This means she was saved from having to be saved by the redeeming blood of Christ. C. As noted in previous lessons, Christ’s redemption is a transaction that delivers from a just sentence of the guilty to death, a pardon; it is not a divine bubble of protection against infection or commission of sin. EPH 1:7. D. All humans in heaven other than Jesus Christ owe their place there to His redeeming blood of atonement which justifies them before God. ROM 8:28-30 c/w ROM 5:9. (1) Christ alone is the Just One, the Righteous. ACT 7:52; 1JO 2:1. (2) Christ alone has immortality. 1TI 6:15-16. E. A faulty view of Mary’s salvation denies the doctrine of the federal headship of Adam over all his posterity (which included Mary). ROM 5:12. F. By Mr. Keating’s reasoning, one could equally conclude that Jesus Christ was sinless because He was similarly “saved” but this would mean that the Divine Fatherhood of Jesus Christ was not necessary: all that was needed was a conceived human male whom God “preserved from the stain of Original Sin and certain of its consequences” (per Keating). 3. Mr. Keating recognizes that Mary’s death so she could resurrect and be bodily assumed into heaven is a bit of a problem since death is the wage of sin, per ROM 6:23. A. If Mary was sinless, her death was unjust, no matter how it took place, and nowhere does Scripture attribute to her the power or responsibility of being a sin-bearer like Christ. B. If she just decided to die, how did this happen? If the natural forces of the Fall were not working in her, it would have been a wilful laying down of life, a virtual suicide. C. “ ‘But,’ ask fundamentalists, ‘if Mary was immaculately conceived, and if death was a consequence of original sin, why did she die?’ Although she was wholly innocent and never committed a sin, she died in order to be in union with Jesus. Keep in mind that he did not have to die to effect our redemption; he could have just willed it, and that would have been sufficient.” (Ibid., p. 275) (1) Consider the poorly anchored chain of reasoning that leads a professing Christian to the conclusion that Jesus “...did not have to die to effect our redemption; he could have just willed it, and that would have been sufficient.” This an overthrow of the entire gospel! (2) If it was not necessary for Christ the God-man to die, then the prophets of old were all false prophets, since they prophesied of Messiah’s death as a certainty. ACT 8:31-35 c/w DEU 18:22. (3) If it was not necessary for Christ the God-man to die, then the Father afflicted Him needlessly. ISA 53:4-6 c/w LAM 3:33. (4) If salvation of sinners was merely a matter of a sovereign God’s will without regard to His own law and prophecies, couldn’t He also have just sovereignly forgiven sinners without any cost? (5) Perhaps God could have ordained sinless Mary to do the work herself if there was no need to adhere to His own law and prophecies. (6) If Mr. Keating is right, then it may also be said that it was not necessary for Christ to rise from the dead and ascend. Even the Incarnation was unnecessary, making the virgin conception and birth unnecessary, and Mary unnecessary. (7) There is virtually no end to the “if, then” possibilities of schemes of salvation if such are not bound by God’s law and prophecies. ct/w LUK 24:25-27. (8) Christ rebuked Peter for thinking like Mr. Keating. MAT 16:21-23. (9) Christ absolutely and uniquely had to suffer and die for sinners. a. It behoved Him to do so. LUK 24:46; HEB 2:17; 9:23-28. b. behove: To have use for or need of, to require; to be in want of. 2. To be physically of use, needful, or necessary to. 3. To be morally needful or requisite to; to be incumbent, proper, or due. 4. Mary rejoiced in God her Saviour for the same reason we rejoice in Him: deliverance from wrath and reconciliation to God through Christ. ROM 5:7-11.