Sunday Message: Timey Wimey conception?

So Saturday morning, a FB Catholic friend posted the following....

To which I basically replied:

But when you think about it (and please keep in mind the words "you" and "think"), it makes a bit of sense.  Now, when I have been confronted with the concept of the Immaculate Conception (keep in mind I grew up Catholic and never realized until extremely recently that the person supposedly 'immaculately conceived' was Mary and not Jesus) , My thought had always been:  "But if Mary needed to be sinless in order to bear the Christ, how could her sinful parents bear a sinless daughter?  Did they have to be sinless as well?  What about their parents?  What about all the sinners in the lineage of Jesus- Rahab the Harlot, Judah himself, Rehoboam, etc?  How far back would you have to immaculize (?) things to make this work?"

But this concept could overthrow all that.  (Keep in mind the word "could".)  God is beyond the touch of time.  The sacrifice of Christ on the Cross covers the sins of those who had faith before His birth on Earth, why couldn't it apply to Mary?

Well, I could try to intellectualize an answer- as the Catholic Fathers did when they came up with the concept.  One such thought would be, "It works with the dead before Jesus manifested BECAUSE they had no way of seeing Him or knowing about His death on the Cross- Mary doesn't have that excuse."  Does she NEED that excuse?

On that question, I don't know.  The Ways of God are beyond the Means of Chris.

However, what I DO know, is that the Church Fathers were wrong to try to dope this out from a philosophical angle.  They should have done what I instinctively knew I needed to do- check the Scriptures.

So my first thought was, "Was Mary special beyond other human beings, which she most certainly would be if God adapted time to make her immaculate?"  And so I went to the Christmas story in Luke:


Luk 1:28  (LITV) And entering, the angel said to her, Hail, one having received grace! The Lord is with you. You are blessed among women! 

Okay, so she has received grace- was it in a different way than anyone else?  She was blessed AMONG women- but was she blessed ABOVE women?  So let's bring up the KJV + so we can look into these words:

Luk 1:28  AndG2532 theG3588 angelG32 came inG1525 untoG4314 her,G846 and said,G2036 Hail,G5463 thou that art highly favoured,G5487 theG3588 LordG2962 is withG3326 thee:G4675 blessedG2127 art thouG4771 amongG1722 women.G1135 

Forgive the numericals, but I want you to see how the Greek is broken down and where.  So we have two key words we need to look into here:

"thou that art highly favoured,G5487"

and " amongG1722".

G5487, the Greek word Charitoo,  is used only one other place in the Bible- 

Eph 1:6  to the praise of the glory of His grace, in which He did make us accepted in the beloved, 

Which COULD be used to say, "Mary was made acceptable",  but does that give her a gift ABOVE other women- salvation without the benefit of belief?  It certainly would seem that it might mean that she was on the plane of Abraham, whose "faith was counted as righteousness".  But consider- Abraham HAD seen God, in the form of the Angel of the Lord- ie the pre-incarnate Jesus- and had faith as a result; Mary had not seen THE Angel of the Lord, she was visited by Gabriel, AN angel of the Lord.

G1722, the Greek word En, refers to a fixed position, "midway between Eis (to or into) and Ek (from out of). " Ah, see now, she was not elevated ABOVE women- from her fixed position AMONG women, she was blessed.  Now, it would seem, we have gotten somewhere.  Is it far enough to say that the Catholic position is incorrect?

Maybe.

Truthfully, I cannot pretend to know the devices God used to bring about the impossible for man to conceive.  But something said in the commentary by Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown- when you take out the anti-Catholic sentiment that it was expressed in- makes me lean one way for sure.

The mistake of the Vulgate’s rendering, “full of grace,” has been taken abundant advantage of by the Romish Church. As the mother of our Lord, she was the most “blessed among women” in external distinction; but let them listen to the Lord’s own words. “Nay, rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.” (See on Luk_11:27).

Just to be clear what the JFB is really saying here, let's go to the passage in question.

Luk 11:27  And it happened as He spoke these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice and said to Him, Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which You have sucked. 

Luk 11:28  But He said, No; rather, blessed are they who hear the Word of God and keep it. 

Here, Jesus is clearly saying, "Don't deify anything about this physical life on earth;  only obey God."  When looked at from that angle, you can look at the question that I couldn't answer in the beginning in a new light:

Does she NEED that excuse?

Answer: No, because IT DOESN'T MATTER.  Only God matters.