Dave G
Well-Known Member
"Maybe?"This is going to seem a bit off topic but...take the idea of personal sin as it applies to a man with a profound intellectual disability. Maybe we would agree in saying that such a man has need of the saviour. But, has he personally committed grave sins? It seems that at least some people are preserved from commiting grave sins, no? So what if the saviour preserves, by grace, one person from committing grave sins for some (Christological) reason. What's the big deal? The Pauline sky isn't about to fall.
I would state that as believers in Jesus Christ we should agree that man has a need of a Saviour...
For without a Saviour we all spend an eternity in the torment of God's wrath, don't we?
"What's the big deal?"
Yes, the Lord can and does preserve people from committing sins...see Genesis 20:6.
But that does not negate the fact that all men are sinners as I've already shown.
As I see it, you seem to be going from sinless perfection in this idea of Mary having it, to now proposing that she was preserved from committing grave sins against God.
But that's not really believing the Scriptures, is it?
With God, it's not about "grave sins".
It's about His holiness and what it demands...sinless perfection in obedience.
The only person to have ever done that is Jesus Christ Himself, and He enjoys the unique status of not only being God in the flesh, but a man who was tempted in every way that we are, yet without sin ( 2 Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 4:15, 1 Peter 2:22, 1 John 3:5 ).
Aside from Jesus, no other person in all of God's word was ever declared as being without sin.
People can chain together all sorts of reasoning, but unless that person can show, by declaration in Scripture, that someone other than Jesus Christ was without sin, then I go with Ecclesiastes 7:21, Romans 3:10-18, Romans 3:23, and many others when it comes to us as men.
However, I also know that it cannot be done and never will be done.
So to me, your reference to "The Pauline sky" is about philosophy and human reasoning, not unwavering faith and belief of the very words on the page.
We're talking about God's word and about absolutes, not about some "fuzzy line of demarcation" and man's idea of what it is to be sinless.
God's revelation of what it is to be sinless is to obey His every commandment, perfectly.
Again, no one has ever done that aside from Jesus Christ.
So...
"The big deal" is that I believe and bank on every word of God, and my reasoning takes a back seat to that and always will.
I also hold that no man has the right to interject themselves into my relationship with my Saviour.
No group of men and no institution of men has the right to command my obedience, give them money, or believe anything I'm not persuaded by my own studies in God's word to believe.
I only have one Mediator... not Mary, not the Pope and not a priest.
I don't go back to the Old Testament and try to replicate, in this New Testament age, the types shown there that all lead to Jesus Christ and His suffering on the cross for me and His rising again for me and others like me.
I recognize that the entire Old Testament Law and its practices have driven me to one person as its focus...
Emmanuel, "God with us".
May the Lord God bless you greatly sir, in your life and in your studies of His word.
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