THE HUMILITY AND COURAGE OF MARY

OBEDIENCE, Pietro Annigoni, Monte Cassino, Italy.

“The angel Gabriel said, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High…his kingdom will never end.’

‘How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’

The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God….For nothing is impossible with God.’

‘I am the Lord’s servant,’ Mary answered. ‘May it be to me as you have said.’ Then the angel left her.” (Luke 1:26-38)

What was announced to Mary was that her son’s humanity would be derived from her, the mother who would conceive and bear him, while his sinlessness and deity would be derived from the Holy Spirit who would powerfully overshadow her.

As a result of the virgin birth, Jesus Christ was simultaneously Mary’s son and God’s Son, human and divine, the Messiah descended from David and the sinless Savior of sinners.

Mary’s response to the angelic announcement wins our immediate admiration. ‘I am the Lord’s servant,’ she said; ‘May it be to me as you have said.’ Once God’s purpose and method had been explained to her, she did not demur. She was entirely at his disposal. She expressed to total willingness to be the virgin mother of the Son of God. It involved a readiness to become pregnant before she was married, and so expose herself to the shame and suffering of being thought an immoral woman. To me the humility and courage of Mary in submitting to the virgin birth stand out in contrast to the attitudes of critics who deny it.

We need the humility of Mary. She accepted God’s purpose, saying ‘May it be to me as you have said.’ But the tendency of many today is to reject it because it does not fit with their presuppositions. Those who reject miracles in general and the virgin birth in particular because they believe the universe to be a closed system, do not see the anomaly of dictating to the Creator what he is permitted to do in his own creation. Would it not be more modest to copy Mary’s reaction of submissiveness to God’s way?

We also need Mary’s courage. She was so completely willing for God to fulfill his purpose, that she was ready to risk the stigma of being an unmarried mother, of being thought an adulteress herself and of bearing an illegitimate child. She surrendered her reputation to God’s will. I sometimes wonder if the major cause of much theological liberalism is that some scholars care more about their reputation than about God’s revelation. Finding it hard to be ridiculed for being naïve and credulous enough to believe in miracles, they are tempted to sacrifice God’s revelation on the altar of their own respectability. Of course critics will smirk and scoff: let them. What matters is that we allow God to be God and to do things his way, even if with Mary we thereby lose our good name.

(John Stott, The Authentic Jesus, 64-67)