If Christ is Busy, It It OK to Pray to Mary, His Mother.
She Might Get Something Done.
Doesn't
follow from Scripture. The only time Mary asked Jesus to do anything in
Scripture, He kindly told her, 'What have I to do with thee, Woman." It
was very tender and kind, but it sent a message reverberating throughout the
whole universe. This was even though He intended to provide wine for the feast.
In this mild rebuke he condemned the whole idolatrous cult of Mary, angels,
etc.
This
is not to take anything away from Mary, who was called by God the most blessed
of women. She is to be honored and remembered, and the image of the Virgin,
Joseph, and Child did a great deal to present to Medieval Christianity a great
model of the godly family. Far better than Brad and JLo I grant. But to give to
Mary what belongs to Christ alone, is wicked and idolatrous.
The
only one who has power with God is His Son, Jesus Christ, and that in His
incarnation, for the One Mediator between God and man is the man Christ Jesus.
Our prayers are to be through Him and through Him alone. We have access to Him
because He is a man; he has access to God because He is God. There is non other
than He.
To say
that He has no time for us is unbelief, for He said I am with you always, even
unto the end of the world.
Jesus
is God and always has time to do His will for each of us. If He says, not now,
but later, not even Mary could change His mind, for it would be first of all,
wise, then powerful, just, loving, and authoritative.
Certainly
the woman of revelation, clothed with the sun is a composite picture of Israel,
the Virgin, and the true church, for all nurtured the seed of the woman who is
Christ, the man child who rules the nations. It is a mental picture of Gen.
3:15. But we do not pray to Israel, the church, or to the Virgin.
It is
not necessary to denounce Christ to lose your soul; it is sufficient to
transfer His glory to a creature and worship that creature. The Council of
Chalcedon made it clear that we worship the man Christ Jesus, not because we
worship a man, which would be idolatry, but because He is God, for in Him
dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He is the Mediator; He has no
mediators between Him and His people and does not need them. If His humanity
were defied we could not have access to Him; if his divinity were humanized He
would have no access to God. The natures are united in His Person, not mingled,
mixed, or confused. Mary is just a human being and therefore cannot be a
Mediator and those who pray to her have not access to God but are deceived by
the devil and in danger of eternal perdition.
“For
we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. 16
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain
mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” Heb. 10
When
my friends ask me to pray for them, they are not praying to me, and if they did
I would verbally smack them. I would pray as a poor sinful man who has been
called through the blood of Christ to call upon my Savior for every need of
myself and my friends. I pray because of His promise, not because I need to
convince of something He doesn't want to do, because He knows what need before
I call; I don't even have to get His attention, for Psalm 139 says He is
acquainted with all my thoughts and my ways. I will not insult him by going to
Mary as Adonijah prayed to Bathsheba to intervene on his behalf with his
brother Solomon. Solomon rightly took it as subversion of the kingdom and an
insult to his majesty and Adonijah lost his life for that bit of royal
intrigue. Jesus is at least as wise as Solomon.
I
would not dare to meddle with the kingdom of Christ by the insult of asking his
human mother to intercede--an insult to Him and to her.
