References to virgin Mary, the earthly mother of Jesus, as the “Mother of God” are really quite unfortunate and unbiblical. On one hand, perhaps the intent is to reinforce the deity of Jesus as God the Son but unfortunately this has backfired and resulted in millions of people praying to Mary as a godlike figure.
The actual phrase “mother of God” is not found in any of the 20 English Bibles I can search through digitally.
One may wonder what the big deal is. If we believe Mary was in fact the instrument God used to bring Jesus into the world biologically and Jesus is God why can’t we logically deduce that she is the mother of God. The Bible is our sole authority for doctrine and the Bible doesn’t teach that Mary should be thought of as the “mother of God.”
And God is also the Father and God is also the Eternal Holy Spirit and God is the Son of God—Jesus all of which do not have a beginning; therefore, giving all of them (or one of them) a mother is very confusing.
A small child may very well wonder, if God has always existed then why does God need a mother. We need to explain that God chose Mary has a special person to be the earthly mother of Jesus while He was a child on this earth.
More over giving God a mother encourages or creates another person to petition for needs desires etc. (You remember how this worked as a kid—if dad said no or appeared to be in a “bad” mood you would go to mom; well that pattern has carried over into adult life for some people.)
I witnessed this first hand most recently and it pained me to see and hear a group of people so confused on a matter which is not hard to understand.
Praying to Mary is like praying to any other human who has ever died. We have no biblical ground to believe that God has given those who die in Christ the ability to hear our prayers. Encouraging someone to pray to Mary or any other saint is encouraging idolatry plain and simple. And idolatry is a sin. The Bible is very clear about this matter; we are to have no other gods before God. This idolatrous god can be any number of things—it could be Mary—that is I spend time devoted to Mary that should be exclusively devoted to God. (Or it could be my boat that is keeping me out of church.)
If someone desires to refer to Mary’s relationship with the Godhead, they could be exceptionally careful to stress that Mary was the earthly mother of the Son of God and nothing more. Mary had to be saved by faith in the Messianic work of Christ as the Savior of the world like every other person that has ever been born-again.
There isn’t a shred of biblical evidence that Mary has been given any divine attributes or qualities. Those who pray to her are deceived by the god of the world who desires to have the glory that is meant for the Son of God and Him alone. Satan our enemy continually seeks to steal from God glory; he was thrown out of heaven for this sin and still seeks to blind and confuse people concerning Jesus the Son of God.
The Bible is very clear we have one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). Focus on Jesus and you can’t go wrong. It is the Father’s desire to see His Son exalted and He has not revealed a plan to share that glory with the earthly mother of the Son of Man (or anyone else).
