The Glorious Good News that Mary Gave Birth to God

Christianity is full of wonderfully good news — so much good news that sometimes we can even forget how glorious some parts of the message are! And perhaps one place that sometimes some Evangelicals forget just how good the good news is is when we think about (or, unfortunately, don't think about) those nine months between the angel Gabriel visiting Nazareth and the choirs of angels visiting the shepherds of Bethlehem. For the incarnation didn't begin in the stable. God the Son took on our human nature nine months before that, unnoticed in the womb of his mother Mary. Mary is indeed the mother of God!

Who is Jesus? He’s God the Son, who has taken on our human nature through His Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary. That means Mary is the mother of God the Son. And God the Son is God — so Mary is the Mother of God. 

And that's wonderful news. Because it means that God has entered into the fullness of human life from its very beginning, from its tiniest, weakest moment. God became a tiny embryo for the sake of all embryos. The one Mary carried in her womb — the one who was born in the stable in Bethlehem, grew up in the carpenter's house in Nazareth, was baptised by John in the Jordan, died on the cross of Calvary, and rose from the tomb the third day really is God! And so, from first to last, it is God who saves us.

If we mistakenly say Mary isn't the Mother of God, then what we really end up saying is that Jesus is not God. (And no good Evangelical wants to say that!) The early church recognised this, and so when the Archbishop of Constantinople refused to call Mary Theotokos (God-bearer – the Greek equivalent of Mother of God), a major crisis broke out that ended up leading to a few major Church Councils to defend the truth that the one born of Mary is God the Son. 

Cyril of Alexandria, the great defender of orthodoxy in that controversy (and one of the greatest teachers on the doctrine of the person of Christ in the history of the Church) even wrote a book Against Those Who Are Unwilling To Confess That The Holy Virgin Is Theotokos. What was the book about? It wasn't about Mary. It was all about Jesus! 

For Cyril, Theotokos (God-Bearer) or Mother of God wasn’t a title on which to establish a Mariology; rather, it was an essential title for a true Christology. As Cyril wrote to the Monks of Egypt at the outset of the controversy:

I was completely amazed that certain people should be in any doubt as to whether the holy virgin ought to be called the Mother of God or not. For if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, then how is the holy virgin who bore him not the Mother of God? (Cyril’s Letter to the Monks of Egypt, §4)

But for Cyril, it wasn’t only essential to agree that Mary is the Mother of God because it’s a vital Christological teaching, but also because he insisted that it’s the biblical thing to say. He points to three particular Scriptures: Luke 1:41-43; Luke 2:11-12; and Isa. 7:14 quoted in Matthew 1:23.

In Luke 1:41-43, when Mary greets her cousin Elizabeth, John the Baptist leaps within Elizabeth’s womb and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, calls Mary ‘the mother of my Lord’ (v.43). Who is Elizabeth’s Lord? The Lord God! If anything, Elizabeth’s wording is even stronger than Mother of God, for she effectively calls Mary the Mother of YHWH!

In Luke 2:11-12 the Angels announce the birth of Jesus to the shepherds. But who do they say is born? ‘A Saviour who is Christ the Lord.’ Like Elizabeth, the angels insist that the one born of Mary is the LORD himself.

Finally, in Matthew 1:23, Matthew quotes Isaiah, writing: ‘“Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”’ In his Scholia on the Incarnation, Cyril argues that ‘God with us’ ‘signifies that the Word (true God of true God) came in our nature on account of flesh’ and so the Son borne by Mary ‘was God in the flesh, and she who gave him a fleshly birth in accordance with the flesh was truly the Mother of God’ (Cyril, Scholia, §27). So, to say that Mary is the mother of Immanuel (as Matthew 1:23 and Isaiah 7:14 both say) is to say that she is the mother of God.

The Church eventually resolved the controversy. The Archbishop of Constantinople in question was deposed, condemned for heresy, and anathamatised. And it is the settled doctrine of the Christian Church that ‘if anyone does not confess the Immanuel to be truly God, and hence the holy virgin to be Mother of God (for she gave birth in the flesh to the Word of God made flesh), let him be anathema.’ (No. 1 of the Twelve Chapters of Cyril, formally accepted as the standard of orthodoxy at the Second Council of Constantinople).

So, Mary is the Mother of God. We say that because: 1) to say otherwise is to say that Jesus isn’t God, 2) it’s a biblical thing to say, and 3) it’s the settled, orthodox doctrine of the entire Christian church. So ignore any nonsense on social media that's claiming otherwise. (It doesn't matter how famous a preacher anyone can use to back up their claims, because it's God's Word we rely on, not fallible Christian celebrities!) Instead, thank God that she is, because that means God really has come down to us for our salvation.