Two Mothers, One Promise

The Christmas story is a tale of two mothers.  Two mothers, and one promise.

The tale begins with our first mother, Eve.  Eve was created perfect.  She lived in the first Paradise with her husband, whose helper God had created her to be.  With Adam she experienced perfect fellowship with God. But all that changed when Eve was deceived by the servant, usurped Adam’s authority with her executive action, and disobeyed God.  Eve wasn’t content with the way God had made her, nor with the position in which he had placed her.  She wanted to be as God, “knowing good and evil.”  Adam followed her into transgression, and so they and the entire human race were enslaved to sin.  They, who had been the friends of God, were now His enemies.  Man’s will was no longer free, but bound to sin.

The disobedience of the “the mother of all living” brought death to all her children.

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, promised that he would send a Savior to rescue Adam and Eve and their posterity.  That Savior would crush the head of Satan, their adversary and the adversary of their children.  He would save them from the death that would now mark every moment of their earthly existence.

That Savior was born of another mother.  The mother of the Savior did not live in Paradise, but in Roman-occupied Palestine.  She had no husband, though she was betrothed to be married.  This young woman hoped in the same promise that had been Eve’s comfort.  But Mary showed herself submissive to God’s perfect will.  When the angel Gabriel appeared, hailed her as one “highly favored,” and revealed to her that God had chosen her to be the mother of His Son, this was Mary’s humble reaction to the angel’s astonishing message:  “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”

And so, through the obedience of the virgin mother, God brought life to as many as believe on his name.

There are some who worship that virgin mother rather than the blessed Savior whom she brought forth.  Like the woman in Luke 11:27, they cry, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked!”  They disregard Jesus’ response, “‘Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.’”

All these things happened unto Eve and Mary for our example: “and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Cor. 10:11).  The promise to which those women clung is still the promise that is the basis of all our hope: our Lord is coming!  Still today God comes to us in his Word, salutes us in Jesus Christ as those who are highly favored, and calls us to obey his commands.

The disobedience of our first mother brought death.  The Spirit-worked obedience of the mother of our Lord brought life.   Do you walk the way of the first mother or the second?

Blessed are all they who hear the word of God and do it.