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VBVMI StaffSince Mary carried sin her flesh, why didn't she pass it along to Jesus along with the curse upon humanity?
There are two reasons we know Jesus didn't inherit sin from Mary.
First, the word of God says the sin nature of humanity transfers from one generation to another through the reproductive process:
Spiritually speaking, our sin nature is passed through the man (i.e., the "seed"). David confirms that sin passes to us in the moment of conception:
But since Christ was formed in Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit, and not by the seed of men, He did not possess a sin nature. We see evidence of this distinction in Genesis 3 where the Lord foretold the virgin birth of the Messiah:
The mention of a woman's seed is a reference to the Holy Spirit's conception of Jesus within Mary. Importantly, a woman doesn't possess "seed" in the Bible's sense of that word, and yet here the Bible says the Messiah will be conceived by a woman's "seed," which is intentional to make the point that the Messiah would not be conceived in the normal way (I,.e., by a man's seed) but rather would be conceived in a woman without the help of a man.
Secondly, neither Joseph nor Mary contributed any "flesh" to Jesus' conception, according to Luke:
Luke says the Holy Spirit conceived the child inside Mary so that Mary was a surrogate only. Conception naturally involves material from both a man and woman, but since Mary was a virgin the normal process was not used to conceive Jesus. He was formed like the original Adam: by God directly. Mary simply carried the child, but her body did not conceive the child.
Paul confirms this conclusion when calling Jesus our new Adam:
Paul says that Christ was a new Adam, and the His body was not made of the earth like the first Adam (v.47), which tells us that Jesus' body was created (i.e., conceived) in the womb of Mary by the Holy Spirit without any connection to Mary's body. Therefore, Jesus received none of mankind's sinful nature, neither from Joseph nor from Mary, and therefore Jesus didn't inherit the sin of Adam.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org