Luke 1:47 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 1:47

Comments

She has just previously been told that she is to name her child Jesus, which, as Joseph is later informed, is because he will save his people from their sins. This is not salvation in the general sense, but salvation from sin. Mary needed a Saviour. She too was a sinner who needed forgiveness. She needed the atonement of the one who was to be born to her, who was in her womb. Great is the mystery of God! She is so careful to make the Lord the centre of her praise. This completely contradicts the idea of the Roman Catholic Church that Mary too was without sin. Ryle says, ‘We may safely affirm that none would be more forward to reprove the honour paid by the Romish Church to the Virgin Mary, than the Virgin Mary herself.’She calls God ‘my Saviour’ – she makes him her own. We must realise Christ is ours and he will deliver us. God was the Saviour of his people and demonstrated he would be by blessing them again and again. She knows she belongs to the Lord. She knows about the seed through whom all the Gentiles would be blessed. The ritual of the ceremonial law taught that God is a forgiving God. She has reflected on these predictions of the coming Messiah, and now she has this personal promise of this coming seed. She thinks, ‘God has set such love on me. He has privileged someone who is worth nothing.’ Do we qualify for communion? Are we lowly servants of the Lord, or are we saved by grace but not seeing ourselves as his servants.

Application

When I worship my God, I lay aside my personal concerns. I give God an exclusive time in my thoughts. I call upon his name, worship and magnify him. At the beginning of a collective time of worship, I prepare by reflecting on the attributes of God. In the opening prayer the one leading the service starts the prayer by rehearsing the attributes of God to focus the minds of the congregation on the one they come before.

Questions

The word ‘spirit’ is here used as a synonym for soul; the two expressions in verses 46 and 47 are parallel. Hendriksen comments, ‘In the New Testament as a whole [soul] occurs about 100 times, [spirit] more than 370 times. It is entirely impossible to draw a sharp distinction – as is often done between these 2 words, as if in the New Testament [soul] always has one meaning, [spirit] another. It is true that when the apostle Paul was thinking of man’s invisible being in its relation to God, he generally uses the word [spirit]. However, in the New Testament as a whole there is considerable overlapping of meanings’ (comment on Mark 8:12). Here the spirit is capable of experiencing joy in God; but joy is also the experience of the heart (John 16:22), and of the soul (Psalm 35:9; 71:23; 86:4).

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Purpose

Introduction

Luke 1:47 Commentary and Bible Study