Mary’s Gospel: There is no Sin
Mary 3: 1-9
Peter said.. “What is the Sin of the World?”
The Savior said, “there is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called sin. That is why the Good came into your midst, coming to the good which belongs to every nature in order to restore it to its root. This is why you become sick and die for you love what deceives you. One who understands, let him understand!”
Go then, preach the good news about the Realm. Do not lay down any rule beyond what I determined for you, nor promulgate law like the lawgiver, or else you might be dominated by it.
There is no sin. Jesus says there is no sin. Peter asks and in the Gospel of Mary, Jesus in his post resurrection appearance to the disciples says, there is no sin.
Of course the Gospel of Mary isn’t saying folks are perfect and always do the right, just, and good thing either. But the notion of sin explored here feels very different from any notion of sin I have ever heard about in any church. I heard a lot about sin at my Middle School Fellowship of Christian Athletes retreat…like, so much that folks cried about their sins and wanted to be saved. The church loves sin, there are seven deadly ones and Augustine Original sin, (which comedian Suzi Eddie Izzard calls a "hellish idea”). This isn’t the script you teach someone before they go door to door to save people from sin.
But here Jesus says, “there is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called sin."
Mary’s Gospel is hidden away, just as Augustine shares the idea of Original Sin. That we start out bad —that’s right, every baby is bad and you need Baptism in Jesus to wash that original sin right off. Which honestly, have you ever held a newborn baby and thought “oh this is terrible.” Tertullian, another early church father, had some views on sin and the soul that are more similar to the theology expressed in the Gospel of Mary. He proposed humans had some “original goodness” but he unfortunately doesn’t stop there — our original goodness is corrupted by pagan birth rituals and we need baptism (King, p. 65-66).
The understanding expressed in the Gospel of Mary weaves a different kind of story around sin and human nature. This gospel talks about God as The Good. You heard it in the scripture when Jesus tells Peter, “this is why The Good came into your midst, coming to The Good which belongs to try nature in order to restore it to its root.”
Divinity is “The Good” and humanity has a spark of the good. In the Gospel of Mary, Jesus is called “The Child of true humanity” not the Son of Man. “The Child of True humanity, the image of the divine realm that exists in every person” (King, p. 59). Mature faith leads one to embody this spark of the child of true humanity, Jesus shows the way and Mary’s Gospel urges deep internal work to be that person of peace in the world. Tertullian believed intense personal work was essential to spiritual growth, so the Gospel of Mary wasn’t alone. In fact, the writings, hidden away in Egypt after they were not included in the cannon, require substantial work on yourself. The pieces we have of her gospel show the soul in debate with passions that derail a person from being their best selves. Today we would probably call that ego work. But no matter what you call it, this kind of work is hard.
Setting up a bunch of rules is a hundred times easier than helping folks grapple with the internal, even if they both hope for the same outcome — a kinder, more compassionate, world.
Jesus says there is no Sin but our ability to deceive ourselves, our ability to grasp on to what is no good when we could do the work to express the good is our main struggle. Rather than seven deadly sins, there are seven passions that the soul has to work through and overcome.
“While insisting that no sin exists as such, the Savior goes on to clarify that people do produce sin when they wrongly follow the desires of their material nature instead of nurturing their spiritual selves. He describes this sin as adultery, an illegitimate mixing of one’s true spiritual nature with the lower passions of the material body…like adultery sin joins together what should not be mixed” (King, p 50).
This is where the Gospel of Mary is at once empowering and challenging. We can image what our faith would be like had the narratives around sin been more influenced by voices like this. Had her words and words like her’s continued to circulate, what would be the prevailing notion of sin, which leads to concepts of hell and salvation? I believe our whole church would be different, maybe less powerful and more vulnerable. Maybe more centered on accountability born out of love rather than absolutes. I believe it would be harder for us to call someone a sinner, harder to write someone off as bad and harder for us to punish folks, whether it’s eternal damnation or our current pipelines to prison and detention centers.
Mary’s gospel, like the others that were hidden away, requires a lot of the individual and a very deep community. Internal work, ego work, and spiritual work on oneself is hard — growth is painful. It means looking in a mirror with love and courage to be your better self every day. It’s also harder to administer and it’s harder to lead that kind of church than a church with some really solid lists of what is right and wrong. The more the church interconnected with state power, the more it focused on rules and creeds because the state always wants help enforcing norms. The church got into the business of rules, even through Jesus warns against making more rules as he departs. It’s sort of a great tragedy, to make and enforce rules in Jesus’ name, to put morality on one side and make it such a challenge as our culture grows and changes. We see this play out today, as we have grown more inclusive, the pressure to take steps backwards almost always comes with the threat of hell and the label of sin.
So let’s do our part. Let’s do our inner work, dive into the places we don’t want to work on, let alone remember exist with in us, and let’s do this out of love. Let’s do it remembering The Good is at the root of it all and within us. Let’s start speaking this love that heals rather than dominates, that nurtures rather than forces conformity, that inspires and embraces rather than shames and slanders. Let’s reweave that fabric of our tradition, away from seven deadly sins and perhaps into the numerous freedoms that we might find when we are no longer bound by our ego and deceived by our wants.
Journaling:
What would our faith look like today if we had learned these words about sin as something that pulls us away from our nature? Mary’s gospel frequently uses language about learning to be human, fully human. How is that different from the dominant narrative of the church?
What have you learned about Sin? Why do you think you learned that?
How have you experienced or seen the word sin used in our culture?
Jesus closes his resurrection appearances with the message to not make additional rules or else you might be dominated by it; what does that invite in you as you consider it.