This week, on the Word of the Lord endures forever, we dig further into St. Luke's Gospel with parable of the Minas Part 2,

Triumphant Entry, Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, the authority of Jesus, and the wicked tenets.

Join me, Pastor Will Whedon, for the Word of the Lord endures forever, your daily 15-minute verse by verse Bible study on demand.

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For example, in the Catechism of Catholic Church section 971, devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is intrinsic to Christian worship.

And you're right where you need to be because you understand that because she's our mother, we are bound to the fourth commandment.

The fourth commandment is not optional, right? Honor your father and mother.

She is our spiritual mother. Therefore, we must honor her. We must honor St. Joseph. That is required by the Ten Commandments and required by the Catholic Church.

That's Tim Staples of Catholic Answers. Is it true that the veneration of Mary is essential to Christian worship?

And is it true, the second claim, that the fourth commandment also requires Christians to venerate Mary and the other saints?

Welcome back to Issues, et cetera. I'm Todd Wilken. Joining us for our series responding to Roman Catholic proof text today to talk about the fourth commandment of the veneration of Mary.

Dr. Steven Parks, Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Concordia University, Irvine, California. Dr. Parks, welcome back.

Thank you so much. It's great to be with you.

We'll get into the details here in just a moment, but there's a fundamental difference between Roman Catholics and Lutherans on what worship in itself is.

And since we heard Tim Staples say that the veneration of Mary is intrinsic to Christian worship, how would the Lutheran Confessions define worship?

Well, when our Confessions speak about worship, they give the highest place to faith because faith is what causes us to take our rest in Jesus Christ and in Him alone.

And it is the Son who reveals to us the Father, the Father then who sends the Son into the world in order to redeem and save us, the Spirit who then bears witness to the Father.

And it's faith which rests and trusts in all of those things, which causes us to see Christ as our mediator, to see Christ as our propitiator, the one who has redeemed us from sin and from death and from hell to see Jesus as our high priest, to understand Him as our Savior?

Understand Him as our intercessor. Faith believes and trusts in all those things and therefore rests ultimately in Him.

What place does Mary currently occupy in the Roman Catholic system of salvation so that we can understand why the veneration of the Virgin Mary is considered mandatory?

Sure. So if Jesus is the head of the church and the church is the body of Christ, then Mary is given the position essentially of neck, which means that everything that comes from the head flows through the neck to the body.

But everything that God has gained for His people comes from the head, which is Christ, but it only comes through the mediation and it only comes through the intercessory work of the Virgin Mary so that just as nothing good comes from our head to our body, so nothing good comes to the body of Christ, the people of God, without the mother of Jesus.

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