“He Did No Sin.”
The Sinlessness of Christ
THERE WAS A TIME in the history of the church when the sinlessness of Jesus was almost universally conceded, but that is not so today. This fundamental truth of Christianity has been denied by such critics as Martineau, Irving, and Mencken. It is argued that on philosophical grounds there is an antecedent improbability of such a perfect life as that portrayed in the gospels. We should be compelled to admit the validity of this objection if deity be left out of account.
The presence of a sinless man among universally sinful men would be as much a miracle in the moral realm as would a virgin birth in the physical realm. But in spite of this improbability, if sufficient evidence is adduced, is it reasonable to reject it? And we submit that sufficient evidence has been adduced.
Other objectors assert that since we have no record of the thirty years of obscurity, it is impossible to claim sinlessness when we are ignorant of His actions. To this we answer that we prove Christ’s deity and base His sinlessness on that fact. Further, the claim is confirmed by those who lived closest to Him and were thus in the best position to know. The quality of His life during the thirty hidden years is best evidenced by the life He lived during His years of public ministry.
Sinlessness in Jesus was not merely a neutral quality of innocence as it was in the first Adam. “The New Testament speaks of His overcoming temptation,” writes T. C. Edwards, “and temptation means nothing if it does not comprise striving against sin. The words ‘in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin’ must mean that, although He was tempted to sin, the conflict left Him immaculate.”
Jesus as High Priest is described as being “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Hebrews 7:27). He was holy in character, utterly devoted to God. He was harmless, or better, guileless in the sense of being free from malice or baseness. He was undefiled, free from all moral impurity and defilement, He was separate—set apart permanently—from the sinners for whom He lived and died. Consider the testimony to His sinlessness.
The fifteenth of the thirty-nine articles of faith of the Church of England sets out clearly a truth that finds consistent support in the Scriptures:
Christ, in the truth of our nature was made like unto us in all things, sin only except, from which He was clearly void, both in His flesh and in His spirit.
There is not one statement of Scripture which, consistently interpreted, can be made to imply less than sinlessness for our Lord. Four affirmations by different New Testament writers are unequivocal in their testimony:
“In Him is no sin” (1 John 3:5).
“[He] did no sin” (1 Peter 2:22).
“[He] knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
“Tempted … yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
The challenge flung out to His carping critics by the Lord still remains unanswered, “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” (John 8:46). His sinlessness was unimpeachable or they would have brought a charge against Him. Even hell could bring no accusation. “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me,” Jesus claimed (John 14:30).
A study of His life reveals a consistent sense of immunity from sin. Never did He evince the slightest discontent with Himself—a grave fault in any other man. Never did He shed a tear over conscious failure. He demanded penitence of others, yet was never penitent Himself. Nor can this self-satisfaction be explained on the grounds that His standard of duty or sense of moral obligation was less exacting than that of His contemporaries. The reverse was the case. His code of ethics was immeasurably higher than theirs, yet not once does He admit that He has in any degree fallen short of His own exacting standards.
At the end of His life, as He communed with His Father in His moving sacerdotal prayer, He claimed to have accomplished perfectly the work entrusted to Him (John 17:4). In any other case than His, we would be justified in regarding such claims as obnoxious pride and arrant hypocrisy. In His case the facts substantiated the claim.
To quote T. C. Edwards again in this context, “The fact that Jesus never confessed sin implies in His case that He never did sin. In every other good man, the saintlier he becomes the more pitiless is his self-condemnation, and the more severe he is on certain kinds of sin, such as hypocrisy. But Jesus, if He were a sinner, was guilty of the very worst of sin, which He rebuked with burning anger in the Pharisees of His day. Yet He never accuses Himself…. He never speaks about redeeming Himself, but declares Himself to be the paschal Iamb ‘whose blood of the new covenant is shed for many unto the remission of sins’” (Matthew 26:28).
While painting the doom of the impenitent in awful colors, He is quite unconcerned about His own salvation. He prayed, “Father, forgive them,” but never, “Father, forgive me.”
It is a striking fact that the Scriptures that so faithfully record the sins and failures of their most notable heroes, such as Abraham and Moses and David, have no record of His sins or failures.
Jesus Christ, our Lord most holy,
Lamb of God, so pure and lowly,
Blameless, blameless on the cross art offered,
Sinless, sinless, for our sins hast suffered.
MICHAEL GRODZKI
That Jesus was sinless appears to be the conviction of His contemporaries, whether friends or foes.
His disciples. For more than three years His disciples had daily opportunity to observe His actions and reactions under all possible circumstances. Had there been discrepancy between His talk and His walk, they would have been the first to observe and note it. But they consistently found in His life the embodiment of His teaching.
As honest men, had they detected any flaw or shortcoming, they would have recorded it as they did their own. But with one voice they exalt their Master as the perfect example of a holy life: “But ye denied the Holy One and the Just” (Acts 3:14). They openly declared of Him that He “did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth” (1 Peter 2:22).
Judas. “The testimony of Judas,” wrote Joseph W. Kemp, “is of peculiar importance. After he had betrayed his best friend, he found he could not retain the wretched price of blood. Remorse compelled him to fling the silver at the feet of the chief priests and elders, saying, ‘I have betrayed innocent blood’ [Matthew 27:4]. So violent was the panic in his breast, that he could bear life no longer, ‘and he went away and hanged himself.’ We may depend upon it that if Judas had ever seen, in public or in private, anything in the character of Jesus inconsistent with His claims, he would, if only to mitigate the poignancy of his remorse, have dragged it into the light of day. But conscience compelled him to testify that He whom he betrayed was innocent.”
He was unable to extract a single crumb of comfort from any inconsistency in the life of Jesus.
The malefactor, deeply impressed by the words and demeanor of the Lord under the most agonizing conditions, gave as his testimony, “This man hath done nothing amiss” (Luke 23:41).
The centurion, similarly impressed, could find no explanation for such serenity and triumph in the hour of suffering and death, except in the conviction that “Truly, this was the Son of God” (Matthew 27:54).
Both Pilate and his wife united to pronounce Him a just man (Matthew 27:19, 24).
Even the demons were forced to add their unwilling testimony, “I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24).
It should be borne in mind, however, that Jesus’ perfection of character did not consist in merely negative faultlessness. Throughout His whole life He was characterized by positive and active holiness. There is no perfection of character of which we can conceive that does not find its ideal fulfillment in Him. The more closely His life is analyzed, the more completely His perfection shines out.
Throughout His earthly life, and through the succeeding centuries, hostile men have been searching for some flaw in His character, but in vain. One of the bitterest infidels was compelled in honesty to declare, “I wish to say once and for all, that to that great and serene man I pay, I gladly pay, the homage of my admiration and my tears.”
To attempt an answer to a question that has found doughty champions ranged on either side in the limits of space available is an impossible task. Contenders for each viewpoint are agreed that Jesus DID not sin. But COULD He have sinned? Some attribute to Christ the inability to sin (non posse peccare), whereas others will concede only that He was able not to sin (posse non peccare).
In advocating the latter view, Everett F. Harrison wrote: “To insist that Jesus could have sinned, takes the incident out of line with the original probation. By reducing the Temptation to a demonstration of sinlessness, the nerve connection is cut with believers also, for then it would be logically impossible for New Testament writers to appeal to Jesus’ temptation as a ground of confidence for the believer’s overcoming of temptation by His sympathetic help [Hebrews 2:18; 4:14–15] … If we affirm the inability of the man Jesus to sin, we are affirming a qualitative difference between the humanity of the first Adam and that of the Last Adam.”
For the former view, John Macleod contends: “Those who content themselves with ascribing only a posse non peccare of Him and refuse to acknowledge a non posse peccare, fail to maintain the unity of His Person, while they acknowledge the distinction in Him of two natures, that of God and that of man.”
We must admit that here we are in the realm of mystery, for there can never be, from the nature of the case, a simplistic explanation of the twofold nature of our Lord. But there are factors that must be given due weight.
On the one hand, to us the thought of temptation without the possibility of sinning seems unreal. But Scripture affirms that Jesus was tempted in all points as we are (Hebrews 4:15), yet never for a moment did He entertain temptation.
On the other hand, consider the implications of the possibility of His being able to sin. He was the God-man—divine and human natures indissolubly united in one personality—and if He could have sinned then God could sin, which is unthinkable.
It would seem that even according to His human nature He was unable to sin. How could “that holy thing” that was conceived by the Holy Spirit be susceptible to sin? If it be asked that if this were so, how could Jesus have suffered in the temptation? we would reply that suffering is most poignant in those who do not sin, not in those who yield. The suffering of temptation lies in our resistance to it. Yielding to it means giving up the struggle.
Again, if Jesus could have sinned when on earth, He could sin now, for is He not “the same yesterday, and to day and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8)? And would this not place the whole work of redemption on a very shaky foundation?
To this writer, despite the other problems involved, the thought that God could be implicated in sin of His own doing is intolerable. The final solution of the problem must be left until the day when hidden things are revealed.
The following paragraph by an unknown writer is a fitting close to this study.
In vain do we look through the entire biography of Jesus for a single stain, or the slightest shadow on His moral character. He injured nobody, He never spoke an improper word, He never committed a wrong action. Ingenious malignity looks in vain for the slightest trace of self-seeking in His motives; sensuality shrinks abashed from His celestial purity; falsehood can leave no stain on Him who is incarnate Truth; injustice is forgotten beside His errorless equity; the very possibility of avarice is swallowed up in His benignity and love; the very idea of ambition is lost in His divine wisdom and self-abnegation.