Divinity and Temptation: Could Christ have sinned?
For the past several months, members of our church have been meeting on Sunday evenings to work our way through the Second London Baptist Confession. The format is pretty informal, with two of the elders leading the discussion and keeping things loosely on track and more importantly, orthodox (which is not to say that people can’t bring up completely unorthodox positions and try to prove them, but that the elders have a responsibility - as all Christians do - to make a reasoned defense of the faith)
Anyway, last week we were covering point three of chapter five and we got off on an interesting rabbit trail. The question was asked, “Could Christ have chosen to sin, and if not, does that mean that he was not tempted in every way that we are, and does that therefore mean that He can not identify with us and understand our position?”
One of the interesting side effects of having discussion like these is that you are very quickly made aware of how difficult it is to articulate anything, much less topics that depend on prior topics and concepts being defined. You also find that the very act of articulation changes the way you understand the subject.
So here’s what I’m proposing: I’ll let this sit until Thursday of this week, possibly longer if there is some activity, and I invite anyone and everyone to leave a comment describing their take on this subject. Be as brief or as verbose as you like. But understand something, saying what you mean so that someone else gets it is harder than you think. (Man, I hope that made sense.)
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August 23rd, 2007 at 8:29 pm
I’ll bite.
Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. The former being true, it must also be true that he was subject to the same temptations any of us is. But to be subject to temptation is not tantamount to sinning, which is the willful decision to sin. Jesus, I believe, had the capacity to sin but chose not to.
Thus, by virtue of his being subject to temptation, Jesus of course can understand what it is like when we are as well. His saying No to sin is not a denial of his humanity but a transcending of it; we, too, transcend our humanity whenever we say No to sin, too.
August 24th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
I guess it doesn’t make much sense to me to say that Jesus couldn’t have sinned, unless you mean that it was foreknown that he wouldn’t. But theoretically, I think he could have sinned. Otherwise, what would it mean to say that he experienced temptation?