Objection:
You teach that, like all humanity, Christ was born with a sinful nature. That indicates that His heart, too, was deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. In harmony with that, you also teach that Christ might have failed while on His mission to earth as man’s Savior—that He came into the world at the risk of failure and eternal loss. But the Bible repeatedly states that Christ was holy, that “he knew no sin,” and that He would “not fail nor be discouraged.”
Answer:
Endless are the controversies that have raged through the centuries over the nature of Christ. That has been inevitable, for we are here confronted with a very great mystery. The Bible throws some light on different aspects of the mystery but presents no formal discussion of it. Theologians who have focused on the texts that speak of Christ as the “Son of God” have been so dazzled with the divine glory revealed in those texts that they have often been blinded to other scriptures regarding Christ. Whereas theologians who have focused on the texts that speak of Christ as the “Son of man” have sometimes been led to minimizing the divinity of Christ.
The facts are that Christ walked among men as both human and divine. That is the historic teaching of Christianity. Incomprehensible? Yes. And that is why we need to tread cautiously as we seek to reach conclusions regarding the relationship of Christ to the problem of sin and the sinful nature that men possess. Indeed, just what is comprehended by the term “sinful nature”? Protestants, from the earliest of Reformation times, have been unable to agree. But the objector seemingly has no difficulty whatever in the whole matter and moves forward with dogmatic assurance through the mystery of the nature of Christ and the mystery of a sinful nature to the conclusion that we are guilty of fearful heresy.
In a brief statement, here is what we believe:
Jesus Christ took our nature and passed through our experiences. God permitted His Son to come, a helpless babe, subject to the weakness of humanity. He permitted Him to meet life’s peril in common with every human soul, to fight the battle as every child of humanity must fight it, at the risk of failure and eternal loss. “In all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren” (Hebrews 2:17). He “was in all points tempted like as we are” (Hebrews 4:15). And He used in His behalf no power that is not freely offered to us. As man, He met temptation and overcame in the strength given Him from God. His life testifies that it is possible for us also to obey the law of God.
That is our belief in a nutshell. And we hold this belief because we feel it agrees with revelation and reason. Note the following:
- Paul says that God sent His Son “in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin” and that He “condemned sin in the flesh,” the sinful flesh (See Romans 8:3).
- Paul explains that Christ did not take “on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham” (Hebrews 2:16); that He partook of “flesh and blood” (verse 14).
- Paul reinforces this immediately with this further statement: “In all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest.” Verse 17. Like us, not simply in some things, but “in all things.” The Revised Standard Version says, “Like his brethren in every respect.” Then He must have had a human nature as well as a divine. And is not our human nature capable of being tempted? If that were not a fact, then Paul’s point would be lost in the next verse, for he immediately adds, “For in that he himself [Christ] hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.”
- Again, Paul says that Christ “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Hebrews 4:15. The Revised Standard Version reads, “In every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning.” How are we to understand Paul when he says that Christ was “tempted”? He answers by saying that Christ was “tempted like as we are.”
The objector seeks to avoid the force of these passages by declaring that so far as Christ was concerned, “tempted” simply meant “tried” or “tested.” But the texts before us emphasize that the nature of Christ’s temptation was exactly the same as that which comes to all humanity. True, these scriptures do note one difference—when Christ was tempted, he did not sin. That cannot be said of any other human being. To a greater or less degree, we have all fallen before temptation. The text does not say that Christ could not sin but that He did not sin. If it was impossible for Him to sin in His human nature, why did Paul not reveal that in these texts before us? It would have been a great revelation.
But, the objector declares, if Christ had a human nature that was capable of sin, in other words, a nature like ours, then He could not have escaped corruption, for the Bible declares that the heart of man is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” We accept the statement entirely that man’s heart is “deceitful” and full of sin. But that distinguishing mark of fallen humanity is not necessarily involved in possessing a human nature capable of sin. Adam in Eden had a human nature, which was capable of sin from the first moment of his existence. But Adam in Eden was spotless until that day that he exercised his will in the wrong way and drew sin into his bosom.
It is an interesting fact that Paul specifically compares and contrasts Adam, whom he calls the “first man Adam,” and Christ, whom he calls the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45). “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Verses 21, 22. Does not this contrast and comparison suggest to us the way through this challenging problem? Our father Adam lost the battle with the tempter, not because he had a “desperately wicked” heart—he came from the Creator’s hand perfect—but because he wrongly exercised his free will and drew wickedness into his heart. And we, his children, have followed in his steps. Christ, the last Adam, won the battle with the tempter, and we, through His promised forgiveness and power, may also succeed.
Adam could have won, but he lost. Christ could have lost, but He won. Therein lies the startling contrast. And the difference is heightened by the fact that Christ was born into the human family some four thousand years after sin’s entry into our world, with all that that mysteriously involved of a weakening of body and mind in the fight against sin. A dyspeptic may become a saint, but his path upward is sorely beset. A nervously frail person may likewise attain to sainthood, but how great are his added handicaps! Neither need sin, neither can excuse his sin. But the victory of either over temptation stands out as a greater triumph of God’s grace, as revealed in a God-empowered free will, than the victory of a person free of such disorders. In this sense, we may properly think of Christ’s victory as gaining even added luster, in contrast to Adam’s defeat. Christ won despite the fact that He took on Him “the likeness of sinful flesh,” with all that that implies of the baleful and weakening effects of sin on the body and nervous system, the great law of heredity, and its evil effects on his environment. “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?”
In other words, we believe that Christ, the last Adam, possessed, on His human side, a nature like that of the “first man Adam,” a nature free of any defiling taint of sin, but capable of responding to sin, and that that nature was handicapped by the debilitating effects of four thousand years of sin.
The objector feels that the only way to honor Christ and protect Him from all taint of sin is to take the position that He could not sin, or at best, give him the nature of Adam before the fall. But what comfort and assurance of personal victory over sin can we find in a spotless Christ if His freedom from sin as He walked this earth was not truly a victory over temptation but an inability to sin? We would rightly stand in awe of such a Holy Being. But we could not see in Him one who was “made like unto his brethren” “in all things,” one who being “tempted like as we are” “is able to succor” us when we are “tempted.” These statements of Holy Writ become meaningless if Christ could not sin.
We feel that we do the greater honor to Christ without charging Him with any taint of sin by believing that though He could have exercised His free will to sin, He did not. Although He felt the full force of temptation, even as we must, He set His will on the side of His Father instead of yielding it to the devil. Temptation assailed Him but found no response in His heart. Said He, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.” John 14:30. He “loved righteousness, and hated iniquity.” Hebrews 1:9. In that sense, was He most truly “separate from sinners.” Hebrews 7:26. Unreservedly we accept the words of Holy Writ that Christ “knew no sin.” 2 Corinthians 5:21.
Our view, for the most part, has been expressed by various theologians through the years. Space limits permit reference only to a few of them:
In his well-known commentary, Albert Barnes says on Hebrews 2:18 that the word “tempted” may mean that a person is subjected to “afflictions or sufferings,” or that he is allowed “to fall into temptation, properly so called-where some strong inducement to evil is presented to the mind.” Then he adds, “The Savior was subjected to both these in as severe a form as was ever presented to men.”
Henry Jones Ripley, a Baptist theologian and seminary professor of a century ago, wrote thus in his commentary on the book of Hebrews:
Christ is said to have become in all essential respects like men; he was, consequently, liable to be tempted in all respects like them. Being on earth as truly a man as any of us, he was tempted as men are, by Satan, by his human adversaries, and by his professed friends. Temptations arose from his bodily nature, from his rational faculties, from his emotional susceptibilities, from his connections with his natural relatives. . . . Whatever difficult questions may be raised from the peculiarity of his being the Son of God while yet humbled to the level of humanity, we must not allow ourselves to lose the efficacy of the equally scriptural truth that he was like us. That he was really made liable to the frailties and temptations of which men have experience. . . . To be tempted is not a proof that we are sinners; sin consists in yielding to temptation.”
The Epistle to the Hebrews (1868), p. 62.
J. C. Macaulay, sometime pastor of the Wheaton Bible church, Wheaton, Illinois, in his comment on the phrase “without sin,” in Hebrews 4:15, says:
That means more than that He did not sin by responding to the temptations. It means that the temptations left His sinlessness intact, unshaken, undisturbed. . . . He shared our natural weaknesses, and these were targets of the adversary, occasions of temptation, but never causes of sin.
Devotional Studies in the Epistle to the Hebrews (1948), p. 70.
Moses Stuart, an early nineteenth-century Congregational theologian and seminary professor, in his commentary on Hebrews, observes thus on Hebrews 4:15:
He [Christ] possessed a nature truly human, 2:14, 17; He was therefore susceptible of being excited by the power of temptations, although he never yielded to them.
A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (4th ed., 1876), p. 336.
William Porcher Dullose, a Protestant Episcopal minister and professor at the University of the South (Tennessee) at the turn of the century, wrote thus on the subject:
I do not know how better to express the truth of the matter than to say, in what seems to me to be the explicit teaching of our Epistle [Hebrews], and of the New Testament generally. That our Lord’s whole relation to sin in our behalf was identical with our own up to the point of His unique and exceptional personal action with reference to it. Left to our nature and ourselves it overcomes and slays us all: through God in Him He overcame and slew it. He did it not by His own will and power as man, but as man through an absolute dependence upon God. And He made both the omnipotent grace of God upon which He depended, and His own absolute dependence upon it, His perfect faith, available for us in our salvation. He re-enacts in us the victory over sin and death which was first enacted in Himself.
Quoted by A. Nairne in The Epistle to the Hebrews, Introduction, p. 78. The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges.
Dean F. W. Farrar, whose Life of Christ and other works have edified the devout through many years, declares, in his comment on Christ’s temptation in the wilderness:
Some, in a zeal at once intemperate and ignorant, have claimed for Him [Christ] not only an actual sinlessness, but a nature to which sin was divinely and miraculously impossible. What then? If His great conflict were a mere deceptive phantasmagoria, how can the narrative of it profit us? If we have to fight the battle clad in that armor of human free-will which has been hacked and riveted about the bosom of our fathers by so many a cruel blow, what comfort is it to us if our great Captain fought not only victoriously, but without real danger. Not only uninjured, but without even a possibility of wound? . . . They who would thus honor Him rob us of our living Christ, who was very man no less than very God. . . .
Whether, then, it comes under the form of a pseudo-orthodoxy, false and pharisaical, and eager only to detect or condemn the supposed heresy of others; or whether it comes from the excess of a dishonoring reverence which has degenerated into the spirit of fear and bondage—let us beware of contradicting the express teaching of the scriptures. And, as regards this narrative [of the wilderness temptation], the express teaching of Christ Himself, by a supposition that He was not liable to real temptation.
The Life of Christ (One Volume Edition), pp. 95, 96.
Much more might be quoted from the writings of devout and learned theologians of various religious bodies. Still, these should suffice to prove that our view of Christ concerning temptation is not a strange heretical teaching.
Now, a word regarding the reference to Isaiah’s prophecy that Christ would “not fail nor be discouraged.” This prophecy is quoted as proof that Christ, therefore, could not have risked eternal loss when He came to earth. A few questions should clear up this matter: Does not God know the end from the beginning? Yes! Hence He knows in advance that certain wicked men will continue in their wickedness and be destroyed. But does His foreknowledge take from them their free will and necessitate their destruction? We all answer no. Again, God knows in advance that certain righteous men will continue in their righteousness and be saved in the great day. But does that foreknowledge take from them their free will and their genuine temptations to sin and necessitate their salvation? Again we answer no. Indeed, God foreknew that His Son would “not fail nor be discouraged,” but that foreknowledge did not free our Lord and Savior from temptation to sin.
Let us repeat in closing. Our belief concerning Christ is that He was truly divine and truly human, that His human nature was subjected to the same temptations to sin that confront us. That He triumphed over temptation through the power given Him of His Father, and that He may most literally be described as “holy, harmless, undefiled” (Hebrews 7:26).
