Human beings are capable of experiencing temptation, as well as committing sin. If Jesus was fully human, and if Jesus experienced temptation, wouldn't He be capable of sin as well? On the one hand, denying that Christ was peccable seems to entail a denial of the completeness or genuineness of His human existence. .After all, if He could not sin, and yet humans can, how could He be fully human? One might even question the meaningfulness of His temptations. How could Christ be tempted in any meaningful sense of the word, if it was not possible for Him to succumb to that temptation? What point would there be in subjecting Jesus to Satan's temptations? What victory was gained by overcoming those temptations, if overcoming was the only possible outcome?
On the other hand, denying Christ's impeccability has disastrous Christological and soteriological implications: it destroys the unity of Christ's person, and undermines His ability to atone for our sins. Let me explain. If God is not capable of sin, and yet Jesus was capable of sin, then Christ must be two persons--the divine person, and a separate human person--only the latter of whom was capable of sin. But in postulating such a Christ, Jesus ceases to be God. He becomes an ordinary man who is indwelt by the Spirit of God, differing from us only in a
quantitative sense (He possesses a greater measure of the Spirit), not a
qualitative sense. Such an individual is not God, but a mere man who happens to be in a very close relationship with God. And if Jesus is not God, He cannot make atonement for the sins of mankind (for an explanation of why this is so, read the section titled
A Denial of Christ's Essential Deity and of a True Incarnation in my article, "
Avoiding the Achilles Heels of Trinitarianism, Modalistic Monarchianism, and Nestorianism: The Acknowledgement and Proper Placement of the Distinction Between Father and Son").
The incarnation was not a mere indwelling of God in a man, but God's coming to
be man.
1 He took on human existence by bringing human
nature into union with His divine person, not by uniting Himself to, or simply indwelling an existing and separate human
person. Because He assumed a human nature and not a human person, Jesus' humanity is not a person in itself. There is only one person in Christ: the divine person. God is the lone personal subject in Christ; the solitary active agent. Understanding a nature as a "what," and a person as a "who," we would say Christ is one
who (the divine person) subsisting in two
whats (divine nature, human nature).
2 Christ differs from us in that He has two natures, not in that He has two persons. Whereas we are human persons with a human nature, Jesus is the divine person with a divine and human nature. Just as we are the subject of all our acts, likewise God is the subject of all Christ's acts. There is, then, no separate human person in Christ who is capable of sin.
Some, recognizing that Christ is one person in two natures rather than two persons in two natures, argue that Jesus could have sinned in His human nature. This solution will not do, however. While human nature has the property of peccability, natures themselves lack volitional power; i.e. they cannot act. Only persons possess volitional power, and thus an act of sin must originate with the person to whom the nature belongs, not the nature itself.
3 While Jesus possessed human nature, and human nature has the property of peccability, without the presence of a peccable person to actualize such a property, the act of sin is impossible. To be peccable, Jesus' nature
and person must be capable of sin. Seeing that Christ's person is the divine person, and the divine person is not capable of sin, then it follows logically that Christ was not capable of sin. So the mere fact that Jesus possessed a complete human nature does not, in itself, make Him peccable.
It is Christ's personal identity, then, that necessitates His impeccability.
Who he is dictates
what He has the potential to do. This is made clear when we ask the question, If Jesus would have sinned,
who would have sinned? Since natures cannot act/sin, and since the divine person is the lone personal subject of Christ, it would be the divine person who sinned. And yet it is impossible for God to sin, ergo it was ultimately impossible for Jesus to sin. Jesus' divine identity requires that He be impeccable.
4
Was God Tempted?
If God is the lone personal subject in Christ, and only persons can be tempted, would it not follow that God was tempted? No. Because God came to exist and be conscious as man, Jesus' temptations are not God being tempted as God, but God being tempted as man through His human mode of existence. God was tempted insofar as he is man, not insofar as He is God, for God is the subject of Christ's acts only insofar as He is man, not insofar as He is God.
5
Because God came to exist as man, complete with a genuine human consciousness/ mind, He had the ability to experience temptation. He experienced the same kind of temptations all men experience (
Hebrews 4:15). Jesus was not tempted
because He was God, but
because He was man. If it was not for Christ's genuine human existence He could not have experienced temptation, because God cannot be tempted (
James 1:13). In His divine mode of existence God cannot be tempted, but in His human mode of existence He can be, and was tempted. So in a human way, and in a genuine human existence, Jesus was tempted as are all men.
While God cannot be tempted as He exists in Himself as God, God can be tempted in His human mode of existence
as man. If God can be tempted in His human mode of existence could He also sin in His human mode of existence? No. God cannot sin in His existence as God or in His existence as man because of His holy nature.
This might be compared to a righteous man who is so opposed to a certain sin that, though he may be tempted by it from time to time, he will never submit to that temptation because it goes against his holy spirit. In the same manner, Jesus' divine nature was holy, and thus He would not submit to sin. His temptations were real, but ultimately He overcame them because of His holy hatred for sin, and complete reliance on the Holy Spirit. Had Jesus ever reached the point where He was willing to succumb to temptation and commit sin, His divine nature would have intervened, not permitting Him to do so.
Would such an intervention undermine Jesus' free will, and hence the genuineness of His choice of the good? I do not think so. William Lane Craig offers an insightful thought experiment demonstrating that one's inability to choose
B does not make his choice of
A determined and meaningless:
Imagine a man with electrodes secretly implanted in his brain who is presented with a choice of doing either A or B. The electrodes are inactive so long as the man chooses A; but if he were going to choose B, then the electrodes would switch on and force him to choose A. If the electrodes fire, causing him to choose A, his choice of A is clearly not a free choice. But supposed that the man really wants to do A and chooses it of his own volition. In that case his choosing A is entirely free, even though the man is literally unable to choose B, since the electrodes do not function at all and have no effect on his choice of A. What makes his choice free is the absence of any causally determining factors of his choosing A. This conception of libertarian freedom has the advantage of explaining how it is that God's choosing to do good is free, even though it is impossible for God to choose sin, namely, His choosing is undetermined by causal constraints. Thus, libertarian freedom of the will does not require the ability to choose other than as one chooses.6
What matters is not that Jesus was ultimately incapable of choosing evil, but that He was tempted to do evil, and yet freely chose the good.
Part 1
Threaded Mode
