DISPUTED DOCTRINES -- Chapter Seven

DOCTRINE OF THE IMPECCABILITY OF CHRIST

On the doctrine of the sinlessness of Jesus Christ there is no dissent in the Lutheran Church. The clear, definite statements of the New Testament Scriptures on this subject are accepted without reservation. But on the question as to whether Christ could sin or not, there has been some confusion of thought, and here and there difference of opinion. The Scriptures do not settle the question in just so many words, but the truth must be arrived at through legitimate inference. This inference is of such a nature that it should be satisfactory to all. In what follows our endeavor shall be to set this forth as clearly as possible.

Sin, in the first place, is a personal matter. It is a personal term, and applies only to personal beings, to intelligent beings endowed with self-consciousness and self-determination. The angels could sin, and some of them did sin. Man, created in the image of God, could sin, and did sin. No non-personal creatures can sin, whatever it may do. No thing or nature can sin, but only a person.

With every child born into the world a new person comes into existence, and that person can and does sin. But this was not so with Jesus Christ. When He was born into the world, no new person came into existence. He was from all eternity the Second Person of the Godhead. Before His incarnation He had but one nature, the Divine nature. The Person was in control of that nature. In the incarnation this Divine Person assumed to Himself a human nature and bestowed His own Divine Personality upon it. Henceforth this Divine Person was possessed of two natures, the Divine, which He had from all eternity, and the human, which He received in time. He was one and the same Person that He had always been. His personality underwent no change when He became man. Henceforth the Person who had eternally been in control of His Divine nature has now equal control over His human nature, and whatever He does, whether through the one nature or the other, is the act of the Person. Hence we can say that the Virgin Mary is the Mother of God. To deny this would be a virtual denial of the essential Deity of the Person whom she brought forth. We can say, God died upon the cross of Calvary, because the Person who died was God. Remembering that sin is a personal term, to say that Christ could sin would be the same as saying that God could sin, which is not only contrary to express Scripture statements, but is a denial of our very conception of God. And Christ's human nature could not sin, because it is only a person that can sin and Christ's human nature was under the absolute control of His person.

The objection is sometimes raised to this doctrine of the impeccability of Christ, that His temptation was a farce, and that it affords no reason whereby we may account for His manifest agony under the temptations that He endured. But this objection rests under a false notion of temptation and also fails to take into account the humiliation of Christ. Temptation means to try, to test, to prove. Because we poor sinners with our corrupt natures so readily fall into sin and succumb to the temptation that is addressed to us, we naturally associate with temptation the possibility of a fall. But where the Person concerned is not a mere human person, but the eternal and almighty God, manifestly no such possibility exists. Even the angels in heaven, who have been confirmed in their holiness cannot sin. Much less dare we say that the Son of God Incarnate could sin. And the agony of the temptation in Christ's case should not be conceived of as due to the idea that He was fearful that He might possibly be overcome and fall. He Himself testifies against any such notion when He says, "The prince of the world cometh, and hath nothing in me." (St. John 14:30). The agony consisted rather in this, that, knowing who He was, He should suffer Himself to be led about from place to place by the devil, the great adversary of God and man, and for the accomplishment of our salvation should submit to have temptations addressed to Him by the author of all the iniquity, degradation and ruin in God's universe, and that He should have to listen to the suggestion of Satan, that He should fall down and worship him. What infinite distress this must have occasioned to the Son of God!

It has been further suggested that, if Christ could not sin, His temptation is robbed of all significance and comfort for us. But this also is a mistaken view. If Christ could sin and didn't, that helps us very little; for we are not Christs, and His overcoming would be no assurance that we poor weaklings would likewise overcome. Our assurance is rather that in Christ we have a mighty Champion whom all the powers of darkness could not touch or harm; that He stood in our place as the new Head of the human race, and that at last we shall come forth more than conquerors through Him that loved us. As Dr. Stump, in his recent dogmatic, "The Christian Faith," well says: "This is the very kind of Saviour we needed."

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