Could Jesus Have Sinned?

The Two Natures ofChrist and the Doctrine of Original Sin

Could Jesus have sinned? – The instinctive Christiananswer is “No,” but this raises a secondary question: In what sense, then,could Jesus be said to have struggled and been tempted like us?

Hebrews 2:17-18: “For this reason he had to be madelike them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become amerciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that hemight make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himselfsuffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

Hebrews 4:15: “For we do not have a highpriest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one whohas been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”  (Seealso Matt. 4:1-11)

The answer to the title question hinges on understanding thetwo natures of Christ: fully divine, and fully human. Based on that fact, thecorrect answer would seem to be: Yes, in theory, the human nature ofJesus Christ could have sinned; but also No, in practice, Jesus wouldnever have sinned because of the union of his human nature with his divinenature. So while his human nature could, in theory, have sinned, in actualityit was a practical impossibility. Let’s back up a little and examine whatthis answer is getting at:

The Two Natures of Christ:

The Bible testifies that Jesus is fully man and fully God.On the one hand, he is a human being with a real human body and a rationalhuman soul, sharing the same human nature that you and I do (Heb. 2:17; Rom.5:12-17). On the other hand, Jesus is clearly shown in Scripture as being fullyGod, sharing the same divine nature as God the Father (John 1:1; Col. 2:9; Heb.1:3; John 10:30). In the words of the Chalcedonian definition (an earlyChristian summary of traditional doctrine), Jesus was “perfect in Godhead,perfect in Manhood, truly God and truly Man, the self-same of a rational souland body; co-essential with the Father according to the Godhead; co-essentialwith us according to the Manhood; like us in all things, except for sin.”

[It is important to note that this does not mean that Jesushad two “persons” inside of him, a human Jesus and a divine Christ, or anythinglike that. Rather, Jesus is one person, who shares fully, at the same time, inboth the divine and human natures. These two natures are distinct from oneanother by essence (one is uncreated and eternal; the other is created andcontingent), but they are perfectly united in Christ, so that he cannot be seenas internally divided (like a split personality), nor as having the two naturesblended together into something new. He has both natures, fully distinct butinseparable, existing in perfect union together in his one person.]

So Jesus had a full, authentic human nature. This humannature was naturally inherited, in the miracle of his incarnation and birth,from his mother Mary. But that leads to another question:

Since human nature is fallen, wouldn’t Jesus haveinherited a corrupt, fallen human nature? The answer to this is No, and toexplain why, we must look at the doctrine of original sin, and what we meanwhen we say that human nature is fallen (or corrupted by sin).

Original sin is the term we use to refer to the clearbiblical teaching that in Adam and Eve’s act of disobedience against God, sinaffected human nature in such a way that every subsequent human being isautomatically and inextricably trapped in sin’s power (Romans 5:12-19).

-       How does original sin get passed on? Eventhough the Bible is clear about the reality of original sin, it does notprovide a clear picture for the mechanism by which original sin works(that is, how it is transmitted from person to person).

-       Is it biologically inherited? Throughoutchurch history, various answers have been given. Augustine thought thatoriginal sin was a genetically-inherited corruption, passed on biologically fromparents to children. (Incidentally, this view is partly why the Roman CatholicChurch holds to the immaculate conception of Mary, believing that it would havebeen necessary for Mary to be purified from all sin before she becamethe mother of Christ, otherwise a “sin nature” would have been passed to him.)

-       Is it legally imputed upon us? TheProtestant Reformers thought that original sin was both a matter of aninherited corruption which inclines us toward sin, and also the imputation ofthe guilt of Adam’s sin upon us, since Adam is the “federal head” of allhumanity, representing us before God.

-       Sin = Falling out of Communion with God: Theclassical view of the eastern church fathers, however, had a view which was rootedboth in the philosophical nature of sin and the idea of salvation as a matterof union with God. This view holds that sin is not a “substance” that can taintour nature or produce a direct effect on human biological inheritance, butthat, as disobedience to God, it simply signifies the breaking of communionbetween God and humanity. When Adam and Eve sinned, their communion withGod—the spiritual closeness that connected them to God’s grace—was ruptured.All human beings inherit a fallen human nature in that sense—not as thoughsomething has gone genetically awry with human nature that changes us in ouressence, but rather that human nature as a whole is no longer in communion withGod and thus no longer in direct contact with his sanctifying grace. We fellaway from God together, as a race, in Adam and Eve, and are now born disconnectedfrom his grace. So, what we inherit didn’t change in the Fall—humannature is still “in the image of God”—but the intended conditions in which ournature was meant to operate have changed. To use an analogy from electronics,our natures were meant to be “plugged in” to God, but all humans now are bornin an unplugged state. In the absence of communion with God, who is the sourceof all spiritual life, we inherit the consequence of death, and we are leftwith the survival-oriented selfishness of humanity’s biological nature. Thisself-oriented bent, which conforms to the established patterns of ancestral sinin the world around us, makes it an absolute certainty that every single one ofus will sin. Thus, because of the Fall, we have two effects: (1) we inherit theconsequences of original sin because our human nature is not in communion withGod (as it was originally intended to be, before Adam and Eve’s sin), and (2)we all ultimately ratify this condition with our own sins.

-       Why Was Jesus’s Human Nature Not Fallen? Underthis conception, Mary was a recipient of humanity’s sinful inheritance justlike us (as both the Bible and the earliest Christian witness appear toassume). How, then, did the nature she passed on to Jesus not suffer from theproblem of sin? Because the problem of sin was fundamentally a problem of beingout of communion with God. But the incarnation was a miracle of the unionof God’s nature with the human nature Jesus inherited from Mary, so his humannature automatically existed in full communion from the very beginning. It cameinto being in a “plugged in” state because of the union of Christ’s twonatures. Therefore, Jesus’s human nature did not bear the fallen effects of sinthat ours do, because his human nature was in union with the divine nature.

-       Jesus’s nature and pre-Fall Adam’s nature: Assuch, the closest parallel we have to Jesus’s human nature is that of Adambefore the Fall: a nature in communion with God. (Technically, Adam’s communionwith God may not have been fully developed. Many church fathers thought he wascreated on the beginning of “growth trajectory” into greater union with God, whichsin interrupted. Further, Adam did not have the divine nature existing in hisperson, as Jesus did, so the analogy is imperfect—but it still remains theclosest one we have.)

-       Then could Jesus have sinned? In theory,yes—Jesus’s human nature, possessing authentic free will, could have sinned,just as Adam’s human nature, in communion with God, did sin. However, becauseJesus’s human nature was fully united to the divine nature, in practicethis flips the answer to No—sin is a practical impossibility when one is infull union with God. To put it another way: Jesus’s human nature was fullycapable of sinning, but because of its union with the divine nature, it neverwould. (And this also explains why we won’t have to worry about sin inheaven—as heirs of full communion with God, even richer than Adam experienced,sin will become a practical impossibility, even though we retain free will.)

-       What was Jesus’s temptation like? So didJesus really experience the struggle of temptation? Yes, in his human nature hereally did. There was never any possibility that he would give into it, but thestruggle was real in a couple key ways: both in terms of facing the pain of ourbroken, fallen world, and of having the discipline to choose God’s way insteadof the easy path of self-satisfaction. Jesus’s human will had authentic powerof choice, and every time a temptation came his way, it had to choose to alignitself to God’s will.

-       What This Means for Us: When we come infaith to Christ, we are transferred over from the old humanity under Adam tothe new humanity in Christ (Rom. 5:12-21). This new humanity has a restoredcommunion with God, made permanent in the everlasting union of Christ’s twonatures. In other words (to return to our electronics analogy), we get pluggedback in. So as we stay connected to Christ, like branches to the vine, weremain connected to God’s sanctifying grace. Our individual sins still occur,but they no longer break our communion with God because those sins have beenatoned for by Jesus’s death, and we are covered by his righteousness, whichjustifies us and restores us to right relationship with God. Now, by his grace,we can learn the same discipline against temptation which Christ practiced, andin our ever-deepening communion with God we can experience ever greaterdeliverance and purification from our sins.