I agree with that Jesus never sinned, but He did inhabit a body
which inherited the sinful nature of Adam and Eve. That's why He was born
of a human woman; He needed to overcome that sinful nature just as He
overcame the world and the devil. Scripture says that He suffered every
kind of temptation that a human can suffer, and He never sinned. (If I
remember correctly, those scriptures are in the book of Hebrews, where it
discusses Jesus' role as high priest.) That's what makes Him a perfect
high priest for us; He was completely human and was exposed to every
temptation to which any human can be exposed, which means He understands
us completely, and, as our high priest, can represent us before the
Father. He is an example to us that we can have that fallen nature in us
and, with the strength of the Holy Spirit, we can still overcome that
sinful nature just as we can overcome the world and the devil. He
overcame that nature so well, that He never sinned.
An analogy might be that, just as Jesus was in a sinful world, but
never sinned, He was in a sinful body, but never sinned.
Scripture tells us that Jesus was "perfected" at some point. I
believe that He was perfected when his mortal body died, at which time
that sinful nature died, and He arose in a perfect, immortal spiritual
body.
On Wed, 25 Feb 2004 22:29:53 -0700 "Wm. Taylor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
writes:
Hi Terry, thanks for the comments.
Well, I don't know where to begin. I knew when I posted this that their
would be no taking it back, not at least in a way that could satisfy my
responders :>) If it is okay with you, I would like to address the middle
portions of your message first and leave the history stuff til last. And
so I will quote you and then post my response:
"The Holy Spirit tells me (backed up by scripture) that Jesus was and is
God." The Holy Spirit tells me the same thing, through the Scriptures.
"Always has been, always will be." I agree with you that the Eternal Son
has always been and will always be God.
"Two things everyone should know about God. One, He does not change, and
two, He cannot sin." If you are speaking of his character when you say he
does not change, then I agree with you. If when you say God cannot sin,
you are speaking of Jesus before his death, then I will have to insist
that we say he was able not to sin; and this is not to say he was not God
-- he was (and is) -- but when referring to the Incarnation, we must also
uphold the equally true statement that Jesus was human as well. Being
human, sin was a possibility; being God, he was able not to. This does
not take away from the statement "God cannot sin"; what it does do is it
lets Jesus be truly human.
"That He took my sins on Himself and paid for them with His blood is
scriptural. He did that during His last moments on the cross. At that
moment you may classify Him as sinful if you wish, but I see Him as
sacrifice, not sinner." I do not classify Jesus as sinful, nor would I
see him as a sinner, for both would imply that he sinned; I would not
want to do that -- Jesus did not sin. What I am stating explicitly now is
that when the Word became flesh, the flesh he assumed was human flesh
from the sin gnarled stock of Adam. The Atonement in part is Christ's
victory over the limitations and propensities of that flesh. It was in
the flesh that he condemned sin. It was in the flesh that Christ
reconciled humanity to God. It was in the flesh that he defeated the
tyrants: sin, death, and the devil. All of these things he accomplished
in the flesh, the flesh of Adam, so that when he died, his death could
truly be our death, and likewise when he rose victorious, his victory
could truly be our victory over these same tyrants, defeated now in
Christ.
Did he do this "during the last moments on the cross"? Yes, and at every
other moment throughout his earthly life. And, yes, I too see him as a
sacrifice; not just on the cross, though, but from womb to tomb he
sacrificed himself on our behalf, in our place, and as our
representative; hence, death being the last enemy to be destroyed.
"Had he ever sinned prior to the cross, He would not have been an
acceptable sacrifice." That's right, and neither would he have defeated
sin, death, and the devil. In short, we would still be in bondage to
those things.
If you would like further clarification on any of these comments please
feel free to ask.
Now, about your comments concerning Jesus and history and referents and
truth and the Holy Spirit, let me begin by asking you if the only truth
is Scripture truth. Is Jesus not the Truth? Is he not Lord over
everything? Cannot the Spirit lead us as decisively into historic truth
as he does to truth via other mediums? When Jesus spoke to the Jews about
Moses or Jonah or Sodom and Gomorrah, was he not speaking of historic
events? And were the Jews not his people? Were these events already in
Scripture before they happened? Were they not historical before they were
inscripturated? Does the fact that they are included in Scripture negate
their historicity? Is the Church not Christ's Church? Are we not his
people? Is Church history not our history; is it not Christ's history? Is
Christ not Lord over all history?
You say that Jesus did not advise us to look at history. Do you believe
that Jesus does not care about history, about what his Church believes in
any age, in all ages? Are the beliefs of the Church not historical
beliefs, whether true or false? Should it matter to us what the Church
teaches? Does it matter what the Church believes, whether we are talking
about today or in days past? What if false beliefs from earlier times are
not caught and corrected today, shouldn't that matter to us? I think
Jesus would say it should.
Thank you, Terry. I will be waiting for your reply.
Bill Taylor
----- Original Message -----
From: Terry Clifton
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 5:31 PM
Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Jesus had the same sinful flesh that we have
Hello Bill Taylor. Welcome to the melee.
Sorry to say that I do not quite understand what you are trying to
convey. Jesus did not advise us to look at history. He did not tell us
about going to resources. He told us the Holy Spirit would lead us into
all truth. The Holy Spirit tells me (backed up by scripture) that Jesus
was and is God. Always has been, always will be. Two things everyone
should know about God. One, He does not change, and two, He cannot sin.
That He took my sins on Himself and paid for them with His blood is
scriptural. He did that during His last moments on the cross. At that
moment you may classify Him as sinful if you wish, but I see Him as
sacrifice, not sinner. Had he ever sinned prior to the cross, He would
not have been an acceptable sacrifice.
If I have misunderstood you, feel free to clarify.
Respectfully,
Terry
A great resource for this discussion is T. F. Torrance. In his great
little book The Mediation of Christ, he introduces his handling of the
Incarnation with these words: "Perhaps the most fundamental truth we need
to learn in the Christian Church, or rather relearn since we have
suppressed it, is that the Incarnation was the coming of God to save us
in the heart of our fallen and depraved humanity, where humanity is at
its wickedest in its enmity and violence against the reconciling love of
God. That is to say, the Incarnation is to be understood as the coming of
God to take upon himself our fallen human nature,
After establishing the historicity of these beliefs and attaching their
origin to the writings of the Apostles, he then goes on to state, "before
long in the fourth century there began a revolt against the idea that
Christ took our fallen humanity including our depraved mind upon himself
in order to redeem it from within. Thus there developed especially in
Latin theology from the fifth century a steadily growing rejection of the
fact that it was our alienated, fallen, and sinful humanity that the Holy
Son of God assumed, and there was taught instead the idea that it was
humanity in its perfect original state that Jesus took over from the
Virgin Mary, which of course forced Roman Catholic theology into the
strange notion of immaculate conception, . . .
It seems to me that Christians should be able and willing to ask the
question, What has happened to influence my thinking in this area? Why
did early Christians accept this teaching, when I am unable even to
consider it? What stands in the gap between the beliefs of these early
Christians and those that I hold? If nothing else, David, if Christians
will take seriously the early history of the Church, when they say No to
you, they will know that you have been relegated to some pretty good
company.
.
----------
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ought to answer every man." (Colossians 4:6) http://www.InnGlory.org
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