One of the most important interpretive rules is to approach a study of more difficult passages from the perspective of the facts that we know to be true from simpler and less complicated passages. Begin your study with what is knowable and obviously true. Some people forget this rule when studying passages dealing with the incarnation or temptation of Christ.
The Bible addresses both the impeccability and temptability of Christ. The “scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35), so there is perfect harmony between these two doctrines. It is just a matter of collecting the facts and properly defining the terms.
What We Know About Jesus And Sin
God prophesied through Isaiah that Christ would not fail or be discouraged. “He will not fail nor be discouraged till He has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands shall wait for His law” (Isaiah 42:4). All three persons of God are in this verse. God the Father makes the proclamation about God the Son and communicates to Isaiah through God the Holy Spirit. Had Jesus sinned and failed in His mission it would have been an indictment of all three persons of the Godhead. Had Christ failed in His mission so would have the Father and Holy Spirit. Had Christ failed it would have made God a liar, yet “it is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18). “God cannot lie” (Titus 3:5). “God is not a man, that He should lie” (Numbers 23:19). Men are “liars” when they contradict God (Romans 3:4). If one claims that God could have been wrong in Isaiah’s prophecy about the infallibility of Christ, one not only denies the deity of Christ, he also denies the deity of the Father and the Holy Spirit.
God is not fallible and Jesus is God. The Bible teaches that God is infallible. That is, He is incapable of sinning or being wrong. Zephaniah said, “The Lord is righteous in her midst, He will do no unrighteousness. Every morning He brings His justice to light; He never fails, but the unjust knows no shame” (emphasis mine, TH, Zephaniah 3:5). Jesus is GOD (John 1:1; John 14:9; Matthew 1:23; Hebrews 1:3; 1 Timothy 3:16; Colossians 2:9). To say that Jesus could have sinned is to deny the deity of Christ.
God is light and Jesus is light and there can be no sin in God. John wrote, “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). John provides his own commentary on the terms “light” and “darkness” in this verse and later in verse 8. Light means “truth & righteousness.” Darkness means “sin.” So, in God is no sin. John 8:12 records Jesus saying, “I am the light of men.” John had earlier affirmed this in John 1:4, 5 when he spoke of God the Word (Jesus) coming as a “light” into the world and shining upon the darkness of men. Jesus is included in the “God” of 1 John 1:5 in Whom is no sin. Some agree that Jesus didn’t sin but also claim that He could have sinned. However, this passage goes beyond the hypothetical. It teaches that God’s nature is intrinsically incompatible with sin. Jesus told the disciples in John 8:23, “You are from beneath: I am from above: you are of this world: I am not of this world.” Christ could not have sinned and retained His nature as God.
We know that satan had nothing in Jesus. He had no hold on Jesus. Jesus said, “I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me” (John 14:30). The verb “has” is present active and indicative. The indicative mood means whether an action really occurs or has occurred or will occur, which means that satan never had any sway or hold on Jesus and never would have. Jesus, is, was, and forever will be, GOD (Hebrews 13:8). This is why Jesus decisively met every temptation with indignant rebuff. Satan had nothing in Him.
The universe would have ended had Jesus sinned. I have been telling people for 40 years that had Jesus sinned we would not be standing here discussing it today. Jesus said in Matthew 5:17-18, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.” The universe would have ended if Jesus had sinned. Had Jesus sinned you and I would have never been born and would not be alive to discuss this issue or any other.
Jesus was foreordained to be the “lamb without blemish and without spot”(sinless) from “before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:19-20). He was “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). The absolute impeccability of Christ was the basis upon which He was sent by God to be the Savior of the world. Had Christ sinned, God’s plan to redeem mankind would have failed. The entire Godhead would have failed.
Jesus said near the beginning of His ministry that His meat was to do the will of God and to finish the work. He said that He “always” did the will of His Father (John 4:34; 8:29). He was prophesied to be God’s “righteous servant” in securing salvation for sinners (Isaiah 53:11). Isaiah wrote by inspiration and could not have been wrong in His 700 year old description of Christ.
But there is an even older prophecy of Christ’s sinless perfection. Genesis 3:15 predicted that there would come a time when the seed of woman (Christ, Galatians 4:4) would “crush” the head of Satan. Had Christ sinned this would not have happened and the prophecy would have failed.
Conclusion
We have seen several reasons for believing that Christ could not have sinned. The above passages lead us to conclude that Christ could not have sinned or failed and God still be God. The temptations of Christ (Matt. 4:1-11; 16:1; 22:18; John 8:6) were not to determine whether or not Christ would sin, but to provide us with a perfect example of how to overcome temptation. The temptation of Christ was not some divine fact finding mission or experiment.
The garden prayer was Christ’s request for the Father to help Him physically, which He did (compare Luke 22:43 with Matthew 4:11 — the angel ministered to Him). Jesus then departed from the garden with firm resolve and strength to deal with His arrest, trials, tortures and crucifixion. Jesus had prayed for the cup to “pass” or pass away, not in the sense of avoiding the cross, but in the sense of enduring it and that it would pass quickly. We know that He did not pray to sinfully avoid the cross, for Hebrews 12:2 speaks of Christ enduring the cross for the “joy that was set before Him.” Christ’s mission did involve and require a human body, but His spirit which animated that body was divine (Hebrews 10:5-10). Though his body was born in Bethlehem Ephrathah, His spirit was “of old, even from everlasting” (Micah 5:2).
For my article on the temptation of Christ see: http://www.biblebanner.com/ga_
–Tim Haile