The Impeccability of Jesus Christ

The Impeccability of Jesus Christ

The New Testament authors had no qualms about declaring that Jesus was truly human and telling us that Jesus committed no sin. Bible passages such as 2 Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 4:15, 1 Peter 2:22 and 1 John 3:5 “witness that He [Jesus] did not give in to temptation, nor violate the moral standards of God, nor was He inconsistent with the nature of his character.” That is, Jesus was sinless.

It is vital to our theology that Jesus was sinless. For only if Jesus was sinless could His death have been a vicarious substitution and fulfil God’s redemptive plan for man. If Jesus had not been sinless, then it would mean that He died for His own sins and not those of mankind. Had Jesus died for His own sins then His death could not have been accepted by the Father as a vicariously substitution for the punishment and judgement each of us are entitled to receive. Even though there is no serious debate that Jesus was anything but sinless, theologians have discussed the question of whether Jesus could have sinned if He had wanted. This is called the peccability of Christ. The opposing argument, i.e., impeccability, being that even if He had wanted, Jesus could not have sinned. Upon first consideration, one might view this question as being trivial; something to simply keep the theologians “out of mischief” when they have nothing better to do. However, there are some very appropriate reasons for examining this issue.

The first reason to examine the issue of Christ’s peccability/impeccability is so that we might obtain a better understanding and a more in depth knowledge about both Jesus Christ and God, just as God has invited us. This is the same reason that we study Theology proper. When we arrive at an answer to this question, we will have additional knowledge about Jesus’ preincarnate state and a better understanding of the meaning of the statement “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever .”

Second, some theologians have argued that the peccability of Jesus has a direct impact on the humanity of Christ. That is, if Jesus was not peccable then just how “human” was he? Could he have been “true man” if he were not able to sin like the rest of mankind? (Note: this is a question of whether Christ could have sinned; not that Christ had to have sinned in order to be human.) Morris indirectly asks if Jesus’ impecca...

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...t Christ is impeccable as my stand on this issue. While the Bible passages which proclaim Jesus’ sinlessness and His impeccability are compelling, the ultimate arguments which convince me is the nature of Jesus, the God-man. For me, Jesus is clearly both God and man; fully the two natures and never separable. If Jesus is God then it means that He must be holy, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresence. Given these attributes and the fact that God is, by definition, immutable then I must conclude that Jesus is impeccable. In conclusion therefore, we have seen that there are several arguments which attempt to prove peccability of Jesus. However, all of these arguments fail to be convincing and have inherent fallacies. On the other hand, we have seen that there are several arguments which prove beyond a doubt that Jesus Christ is impeccable. Each of these arguments, by their very definition and by logical conclusions they lead to, show us that Jesus was impeccable.

For myself, while I would like to believe that Jesus is peccable, the evidence and weight of conviction is clearly proves that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Second Person of the Trinity, the true God-man, is impeccable.