Skip to main content

The Impeccability of Christ

The doctrine of the Impeccability of Christ states that Christ could not sin, i.e. He was incapable of sinning. For one thing, it is certain that Christ’s temptations were real (Heb. 4:15), that Christ experienced struggle (Mt. 26:36-46), and that Christ did not sin (2Co. 5:21; Heb. 7:26; Jas. 5:6; 1Pe. 2:22; 1Pe. 3:18). Those who hold on to the "Peccability view" believe that Christ could have sinned but He chose not to sin. But, such a view tries to segregate the divine and the human in Christ, as if Christ was devoid of His divine nature when "in the days of His flesh"; however, the fact is that Christ in the days of His flesh was the Word Incarnate: fully God and fully Man, and His humanity could not annul His eternal moral perfection by any means.

Conclusion – Impeccability : Temptation implies possibility of sin in general (humans) but not in specific (Christ). For instance, the testing of gold implies the possibility of things not being gold in general, but not the possibility of pure gold not being pure gold. The end of testing gold is to distinguish true gold from false gold. Thus, Christ’s not falling in sin proves He could not sin. Since, Jesus is God and sin is rebellion against God, Jesus could not sin, for it is impossible for Him to rebel against Himself, unless His omniscience and omnipotence were brought into question. Thus, being human, He was tempted, but being divine and undivided in His moral nature, He was essentially holy and so could not sin.

Related Articles
Arthur Pink, The Impeccability of Christ
Got Questions, Could Jesus Have Sinned?
John Walvoord, The Impeccability of Christ
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Placebo and the Philosophy of Mind and Matter in Drug Research

A placebo is a non-therapeutic substance administered under the camouflage of medication to deceive patients into believing that they are receiving medications; this done solely for psychological and not for physiological effects. Placebo may usually be used to compare its effects with the effects of other drugs in drug research. Let's take the case of an experiment that tries to establish whether a particular drug, say to treat weariness, is genuine or merely has the effects of a placebo. Suppose 20 candidates are chosen for this experiment. 10 are given the drug and the rest are put on a placebo while they are told that the placebo is a genuine medication. They need to make sure that the deception is well carried on for the success of the experiment. If both the groups make similar improvements after taking the treatments, the new drug seems to only function as a placebo in effect. The basic hypothesis of the placebo raises the question of mind over matter. Of course, this pushes...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is Theology? Its Divisions with Short Descriptions

Published in REVIVE, May 2012 (Malayalam Edition) A simple and literal definition of “theology” would be “the science of divine things”. It comes from two Greek words theos meaning “God” and logia meaning “discourse or speech”. In modern times, it is the stream of knowledge that differentiates the secular pursuit of knowledge from the sacred one because of its starting point: all secular studies begin with reason and experience while theology begins with faith. The starting point for all extra-theological studies is the world (Latin: saeculum); the starting point for theology is the Word of God. So, while one may say that theology is the study of God, the factual definition would be that theology is the science that rationally pursues the understanding of the self-revelation of God in the Scriptures. It would be interesting to note that many of the universities had originally begun as seminaries and theology was once known as the Queen of Sciences. However, with the dawn of theAge of E...
5 comments
Read more

Reliability, Predictability, and Paul the Octopus

Paul the Octopus has recently become very famous after his predictions for Germany and Spain during the World Cup 2010 came right. The 100% accuracy tag distinguishes him from any other diviner who had attempted a prediction during the World Cup. There were responses and reactions from various people including sportsmen, statesmen, and mathematicians. Whatever, the use of Paul has demonstrated once again that mankind's search for an extra-temporal, psychic foresight has not quelled through the historical calendar returning a decade over this millennium. The question before us is can such predictions as those of Paul be counted on as reliable (in other words, can they be seriously taken as true)? The mathematicians have plumped for chance. It's all a matter of probability, they say ( BBC News ). However, the argument of chance in itself is weak. The mathematics of chance will calculate that the probability of Paul being right seven times out of seven is 1/128. But, the conclusi...
3 comments
Read more