Whether Christ Could Have Been Tempted As We Are Without Being Able to Sin

The Garrett Ashley Mullet Show

Home prices may soon plunge by 15-20%, and the number of Americans making a habit of concealed carrying handguns doubled between 2015-2019. That is, we are fast entering a circumstance and condition here in the U.S. which sees not just more sin, but also more temptation to sin, as economic trouble combines with social strife to produce conflict and consternation.

For instance, we may be tempted to brag about how much better at self improvement we are, or we might call ourselves and our friends "10's." Or we might dress up as the opposite gender for a year, and then kill ourselves when the reality is too awful and disturbing.

What we know for sure is that there is a great deal of wickedness and pain in the world, because of sin. And yet, as Christians, we know that Jesus was tempted with sin during his incarnation. And we further know that Christ resisted that temptation, and remained sinless, just as it is written.

But could our Lord have ever even possibly sinned? Or did he entirely lack the capability to sin by nature of his being God?

Back in 2012, R.C. Sproul and Sinclair Ferguson discussed the impeccability or peccability of Christ. That is what you call the two positions on this question. But they explained that their conclusion is that, in order to actually have been tempted in every respect as we are, as Hebrews says, Christ had to have been able to give into the temptation to sin. He must have been capable of actually sinning to have been actually tempted as we are.

To deny this by emphasizing the divinity of Christ is, Ferguson fears, to verge on the ancient heresy of Docetism, saying that it only appeared as though Christ was fully man, but that this could not have been in conjunction with his full deity.

On the other hand, Christ the Center, a podcast put out by Reformed Forum, put out a lengthy discussion on this topic back in 2018, and they came to just the opposite conclusion. Christ could not possibly have sinned, and did not even have the ability to sin, but was only tempted externally in all ways as we are; he was never tempted internally in the way we are. That is, his heart and mind were never really tempted, since that would depend on, and indicate, a sinful nature.

Whereas Sproul and Ferguson perceive a risk of Docetism in holding to impeccability, Christ the Center expresses concern that our belief in the hypostatic union is in jeopardy if we can envision a scenario in which the second person of the trinitarian God could have sinned, and been truly separated from the other two persons of the trinity.

So who is right, and who is mistaken? Which of these two views is most correct?

Though I favor Sproul and Ferguson's, my fallback once again is that God is ultimately incomprehensible, and that we cannot know and understand him as fully as we ourselves are knowable, though we can know Him in what He has revealed clearly about Himself.

This is also a factor of His holiness, that He is set apart and other than us. His ways are not our ways. But what is not up for debate is that Christ was sinless. That much is quite clear. And so, in some sense, the crucially important piece is known here, that our Savior is perfect and without blemish in a way we could not have been, but also in a way that makes it actually possible for us to become so as well.

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