Articles
Him Instead of Us
What if Jesus had ______? Go ahead pick any sin, just one, because that is all it would have taken. What if Jesus had lied, stolen, murdered? What if Jesus had cursed? What if Jesus had been immoral, only once? It would have only taken one of these or any other sin, for Jesus to have lost the ability to be our Savior! Have you ever thought about that?
"You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin." (1 John 3:5) "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Cor 5:21). Do we fully understand what Christ had to do for us? I don't know about you, but I've probably already sinned today, and I'm sure I will in some way sin before the end of the day. I'll fall into some temptation to gossip, I'll have some impure thought, maybe I'll just break the speed limit. In some way though, I'll commit sin.
Jesus came and lived among sinners. He was "One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin." (Heb 5:15). I don't know how He did it. I don't know how He never sinned in His anger, how He held His tongue when people reviled Him. I don't understand how any human being could live 33 years, and not sin. He was a lamb without blemish. But I know with confidence that He accomplished it.
What the world lost in Adam & Eve, it gained in Christ. He came to succeed where Adam failed. "For what the law could not do, in that, it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." (Rom 8:3). Jesus was born in the flesh like you and me, but while it seems our nature to sin, it was not His. If Jesus had sinned, He would have been one of us, and God could not have used Him.
John said "in Him is no sin" (1 John 3:5) and Paul said Jesus was one "who knew no sin" (2 Cor 5:21). And yet we also know He was tempted constantly, even face to face by Satan, and yet "was without sin" (Heb 5:15).
Jesus was obviously very hungry after fasting for 40 days, and His body most certainly had the physical urge to turn the stone into bread when the devil suggested doing so, but our LORD knew He could not, and He would not allow Himself to submit to the temptation.
Physically, as a walking-talking human, Jesus could have sinned, nothing physical would have stopped Him. He had the opportunity, just like Adam & Eve and you and me. Morally though, and in His very nature, Jesus could not have sinned. His nature was in harmony with the will of God, and not the flesh, and that is where we often fail. We follow the flesh, even knowing full well the will of God that we should be choosing to follow.
Because Jesus was in harmony with God and did not sin, He was able to shed His blood to pay the price required of God for sin, and He paid it one time for all time, something all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant could never do. Under the New Covenant, the one we live under today, we know God when we commit to Him, He forgives our wickedness because of the blood of the sinless One, and He remembers our sins no more. (Jeremiah 31:34, Heb 8:11)
This is why we choose to follow Christ. This is why we live differently than the world around us. This is why God can claim us when we come to Him in submission and obedience of His commands to be "washed in the blood of THE Lamb". (Rev 7:14)
