Bruce Ware in his book, The Man Christ Jesus: Theological Questions on the Humanity of Christ (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013) (click to view) teaches the impeccability of Christ, i.e., that Christ in His humanity could not have sinned because of His deity.
Bruce A. Ware says Christ could not sin because of His divine nature but Christ did not sin in His humanity because he was totally dependent on the Word, the Holy Spirit, and His Father.
This is a departure from the way impeccability has been defended in the past by some. Before we examine this new defense of Christ’s inability to sin, let’s ask, “What has this theological debate have to do with my struggle with my particularly nagging sin?” You might be saying, “Just yesterday, I lost again the battle with this sin. Today, I am guilt-ridden. I need help, not a theological discussion of whether Jesus was peccable or impeccable.” Let’s examine this problem and make it personal.
God tests us to make us better (Genesis 22:1). Satan tempts us to make us sin (James 1:13, 14; 4:7). God tested Joseph to make him a leader. Satan tempted Joseph through Potiphar’s wife to stop him. Satan audaciously tempted Jesus. We shall see how Jesus defeated sin and did not yield to temptation will be very important for you and me in overcoming our pet sin or sins that just will not go away.
There is a longstanding debate concerning the question, “Could Christ have sinned?” Was Christ impeccable or not able to sin? Or was Christ peccable or able not to sin?
There are clear statements of Scripture on this subject
(Wayne Grudem who believes in the impeccability of Christ, makes these observations)
1. Jesus was tempted in all points as we are tempted (Hebrews 4:15)
Before we move to the next clear statement, we have to ask about the statement in James 1:13, which says God is not tempted to sin. Was not Jesus God and was He not tempted? The answer is “yes.” Jesus was tempted in His humanity but not in His deity. So, “Jesus was tempted” according to Hebrews 4:15 in his humanity. Jesus was not tempted according to James 1:13 in relationship with his deity.
2. Jesus did not sin (1 Peter 2:22)
“This is as far as we can go in terms of clear and explicit affirmations of Scripture” (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, 538) (click to view).
Let’s elaborate on these two observations
1. Because Christ was man, He could be tempted
Christ’s temptation was both unlike and like our temptations.
a) Christ’s temptation was UNLIKE our temptations because Christ had no sin nature as is described in James 1:13, 14. Jesus never experienced the internal struggle with sin that James graphically revealed. Christ never had the battle of Romans 7:15 or Galatians 5:17.
Ryrie makes this important distinction about the temptations of Christ: “Christ’s three different times of temptation were suited to the God/Man” (Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology, 305).
1) In the wilderness Jesus faced temptations no ordinary person faces. Jesus was tempted to turn stones into bread and to prove He is God by jumping off a tall building and to accept all the kingdoms of the entire world. We will never face these temptations.
2) In Gethsemane Christ was tempted not to go to the cross and make atonement for the sins of the world.
3) On the cross Christ was tempted to come down and end His suffering: “If you are the Son of God come down.” While these temptations were unique to Christ, Christ was in other ways or areas tempted like we are.
b) Christ’s temptation was LIKE our temptations according to Hebrews 4:15: “He was tempted in all points like as we are.” Does this mean that Christ experienced every temptation that you and I face? Was Christ tempted to watch R-rated movies? No! Was Jesus tempted to hack computers? No! Was Jesus tempted to lie when filing his taxes? No! Christ experienced temptation in the same three areas that all of us are tempted. These three arenas of temptation are listed in 1 John 2:16.
1) He was tempted with the “lust of the flesh” or physically to turn stones into bread.
2) He was tempted with the “lust of the eyes” or emotionally to please the people by leaping safely from the top of the temple.
3) He was tempted with the “pride of life” or ambitious thinking when He was offered all the kingdoms of the world.
Because Jesus was tempted in all of the same areas that we are tempted, He can be our sympathizing High Priest (Hebrews 4:14-16). Because Christ was man, He was tempted. Next, we will see from Scripture, that because He was God, He could not have sinned.
2. Because Christ was God, He could not have sinned.
The major objection raised by peccability advocates is that if Christ could not have sinned, then His temptations were not real.
Charles Hodges believed in the peccability of Christ, i.e., Christ had the potential to sin, and raised this issue: “Temptation implies the possibility of sin. If it was impossible for Christ to sin, then his temptation was not real and He cannot sympathize with his people” (Systematic Theology, vol. 2, 457). William Shedd, who believed in the impeccability of Christ, i.e., Christ was not able to sin, responded to Hodges: “A person who cannot sin, it is said, cannot be tempted to sin. This is not correct; anymore that it would be correct to say that because an army cannot be conquered it cannot be attacked” (Dogmatic Theology, vol. 2, 336). “It is possible to attempt the impossible” (John Walvoord, Jesus Christ Our Lord, 45).
We mentioned earlier that Christ did not have a sinful nature as we do. In this regard, Christ was like Adam, who also did not have a sinful nature before the fall. “Advocates of impeccability state that Christ could not have sinned because He had no internal sin nature” (Michael McGhee Canham, Evangelicals, Hermeneutics, and the Impeccability Debate, The Master’s Seminary Journal, Spring 2000, 106). What is wrong with this argument?
Even though Adam before the fall had no sin nature, he still sinned. Christ was unlike Adam, however, because Christ had a divine nature.
Ware believes that because “Jesus was also fully God, and as such it has seemed to most theologians4 (myself included) that he was impeccable, that is, he could not sin” (Bruce Ware, JETS 53/1 (March 2010) The Man Christ Jesus). So, Ware sees the union of Christ’s divinity and humanity affecting Jesus’ ability not to sin.
John Walvoored applies this thought to three areas of Christ’s divinity. According to Walvoord, Christ did not sin because his divine attributes dominated his human nature.
Jesus as God possessed the divine attribute of immutability. “Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Christ was holy in eternity past and could not have sinned. He is still the same today. No one would say about Christ in Heaven today with a human nature that he could sin.
Jesus as God also possessed the divine attribute of omnipotence. The person who yields to sin demonstrates weakness. Christ had infinite power to resist temptation.
Finally, Jesus possessed the divine attribute of omniscience. Eve was deceived when she sinned. Because Christ knew the eternal consequences of His sin to Himself i.e., He could not be our sinless substitute, and to the human race i.e., He could not save us from our sin (John Walvoord, Jesus Christ Our Lord, 145).
Wayne Grudem makes a similar argument: Although there were some things (such as being hungry or thirsty or weak) that Jesus experienced in his human nature alone and were not experienced in his divine nature (see below), nonetheless, an act of sin would have been a moral act that would apparently have involved the whole person of Christ. Therefore, if he had sinned, it would have involved both his human and divine natures. But if Jesus as a person had sinned, involving both his human and divine natures in sin, then God himself would have sinned, and he would have ceased to be God. Yet that is clearly impossible because of the infinite holiness of God’s nature. Therefore, if we are asking if it was actually possible for Jesus to have sinned, it seems that we must conclude that it was not possible. The union of his human and divine natures in one person prevented it (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, 538).
Bruce A. Ware says Christ could not sin because of His divinity but Christ did not sin in His humanity because He was totally dependent on the Word, the Holy Spirit, and His Father. Ware does not follow Walvood who contended that Jesus did not sin because of the divine nature.
Although Ware has agreed with Grudem that Christ could not have sinned because of his deity, Ware insists that the questions of why Christ could not sin and why he did not sin require, instead, remarkably different answers.
To understand better the distinction here invoked between why something could not occur and why it did not occur, Ware provides an illustration. imagine a swimmer who wants to attempt breaking the world’s record for the longest continuous swim (which, I’ve read, is something over 70 miles). As this swimmer trains, besides his daily swims of 5 to 10 miles, he includes weekly swims of greater distances. On some of the longer swims of 30 and 40 miles, he notices that his muscles can begin to tighten and cramp a bit, and he becomes worried that in attempting to break the world record, his muscles may cramp severely and he could then drown. So, he consults with friends, and they decide to arrange for a boat to follow along behind the swimmer 20 or 30 feet back, close enough to pick him up should any serious problem arise but far enough away so as not to interfere with the attempted historic swim itself. On the appointed day, conditions being just right, the swimmer dives in and begins his attempt at breaking the world record. As he swims, the boat follows along comfortably behind, ready to pick him up if needed. But no help is needed; with determination and resolve, the swimmer relentlessly swims and swims and swims, and in due time he succeeds in breaking the world record.
Now, consider two questions: (1) Why is it that in this record-breaking event, the swimmer could not have drowned? The answer is that the boat was there all the while, ready to rescue him if needed. But (2) Why is it the swimmer did not drown? The answer is that he kept swimming! Notice that the answer to the second question has nothing at all to do with the boat, i.e., it has nothing to do with the answer to the first question. In fact, if you gave the answer of “the boat” to question 2, the swimmer would be both astonished and dismayed. It simply is not true that the swimmer did not drown because the boat was there. The boat, quite literally, had absolutely nothing to do with why the swimmer did not drown. Furthermore, although the swimmer knew full well that he could not drown due to the boat’s following along behind him, that knowledge had nothing to do with why he did not drown since he also knew that if he ever relied on the boat, his mission of breaking the world record would be forfeited. So although he knew that he could not drown due to the boat, he also knew that he could only accomplish his goal by swimming as if there were no boat there at all.
Grudem, as well, advocates this view:
But the question remains, “How then could Jesus’ temptations be real?” .... Jesus refused to rely on his divine nature to make obedience easier for him. In like manner, it seems appropriate to conclude that Jesus met every temptation to sin, not by his divine power, but on the strength of his human nature alone (though, of course, it was not “alone” because Jesus, in exercising the kind of faith that humans should exercise, was perfectly depending on God the Father and the Holy Spirit at every moment). The moral strength of his divine nature was there as a sort of “backstop” that would have prevented him from sinning in any case (and therefore we can say that it was not possible for him to sin), but he did not rely on the strength of his divine nature to make it easier for him to face temptations, and his refusal to turn the stones into bread at the beginning of his ministry is a clear indication of this (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, 466).
Ware continues, As one considers again the temptations of Christ, it seems that one should rightly hold that the theanthropic Jesus could not sin because he was God. But this does not necessarily answer the question of why he did not sin. And, in fact, the answer Scripture suggests to us is this: Jesus did not sin, not because he relied on the supernatural power of his divine nature or because his divine nature overpowered his human nature, keeping him from sinning, but because he utilized all of the resources given to him in his humanity.
1) He loved and meditated on God’s Word.
Jesus quoted Deuteronomy three times when he faced temptations in Matthew four.
2) He prayed to his Father; he trusted in the wisdom and rightness of his Father’s will and Word.
Jesus prayed, “O Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, your will be done” (Matthew 26:43).
3) He relied on the supernatural power of the Spirit to strengthen him to do all that he was called upon to do.
The wisdom Jesus received came from the Holy Spirit according to the prophecy in Isaiah 11:1-2. Jesus lived his life in reliance on the Spirit so that his resistance to temptation and his obedience to the will of the Father took place through, not apart from, the empowerment provided him as the second Adam, the seed of Abraham, the son of David. Recall again Peter’s claim that God anointed Jesus “with the Holy Spirit and with power,” and that he went about doing good [the moral life and obedience of Christ] as well as healing all who are oppressed by the Devil [the miracles he performed], “for God was with him” (Acts 10:38). Although he was God, and although he was impeccable as the God-man, he resisted temptation and obeyed the Father not by his divine nature but by the power of the Spirit who indwelt him (Bruce Ware, The Man Christ Jesus: Theological Questions on the Humanity of Christ, Wheaton: Crossway, 2013, 81–84).
We believe that part of the humility of Christ was His independent use of His attributes. He gave up no attributes, only the selfish use of those attributes for Himself. There were times when Christ performed the supernatural by His deity. He forgave sins while on earth from His deity (Mk 4:1-12). He never ceased being God. Regarding temptation, He did not depend on His attributes to overcome sin, but because He was fully God, He did not and could not sin. But so we could “follow his steps: who did no sin” (1 Peter 2:21, 22), He did not sin by means we could emulate.
Consider afresh the staggering command of 1 Pet 2:21-22: Christ left us an example that "we should follow in his steps, who committed no sin. . . ." If Christ resisted temptation and obeyed the Father out of his divine nature, how could he be an example for us? If Christ lived out his life and carried out his mission in the power of his divinity, how could we be commanded rightly to follow in his steps? But if Christ lived the prototype of new covenant life, by prayer and the Word and the power of the Spirit, and then if he shared those same resources with us, his followers, then we can rightly be called to live like him (Bruce Ware, JETS 53/1 (March 2010) The Man Christ Jesus).
We can use the same means Jesus used to overcome sin
1) Mediating on God’s Word
Jesus defeated Satan’s temptation in Matthew four by quoting verses from Deuteronomy that he had memorized and meditated on. The following two verses teach us that memorizing and meditating on God’s Word, can also help us overcome sin: “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word …. I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you (Psalm 119:9, 11).”
2) Praying to our Father
Jesus who practiced the spiritual discipline to aid him in overcoming temptation taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Luke 11:4).
3) Relying on the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit
We possess the same Holy Spirit as Christ to give us victory over sin: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).