The Absolute Sinlessness of Christ
I. The sinlessness of our Lord has been supposed to be compromised by the conditions of the development of His life as man sometimes by particular acts and sayings which are recorded of Him. When, for instance, we are told in the Epistle to the Hebrews that our Lord "learned obedience by the things that He suffered," this, it is argued, clearly means progress from moral deficiency to moral sufficiency, and as a consequence it implies in Him a time when He was morally imperfect; but, although the growth of our Lord's moral nature as man implies that as a truly human nature He was finite, it does not by any means follow that such a growth involved sin as its starting point. A moral development may be perfect and pure, and yet be a development. A progress from a more or less expanded degree of perfection is not to be confounded with a progress from sin to holiness. In the latter case there is an element of antagonism in the will which is wholly wanting in the former. Christ's life is a revelation of the moral life of God, completing God's previous revelations, not merely teaching us what God is in formulas addressed to our understanding, but showing us what He is in characters which may be read by our very senses and which may take possession of our hearts.
II. Now, the sinless Christ satisfies a deep want of the soul of man the want of an ideal. Other ideals, great as they are in their several ways, fall short, each of them, of perfection, in some particular, on some side. When we examine them closely, however reverently we scan them, there is One beyond them all only One One who does not fail. They, standing beneath His throne, say, each of them, to us with St. Paul, "Be ye followers of me, even as I am of Christ." But He, above them all, asks each generation of His worshippers asks each generation of His critics that passes along beneath His throne, "Which of you convinceth Me of sin?"
III. The sinless Christ is also the true Reconciler between God and man. His death was the crowning act of a life which throughout had been sacrificial; but, had He been conscious of any inward stain, how could He have desired how could He have dared to offer Himself in sacrifice to free a world from sin? Had there been in Him any taint the least of personal evil to purge away, His death might have been endured on account of His own guilt. It is His absolute sinlessness which makes it certain that He died, as He lived, for others.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit,No. 511.
A Sense of Sin
I. A sense of sin is chiefly fed by the Holy Ghost on the fruits of evil, the results which it always bears. Those are the providences of God to awaken and strengthen the sense of sin; and He has surrounded us with the sorrows and the evils and the shame that spring from weakness, in order to prevent the healthy soul from becoming indifferent to evil. The act of sin in a man is not the real spiritual evil that has long been lurking and hiding about a man's mind and heart and soul. The fault is only the bodily shape of the spiritual wickedness by which God in His mercy revealed the sinner to Himself. We are not punished at last for that lie, or for that blow, or that word sharper than any blow; but we are punished for that internal nature, for that violent heart, for that unloving and unlovely soul which cannot get to heaven, which has daily grown by use and become by habit our second nature, slowly overgrowing and choking all the good seed which our Lord has sown in the fields of our life, and counteracting all the graces by which He has sought throughout our life to give us a new heart in communion with His own.
II. When a man has been kept from all open and flagrant acts of sin by the Hand that held him up, he is apt to grow self-righteous and self-satisfied; he slowly enters into the family of the Pharisee. The sins we do speak for themselves, and the danger is light compared with that self-esteem, or at least that self-content, that prevented men from coming to the Baptist, and at last prevented them from coming to our Lord. There are truer measures for sin than those which the law has laid down. The use of sin is to convince us of our sinfulness, to bear witness with the Word of God that we cannot win heaven by our own goodness, nor deserve the good things which the Lord provides.
J. Gott, Family Churchman,April 28th, 1886.
References: John 8:46. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. ix., No. 492; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. v., p. 6; H. P. Liddon, Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament,p. 83; Contemporary Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 315; S. Leathes, Preacher's Lantern,vol. iv., p. 299. John 8:46-59. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 150; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 60.