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L I G H T ON PUZZLING PASSAGES and PROBLEMS By R. A. TORREY
Was it possible fo r our Lord to sin? • It was not. Our Lord was holy. His holiness was the fundamental fact about His character. He was absolutely holy. “The Holy One” (A cts'4:27, 30). As abso lutely holy, sin made no appeal whatever to Him. He loved righteousness and hated iniquity (Heb. 1 :19). Sin found no response in Him whatever. He was tempted in all points like as we are, but He was tempted “without sin” (Heb. 4:15). The Greek word translated “without” in this passage means “apart from.” The sense of it is something with which one has no associa tion whatever, something with which one has absolutely no connection or fellowship. Sin found absolutely no response in the heart of our Lord Jesus. The impossibility of His sinning, however, lay entirely in His own perfectly holy character: It was a moral impossibility, but none the less abso lute because moral. Just as God could not lie (Titus 1:2), because He would not lie, because in Him was no darkness at all (1 John 1:5), so Jesus could not sin because He would not sin. I f the Lord Jesus could not sin, in what way did the temptation affect H im ? For if He could not sin there would be no glory in the temptation. We have given this question just as written, but we think our questioner has left out some words. We presume that he means, no glory in the victory over the temptation. The fact that our Lord could not sin
does not make the temptation any less real. Temptations come from appetites and desires which are perfectly proper in their place. For example, take the Lord’s first temptation. He had been without food for forty days. He was hungry, one of the hungriest men that ever lived, and so the temptation to get something to ¿at was very real, and therefore it was a real test ing and a real temptation. But not for one moment even in thought did our Lord yield to the suggestion of gratifying His perfectly proper appetite, His hunger, in an unlawful way. So with our temptations, the longing may be very real and very intense, and therefore the temptation very real, but if one is holy, he will not yield to the temptation to gratify the longing or desire in a wrong way. That does not make the temptation any less real. As to the glory in victory over the temptation, there was all the more glory in it because it came from His absolute holiness,_and as the temptation was real the victory was real. Could we say that in H is human nature it was possible fo r our Lord to sin, but as God man in H is Divine nature He could not do any sin f No, Jesus was not only holy as God man, He was holy as man. In His human char acter He was absolutely holy and therefore could not sin. In His human nature, which was an absolutely holy nature, He could not sin, irrespective of the fact that He was also Divine.
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