Comments on: The Impeccability of Jesus Christ https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc551/ Reformed Theological Resources Thu, 02 Jan 2020 01:02:32 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 By: Elmer G. White https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc551/#comment-3598308 Thu, 02 Jan 2020 01:02:32 +0000 http://reformedforum.org/?p=10361#comment-3598308 In reply to Elmer G. White.

Forgot to mention, this is probably a result of adventists promoting a very false she-prophet, another thing commanded against in Matt 7.15-23, notice no forgiveness mentioned at all.

They disobey Jesus at every single turn, yet they claim to keep a day holy! Listen dear reader, liars, idolators, blasphemers, thieves, keep nothing holy! These people deceive themselves and many others.

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By: Elmer G. White https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc551/#comment-3598307 Thu, 02 Jan 2020 00:57:57 +0000 http://reformedforum.org/?p=10361#comment-3598307 The seventh day adventists are positive the jesus they pray to was capable of sin. They totally do not get John 5:19, so they do not obey it.

They have been tricked into worshipping this aspect of satan. They do not have ears to hear.

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By: Bill Baldwin https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc551/#comment-3546239 Wed, 15 Aug 2018 01:12:45 +0000 http://reformedforum.org/?p=10361#comment-3546239 In reply to Hermonta Godwin.

I don’t believe I’m saying that Jesus’ humanity trumps his divinity. The impeccabilists wish to argue that Christ’s divinity made him incapable of choosing evil even with respect to his humanity. I am not saying the opposite. I.e. I am not saying the Christ’s humanity made him capable of choosing evil with respect to his divinity. Neither side trumps. Being human, like Adam, he was good but capable of choosing that which was not good. On the other hand, being divine, he was INcapable of choosing to sin. This is a paradox consistent with orthodox Biblical Christology. Christ was mortal and immortal, finite and infinite, tempted and untemptable. On my side, the humanity does not override the divinity, nor vice versa. On the impeccabilist side, the divinity overrides the humanity and he becomes incapable of sin with respect to either nature. You won’t find a corresponding trumping on my side of the argument.

I’m not sure what you mean by libertarian free will. I believe Adam before the Fall had the ability to choose good or evil without any absolute inclination to one or the other. I believe he had a non-absolute, lapsable inclination to choose the good. He could (and in his case did) exercise his capability to override that inclination. Jesus, the second Adam, freely chose the good. Nothing about his human nature forced him to do so. He took the same test Adam took with the same nature Adam had. And he passed.

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By: Hermonta Godwin https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc551/#comment-3546234 Tue, 14 Aug 2018 22:03:00 +0000 http://reformedforum.org/?p=10361#comment-3546234 In reply to Hermonta Godwin.

Bill,
You keep saying that you don’t want Jesus’ humanity to be trumped by His divinity but it seems that you wish the opposite to be true: his divinity is trumped by his humanity.

Next, do you believe that (pre fall) Adam had libertarian free will? If not, then you dont believe that Adam had complete freedom while in the garden before the fall, right? If Adam didnt have complete freedom then Jesus not having complete freedom to choose evil or good, would not be a problem as far as properly representing us goes.

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By: Bill Baldwin https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc551/#comment-3546226 Tue, 14 Aug 2018 17:03:39 +0000 http://reformedforum.org/?p=10361#comment-3546226 In reply to Hermonta Godwin.

Depends what you mean by “could”. The discussion ends up in the woods on this one by bringing in considerations of God’s eternal decree that Christ would not fail. In that sense, of course he couldn’t just as I cannot help but type the words I am typing. After all, God foreordained them. This, of course, is not a Biblical way of looking at human choice before or after the Fall.

Brushing that aside, it seems to me that yes, Jesus had the capability to fail. And I don’t just mean his body had the capability of performing sinful acts and his lips could physically frame statements that would be lies. Jesus was not human merely with respect to his body. His humanity was complete. His mind and his will also had the capability to think sinful thoughts and make sinful decisions. Just like Adam. But unlike Adam, Jesus chose not to exercise the capability even though he possessed it. Instead, he exercised his capability to remain faithful to God and submit to his will.

Jesus had the complete freedom to choose righteousness or sin. Just as with Adam, there was no absolute necessity of his human nature compelling him to choose good. Nor does the divine nature, with respect to which he CANNOT sin, get to trump his humanity and compel choices that for a mere human would be unconstrained. This is the monophysite or Eutychian error in which the divinity overpowers the humanity and Jesus does not have a true human nature but only a combined nature which is essentially divine.

If the man Christ Jesus refrained from sin because his divinity offered him no alternative, then Jesus is not the second Adam. He does not succeed where Adam failed. And thus he does not succeed on our behalf. Since we in Adam failed the original test, we need a second Adam who passes the same test. Impeccability argues that Jesus took a different test. He did not pass the original by choosing to obey when he could have chosen otherwise. Rather, he rewrote the original test so that it was impossible to fail. That’s not salvation; it’s the Kobayashi Maru.

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By: Hermonta Godwin https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc551/#comment-3546206 Tue, 14 Aug 2018 02:51:55 +0000 http://reformedforum.org/?p=10361#comment-3546206 In reply to Bill Baldwin.

Bill,
How would you answer the question of whether Jesus could fail?

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By: Bill Baldwin https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc551/#comment-3546195 Mon, 13 Aug 2018 19:42:30 +0000 http://reformedforum.org/?p=10361#comment-3546195 This discussion considers two possibilities: 1) Christ, being divine, could not sin, and 2) Christ, being human, had a sinful human nature and therefore could sin. Having rightly rejected the second option, the speakers consider the first option obviously correct. I feel the discussion needs to address an obvious objection and consider a third option.

The obvious objection comes in response to F. W. Kremer’s observation, “Unless therefore, the divine in Christ could sin, he could not sin at all.” Or, as Adam York puts it, “But bringing it back to the question that our listeners should recoil from, if we just ask them could God sin? No.” (Hi Adam! Long time, no talk.) A few similar questions should point out my difficulty with these statements. Could God have a beginning? Could God be finite? Could God grow in wisdom and stature? Could God be tired? Could he sleep? Could God die? No, no, no, no, no, and no. Yet Jesus did all these things. And so it is orthodox Christology to state–“improperly” but truly–that God had a beginning in the womb of the Virgin Mary. God was finite in the body of Jesus. God grew in wisdom and stature. God became tired. The Keeper of Israel slumbered and slept. On the cross, the eternal God died.

We cannot resolve this paradox or rationalize these impossibilities. We can only state them as a means to provoke ourselves and one another to faith and awe. The discussion touches on the heresy of Nestorianism which so separates the natures of Christ as to make him two persons. But we must equally avoid the mirror image of that heresy–monophysitism or Eutychianism. We must not turn Christ into a person with a single nature created by the union of the human and the divine (in which, as one might expect, the divine trumps the human). If we do, we will make arguments like the above. Could God do X? No. Then Christ could not do X. I feel this argument is a dangerous attempt to rationalize the glorious Nicene and Chalcedonian impossibilities and paradoxes. We must staunchly affirm that the divinity of Christ does NOT keep him from any unfallen human capability, regardless of how contrary those things are to the nature of God. In particular, as mentioned in the discussion, God cannot be tempted. Yet Jesus was tempted.

I realize those in the discussion assert that Jesus being tempted does not mean he was CAPABLE of sin. But I don’t feel they prove that point. Surely God cannot be tempted precisely because he does not have a nature which can, even hypothetically, be induced to sin. Surely Christ’s temptations were real precisely because he could theoretically have given in but chose not to.

The participants in the discussion argue that Jesus did not have a sinful human nature. Absolutely true. But I feel they did not address the possibility that Jesus had the same nature as the first Adam prior to the Fall. This seems to me to be the teaching of Scripture. Adam was sinless but peccable. He did not HAVE to sin but he was free to choose to do so. Had he chosen not to, he would have been confirmed in righteousness and glorified. He would have been made impeccable, and he would have passed on that impeccability to his posterity, to all those for whom he was a federal head. Surely Adam’s failure, and the nature of the Life held out to him had he succeeded, must provide for us the terms under which Christ succeeded. If Christ was never peccable, then he has not earned impeccability on our behalf and cannot gift it to us as the Second Adam. If Christ was never peccable, it’s almost as though God’s admitting he made a mistake with the first Adam. God never should have let the man have the option of sinning because of COURSE he’ll end up exercising that option. So God fixes that mistake by giving us a head who doesn’t even have the option.

I don’t think that’s the Biblical story. The Biblical story is not that Jesus was tempted but there was never really any jeopardy because he COULD not sin. The story is that he was tempted–genuinely tempted–and DID not sin. Because he overcame that temptation he was confirmed in righteousness at his resurrection. Now he is impeccable. He cannot be tempted ever again.

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By: Timothy Joseph https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc551/#comment-3545670 Tue, 31 Jul 2018 13:46:31 +0000 http://reformedforum.org/?p=10361#comment-3545670 This show reiterates the importance of how our beliefs in one area of doctrine affect our theology overall. Impeccablility affects our understanding of who Christ was and is, as well as, who we will be in eternity! Thank you for this discussion! Jesus indeed was tempted like us in all things, yet without sin.

Tim

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By: William Duncan https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc551/#comment-3545512 Fri, 27 Jul 2018 09:01:06 +0000 http://reformedforum.org/?p=10361#comment-3545512 Really great episode to provide an opportunity to examine various doctrinal positions one might have. Just to ask someone to give their own position can open a dialogue to worlds of theology. I even went back and asked my adult daughter the question, “Could Jesus have sinned?”, just to see if I had taught her when she was younger the doctrines needed to arrive at the correct conclusion. She passed!

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By: Patrick Brink https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc551/#comment-3545246 Sun, 22 Jul 2018 20:32:51 +0000 http://reformedforum.org/?p=10361#comment-3545246 I think your point that persons sin not natures is the nail in the coffin to those who believe in peccability. Great show!!

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By: CM https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc551/#comment-3545186 Sat, 21 Jul 2018 03:09:14 +0000 http://reformedforum.org/?p=10361#comment-3545186 Great show. I leaned heavily toward impeccablity but I had a few lingering questions; this episode completely resolved the issue for me. Thanks!

BTW, there are several other good articles in that Reformed Quarterly Review issue.

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