Spir Dynamics 1290-1 5/14/98; Isr 103-106, 10/13/91; Eph 379, 152; Rev 150 6/10/82
A. Definition.
1. Impeccability is the status quo of the human nature of Jesus Christ in the dispensation of the hypostatic union starting with His virgin birth and forever. This is the doctrine of Christology which recognizes the fact that during the entire course of the dispensation of the hypostatic union and forever, our Lord Jesus Christ did not sin though He was tempted in His humanity and the temptations were real.
a. The first Adam was temptable and peccable. This means that Adam in the Garden of Eden was temptable and capable of sinning through the use of his own volition in response to the temptation. Like the Last Adam (Jesus Christ) he was tempted from the outside. Adam did not have a sin nature. The first Adam originated the sin nature. There was only one way Adam could sin—by eating the forbidden fruit. The Last Adam is Jesus Christ in hypostatic union.
b. This doctrine is described by two technical Latin phrases.
(1) The first phrase refers to the deity of our Lord. Our Lord Jesus Christ during His First Advent was NON POSSE PECCARE, not able to sin in His deity. Jesus Christ is not able to sin, solicit to sin, to compromise with sin, or to have anything to do with sin except to judge it.
(2) The second phrase refers to the humanity of our Lord during the prototype spiritual life of the hypostatic union and forever. He is POSSE NON PECCARE, able not to sin in His humanity. He resisted every temptation (and the temptation were real) and remained absolutely perfect.
c. The humanity of Christ was temptable but impeccable. The humanity of Christ was temptable but able not to sin. The deity of Christ was neither temptable or peccable. Christ in hypostatic union was, therefore, temptable but impeccable. The temptations were real but our Lord as true humanity was able not to sin. As God He could not sin.
2. Therefore, the union of undiminished deity and true humanity in one Person forever guaranteed the status quo of both NON POSSE PECCARE and POSSE NON PECCARE, that the deity of Christ was not able to sin and that the humanity of Christ was able not to sin. As God, our Lord cannot be tempted, Jam 1:13, “...for God cannot be tempted with evil and He does not tempt anyone.” God the Father invented the prototype spiritual life to sustain the humanity of Christ during the Incarnation. The original prototype spiritual life was the original Christmas gift from God the Father to God the Son on that first Christmas day of the virgin birth. Our Lord also used the problem solving devices to resist temptation or convert the outside pressures of adversity into the inside pressures of stress in the soul.
3. Because of the virgin pregnancy and virgin birth, when human life was imputed after the embryo fetus emerged from the womb, there was no simultaneous imputation of Adam’s original sin, due to no genetically-formed old sin nature. God the Holy Spirit fertilized the twenty-three pure chromosomes of Mary with twenty-three other pure chromosomes; therefore, no old sin nature of a male was passed down to the embryo.
4. Instead of imputing Adam’s original sin, God the Father provided a special gift. He invented the prototype spiritual life and imputed it to the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, our Lord was born as Adam was born, perfect. So at His birth, Jesus Christ entered the prototype spiritual life; for from birth our Lord was filled with the Holy Spirit.
5. Four Great Principles of Impeccability.
a. When all the sins of the human race were imputed to Christ and judged, our Lord retained His impeccability. When the righteousness of God is imputed to every believer through faith alone in Christ alone, the believer still retains his sin nature. This is why we still sin and have rebound as a solution.
b. The substitutionary spiritual death of Jesus Christ on the Cross would not have been an efficacious sacrifice unless our Lord remained perfect during the entire time He was being judged for the sins of the world. He remained impeccable while bearing our sins and the results of this are mentioned in Heb 10:14, “For by one offering, He has brought to completion for all time those who are being sanctified.”
c. The doctrine of impeccability not only includes the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ but the fact that our Lord’s humanity resisted real temptations through the filling of the Spirit as per Heb 9:14, “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the agency of the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”
d. In addition to the filling of the Spirit from birth, personal love for God the Father and sharing the happiness of God were used constantly by the humanity of Christ on the Cross. Heb 12:2, “Be concentrating on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our doctrine, who because of His exhibited happiness He endured the Cross and disregarded the shame, then He sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
B. The Ministry of the Holy Spirit inside the Prototype Spiritual life.
1. The ministry of the Holy Spirit was prophesied in Isa 11:2-3, 42:1, 61:1-2. One of the great subjects in Isaiah’s prophecies regarding the Messiah is our Lord’s function in the prototype spiritual life and the ministry of God the Holy Spirit to Him.
2. This ministry of the Holy Spirit was the same enabling power as we have in the operational-type spiritual life.
3. Remember, Isaiah did not prophesy about the Church Age, because it was a mystery. He prophesied about our Lord who lived in the Age of Israel.
4. The provision of the prototype spiritual life means that the Holy Spirit was given without measure to the incarnate Christ, Jn 3:34.
5. Inside the prototype spiritual life, the Holy Spirit guaranteed to sustain the humanity of Christ during His earthly ministry, which began at the point of our Lord’s baptism, Matt 3:16.
6. Therefore, inside the prototype spiritual life, the Holy Spirit provided enabling power for the humanity of Christ during His earthly ministry, Mt 12:18,28; Lk 4:14-15,18.
7. The important point of all this is that the Lord Jesus Christ did not rely upon His deity. He voluntarily refused to use His own deity to sustain Himself.
8. In Mt 4:1, our Lord was guided by the Holy Spirit in the prototype spiritual life out into the desert, in order that He might be tested by the devil in evidence testing.
9. The Holy Spirit participated in the resurrection of Christ, Rom 8:11; 1 Pet 3:18.
C. Our Lord’s function inside the Prototype Spiritual life.
1. Our Lord’s Function at Gate Number Three—Enforced and Genuine Humility.
a. Our Lord’s home represented organizational humility. The home has a purpose, to prepare the child for life; a policy, the teaching and training of the child; and authority, one or more parents. These add up to enforced humility. Response to the authority of the parents, fair or unfair, just or unjust, results in the development of genuine humility, the first characteristic of maturity and the most basic human virtue in life.
b. Our Lord was born into a home with two parents. From their authority He developed enforced humility, and response to their authority resulted in His genuine humility. By age twelve, our Lord had attained these factors. He was totally teachable in the spiritual life.
c. The home, or divine institution number three, is provided by God for the human race to make the most difficult transition in life from authority in the home as a child to freedom in life as an adult.
d. Many humans fail to make this transition. They reject parental authority, policy, and purpose, and thus become unteachable. This results in becoming a physical adult and while remaining a child mentally and soulishly, a great tragedy in life.
e. Human immaturity, or lack of enforced humility and genuine humility, cannot make proper use of freedom, but distorts it into a system of evil by abusing freedom and rejecting authority.
f. Furthermore, such a person cannot and will not take the responsibility for the function of his own volition. People who do not take the responsibility for their own decisions never have solutions in life.
g. But our Lord Jesus Christ responded to parental authority, and He functioned under gate number three, Lk 2:51-52. He was constantly subordinate to the authority of His parents, right or wrong.
2. Our Lord’s Subordination to the Father’s Plan.
a. The Father’s plan represented organized humility, His authority or sovereignty represented enforced humility, and our Lord’s positive volition to His plan represented genuine humility. You cannot fulfill the plan of God for your life without enforced humility and genuine humility.
b. From the point of birth, we see our Lord’s subordination from Heb 10:5-9 under the plan of God.
c. The same thing was said before the cross in Mt 26:36-42. This prayer represented the peak of our Lord’s function in the prototype spiritual life. Verse 42 says “Your will be done.” This is the combination of His enforced humility and genuine humility, resulting in a decision without which we would not have salvation. So the importance of genuine humility is dramatized here.
d. Our Lord’s function inside the prototype spiritual life, the purity of His motivation, His perspective, and modus operandi is phenomenal, as stated in Phil 2:5-8. “He did not think equality with God a gain to be seized and held.” He didn’t demand His right because He had enforced humility and genuine humility. “He humbled Himself” was the act of His own volition because of the establishment of His priorities in the spiritual life.
e. Jn 15:10, “Just as I have fulfilled the mandates of My Father, and I reside in the sphere of His love complex.”
f. Our Lord on the cross had certain ways of emphasizing the spiritual life;, for example, He emphasized doctrine.
(1) Lk 23:32-34 was His first utterance on the cross, spoken to the criminal. “Father forgive them” referred to the entire human race, but specifically to the judges and religious people who ridiculed Him. This was the highest expression of impersonal love, which we are also commanded in taking up our cross and following Him.
(2) Lk 23:39-43 was His second utterance to the criminals.
(3) Jn 19:31-37 is our Lord’s expression of His impersonal love, integrity and responsibility. Our Lord had a personal category #3 love for His mother, but on the cross He switched from personal to impersonal love to fulfill a responsibility of His integrity. His honor code obligation to her was all that counted, not her character. The clue that it was His impersonal love is that He used GUNE, not MATER, in addressing her.
(4) The expression of spiritual death reveals, more than anything else, our Lord’s function of impersonal love inside the spiritual life, Mt 27:45,46. The fact that He could receive and be judged for our sins is the highest expression of impersonal love. No motivation of personal love could have kept our Lord on the cross.
(5) Jn 19:28-29 states the expression of the completion of his mission: “TETELESTAI!”
(6) The expression of His royal family heritage when He brought into focus the source of the integrity and impersonal love and honor code is in Lk 23:46, and His last word is recorded in Ps 31:5. The four Gospels emphasize different things. Mt 27:50 emphasizes the sound at the point of His physical death; KRAZO means to shout. Mk 15:37 emphasizes His breath control in the constative aorist of APHIEMI, which means to exhale under breath control. Luke emphasized the content of His words. John emphasized the position of His body, on which he comments in 1 Jn 5.
D. The Impeccability of Christ inside the Spiritual life. All the way from the virgin birth to the cross, resurrection, ascension and session, the humanity of our Lord functioned in the prototype spiritual life, the place of virtue, His very own palace.
1. Impeccability means not liable to sin; exempt by virtue of being inside the spiritual life. (As soon as you sin, you step out of the spiritual life to do it.)
2. Inside the spiritual life is purity. As long as one remains inside the spiritual life, the purity factor remains in status quo.
3. Jesus Christ during the incarnation remained inside the prototype spiritual life. Therefore, He did not sin, though His temptation pressure was a million times greater than the temptation pressure we face. Though He had no old sin nature inside to tempt Him, Satan himself tempted Him personally, something Satan did only with Adam and Eve.
4. Our Lord’s temptations were real and far greater than anything we could ever face. After forty days of no food, He was tempted to turn stones into bread. But to do so, He would have had to act independently of the Father’s plan. Those who reside in the spiritual life do not need miracles. Therefore, He refused this temptation. (See Ephesians 242-244.)
5. The sinlessness of Adam before the Fall differs from the sinlessness of Christ during the Incarnation. The first Adam was temptable and peccable, i.e., capable of being tempted and capable of yielding to temptation. But our Lord, the last Adam, was able not to sin (because of the spiritual life) and not able to sin (because of Hypostatic Union - deity). Because He as the last Adam went to the cross and died for our sins, we have a new creation, the only spiritual creation. It is created by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, who enters each one into union with Christ. “The Last Adam and the new creation” is a synonym for the royal family. 6. Christ was born without an old sin nature. Therefore, He could not be tempted from the inside. All our Lord’s temptations were real, but they came from Satan himself, not Satan’s inside agent, the sin nature, Heb 4:15.
7. The human nature of Christ was temptable, but in the spiritual life, His purity was always intact. For thirty-three years inside the spiritual life, our Lord manufactured the highest virtue ever to exist in a human being.
8. Our Lord’s temptations to His humanity not only came from outside, but He was tempted by Satan personally, Matt 4:1.
9. The divine nature of Christ was not temptable because immutability demands impeccability. Sovereignty cannot choose to sin.
10. While the woman was deceived in her original temptation in the Garden, our Lord is omniscient and could not be deceived as she was.
11. The sovereignty of God cannot change His mind about sin. The perfect righteousness of God cannot be corrupted by sin. The true humanity of Christ in the love complex could also not sin.
12. The deity of Christ is therefore not able to sin. Jesus Christ was in Hypostatic Union, Jas 1:13.
13. The union of undiminished deity and true humanity in one person, plus the fact of His humanity residing in the spiritual life, emphasizes the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ during His First Advent was POSSE NON PECCARE, able not to sin in His humanity, and NON POSSE PECCARE, not able to sin in His deity.
14. The humanity of Christ was temptable and peccable, but He remained in the purity of the spiritual life. He had human volition, but used His volition within the love complex, an absolute place of virtue.
15. The deity of Christ was neither temptable nor peccable.
16. Christ in Hypostatic Union then was temptable but impeccable.
17. As God, Christ was not able to sin; as true humanity inside the prototype spiritual life, he was able not to sin.
E. The Purity Factor inside the Spiritual life—Virtue.
1. In His humanity inside the spiritual life, Christ was POSSE NON PECARE, able not to sin.
2. In His deity, Jesus Christ was NON POSSE PECARE, not able to sin.
3. In His Hypostatic Union, Christ was temptable but pure, always saying no to temptation from His human volition inside the spiritual life. His impeccability is the purity of 1 Jn 3:3.
4. Although the believer possesses an old sin nature in his body, which means temptation comes from the inside, he can maintain purity only inside the spiritual life.
5. Once the believer yields to temptation from his own free will, that decision to yield is made outside the spiritual life, where there is no purity or virtue.
6. One sin without rebound destroys purity. Our positive volition must use the rebound technique to reenter the spiritual life.
7. One sin places the believer in Satan’s cosmic system(s).
8. In cosmic one, the believer grieves the Holy Spirit, Eph 4:30. In cosmic two, the believer quenches the Holy Spirit, 1 Thes 5:19.
9. Therefore, all purity is related to the positive ministry of God the Holy Spirit. Eph 5:18 is the purity of residence in the spiritual life: “Be filled with the Spirit.” Gal 5:16 is the purity of function inside the spiritual life: “Walk by means of the Spirit.”
F. Christ in His spiritual life is impeccable.
1. The doctrine of impeccability is that category of christology which contends that our Lord Jesus Christ, in Hypostatic Union, did not sin during the First Advent, although His humanity was temptable. His humanity was tempted far beyond anything we have ever known or experienced.
2. With reference to His deity, Jesus Christ is said to be NON POSSE PECCARE, not able to sin. With reference to His humanity, Christ is said to be POSSE NON PECCARE, able not to sin. Of course, deity cannot sin. Because His humanity relied upon the filling of the Spirit inside the prototype spiritual life, He was able not to sin.
3. There are two reasons for the perfection of the humanity of Christ.
a. Union with deity in Hypostatic Union.
b. The humanity of Christ resided continually in the prototype spiritual life, relying entirely upon the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit.
4. While our Lord was tempted in all points as we are tempted and far beyond, He did not sin. Therefore, Christ as the last Adam remained in the status quo of perfect impeccability (non-liability to sin). Heb 4:15, “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we have been, and yet without sin.”
5. Impeccability is based upon the humanity of Christ utilizing divine omnipotence in two categories.
a. The sustaining omnipotence of the Father in logistical grace.
b. The delegated omnipotence of the Holy Spirit inside the prototype spiritual life. 1 Pet 2:22, “He who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth.”
6. In Hypostatic Union, the deity of Christ is neither temptable and therefore not in any way sinful, i.e., impeccable.
7. In Hypostatic Union, the humanity of Christ is temptable but impeccable because of His humanity’s residence, function, and momentum inside the prototype spiritual life, where He utilized the delegated omnipotence of the Holy Spirit.
8. The person of Christ in Hypostatic Union was temptable but impeccable. The humanity of Christ did not sin; the deity of Christ could not sin.
9. The impeccability of Christ was the prerequisite for His saving work on the cross. Therefore, our Lord was qualified to go to the cross, to receive the imputation and judgment of all the sins of the entire human race, and to provide eternal salvation for all who believe in Him. Jesus Christ retained His impeccability while bearing our sins. The substitute has to keep on being perfect.
a. 1 Jn 3:5, “Indeed, you know that He was revealed [First Advent] in order that He might carry our sins; in fact, sin was not in Him.”
b. 1 Pet 2:24, “He Himself carried our sins in His own body on the cross.”
c. 2 Cor 5:21, “He made Him who knew no sin [to be] sin as a substitute for us so that we might become the righteousness of God through the agency of Him.” All the time that God the Father was making Christ to be sin on our behalf Christ did not sin. The action of the aorist participle is coterminous with the action of the aorist active indicative of the main verb.
d. Isa 53:5-6, “But He was pierced by our transgressions, He was crushed by our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace [reconciliation] was upon Him, and by His wounds we are drawn together with Him. We all like sheep have gone astray, each one of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord [God the Father] has caused to strike Him with the punishment of all of us.”
(1) Christ did not actually become a sinner, but was punished for the sins that we committed. The punishment belonged to us, but He accepted the punishment for us.
(2) The phrase “it was healing to us” in the Hebrew is a niphil of incomplete passive. It involves a third person singular form without an expressed subject. The impersonal construction demands we put in a pronoun “it.” The verb “healing” originally meant to sow together. Therefore, the best translation is “we are brought together.” We are drawn together to God through the salvation work of Jesus Christ. This is not talking about the healing of people’s bodies. This is the greatest love that ever existed in heaven or on earth. This is the love of the prototype spiritual life, our Lord’s human love for God the Father. This love is the most important thing in your life, a soul love from maximum integrity that changes you both now and forever.
(3) Verse six does not refer to the imputation of our sins but the punishment of them which followed the imputation of our sins to Christ. This is the doctrine of unlimited atonement, 2 Cor 5:14-15,19; 1 Tim 2:6, 4:10; Tit 2:11; Heb 2:9; 2 Pet 3:9; 1 Jn 2:2.
10. As God, Christ could not be tempted, Jas 1:13, “Let no one say when he is tempted, `I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.” Therefore, temptation came to Christ through His human nature.
11. The issue is not that Christ did not sin, but that while His temptations were real, He could not sin in the love complex. Illustration: copper by itself is thin and easily broken, but welded to a steel bar, it is indestructible. This was true of the Hypostatic Union of Christ.
G. Christ was temptable but impeccable.
1. Temptation implies the possibility of sin. Because of the humanity of Christ, there was the same potential for sin as with the first Adam in the Garden.
2. However, for both Christ and Adam, temptation had to come from outside of the body, (much stronger) since there was no old sin nature inside the body.
3. Because volition guards the gate of the soul, temptability does not imply susceptibility.
4. Our Lord’s temptations were real. But His deity was not able to sin, and His humanity in the prototype spiritual life had the power system by which He always resisted temptation.
5. Jesus Christ as God cannot sin, cannot solicit sin, cannot tempt, or have anything to do with sin except to judge it. Hence, our Lord’s deity rejected sin, human good, and evil. In Hypostatic Union, not once did our Lord sin, perform an act of human good, or become involved in evil.
6. As true humanity inside the prototype spiritual life, our Lord was temptable but impeccable.
7. Impeccability was the direct result of the utilization of divine omnipotence, i.e., residing inside the prototype spiritual life and relying on the omnipotence of God the Father who kept Him alive. Otherwise, Satan would have destroyed Him and made the incarnation no contest. (Satan has the power of death.) So the omnipotence of God the Father sustained Him through logistical grace, and the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit empowered the humanity of Christ to resist temptations far greater than anything we have ever known.
8. The direct statement of Scripture cannot be ignored in Heb 4:15, “Our Lord was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin.”
a. By the end of our life, we have faced maybe one-third of all possible temptations known to the human race. But our Lord resisted 100% of all possible temptations. Satan offered to our Lord every possible temptation that a human being can face. Yet, our Lord arrived at the cross totally free from sin.
b. So our Lord was not only “tempted like we are,” but far beyond that. No one in all of human history will ever come close to enduring the temptations which our Lord endured during the great power experiment of the Hypostatic Union. He never once succumbed to any temptation to sin, human good, or evil; all are equally rejected by God.
9. With the possession of an interim body in heaven, minus the old sin nature, and the resurrection body at the rapture, the believer in eternity will become impeccable. But in the meantime, impeccability is related to one person only, the Lord Jesus Christ, Heb 13:8. The humanity of Christ in the love complex was temptable and peccable; the deity of Christ was not temptable and impeccable. The result is that Jesus Christ in Hypostatic Union was temptable but impeccable. This qualified Jesus Christ to go to the cross for us for our salvation. This is the key doctrine to our salvation. 1 Jn 3:15, “He was revealed in order that He might carry [bear] our sin; in fact, sin is not in Him.”
H. Purposes and Results of Our Lord’s Impeccability.
1. The impeccability of Christ is the basis for His strategic victory in the angelic conflict, accomplished entirely through the omnipotence of God the Father and the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit. Heb 2:14, “Since therefore children [people] share blood and flesh, He Himself likewise partook of the same [humanity], that through death, He might render powerless the devil who had the power of death.”
2. Our Lord’s humanity is described after resurrection as being at the right hand of God in Heb 7:26. There, at the right hand of the Father, His humanity is said to be “holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.”
3. Our Lord had to be both true and impeccable humanity before He could go to the cross and be judged for our sins.
4. Functioning under the sustaining omnipotence of God the Father and omnipotence of the Holy Spirit is the basis for the mental attitude described in Phil 2:5-8. “Keep on thinking this within you, which was the mental attitude of Christ Jesus [His humanity], who though He eternally existed in the essence of God, He did not think equality with God a profit [gain] to be seized and held, but He deprived Himself of the proper function of deity [kenosis] when He had received the form of a servant, when He was born in the likeness of mankind. In fact, although He was discovered in outward appearance as a man [true humanity], He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, that is, the death of the cross.”
5. The power for this mental attitude of our Lord came from two sources: the omnipotence of God the Father who provided logistical grace, and the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit who was the teacher of doctrine to the humanity of Christ. That same omnipotence of God the Father is provided for us through our portfolio of invisible assets, and that same omnipotence of the Holy Spirit is provided for us through the operational-type spiritual life.
6. Because of the impeccability of His true humanity, our Lord was qualified to go to the cross and provide eternal salvation by receiving the imputation of our sins.
7. While on the cross, Jesus Christ was ridiculed: “If you are the Son of God, come down and save yourself and us.” He could have done that by using His own power. But He chose to remain and to subordinate His own omnipotence to the plan for the incarnation. Therefore, in the power of the Spirit, He was able to endure the cross and bear our sins.
8. In fact, this entire doctrine leads to teaching us how Jesus Christ was able to endure the cross, and what power His humanity used during those last three hours on the cross. Therefore, the entire structure of the Christian way of life is based on the power principle and power structure used by our Lord which kept Him on that cross during the three hours in which He was judged for our sins.
9. Rom 1:3-6, “Concerning His Son, who was born from the progeny of David according to the flesh [hypostatic union], who has been demonstrated [to be] the Son of God [deity] by means of the power belonging to the Holy Spirit, by means of the resurrection from the dead — Jesus Christ our Lord, because of whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the doctrine among all the Gentiles on behalf of His name [King of kings, Lord of lords], among whom you also [Church] are the elect of Jesus Christ [as royal family of God].”
a. “By means of the power belonging to the Holy Spirit” is the Greek preposition KATA plus the accusative of possession, a very rare use of the accusative, used only to express something unique. The reason for this construction is because the delegated omnipotence of the Holy Spirit inside the spiritual life was the means by which our Lord’s humanity fulfilled the Father’s plan for the incarnation. In other words, He was not “demonstrated the Son of God” by His own power, but by the power of the Holy Spirit.
b. “By means of the resurrection from the dead” says that the resurrection also demonstrates that same power. For the Holy Spirit restored our Lord’s soul from Hades to His body in resurrection.
c. There are two categories of omnipotence delegated.
(1) There is grace delegation of divine power, grace being the policy for the Church Age. The omnipotence of God the Father sustains you logistically; this is unconditional grace. The omnipotence of the Holy Spirit empowers you conditionally, depending upon your use of rebound and resultant residence in the spiritual life.
(2) There is grace delegation of authority for the communication of doctrine (“apostleship”) .The gift of apostleship is mentioned here because it was the greatest authority ever delegated to twelve men in the Church Age. Notice that “grace” comes before “apostleship.” A pastor is the recipient of grace like everyone else. But the pastor is ineffective unless he learns the mechanics as well as the principles of grace.
I. Conclusion.
1. Because of immutable holiness or integrity (perfect righteousness and justice), Christ being God could not sin.
2. Because His humanity resided permanently inside the spiritual life, and because He never chose to convert temptation into sin, Christ was able not to sin.
3. Just as an unconquerable city can be attacked but not taken, so Christ could be tempted but could not sin.
4. This qualified our Lord to go to the cross and be judged for our sins, thus providing salvation for all who believe in Him.
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© 1989, by R. B. Thieme, Jr. All rights reserved
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