What Would It Take for You to Say Someone You Know Is Sinless?
The claim that Jesus was sinless circulated among people who knew Jesus—and this provides a powerful apologetic for the presence of supernatural power in him
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the New Testament claims regarding the sinlessness of Jesus. What has occurred to me is that these statements are more apologetically valuable than I had considered before.
More Than Blameless
When it comes to descriptions of Jesus, the authors of the New Testament don’t simply suggest he was “righteous” or “blameless.” As true as those traits may be of Jesus, such claims had been made many times before regarding persons who were ordinary human beings, faithful yet far from sinless (see, for example, Genesis 6:6; 2 Samuel 22:24–27; Job 1:1).
But the claim in the New Testament is not merely that Jesus was blameless.
The New Testament authors declare that Jesus was sinless.
“He Did Not Commit Sin”
The apostle Paul declares that Jesus “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The author of Hebrews speaks similarly, stating that Jesus was “without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). According to the first letter ascribed to John, there was “no sin” in Jesus (1 John 3:5). The author of 1 Peter says without reservation that Jesus “did not commit sin,” and he seems to assume his readers share this perspective (1 Peter 2:22).
If I receive these epistles as documents that accurately preserve the teachings of eyewitnesses of Jesus (which I do), these conceptions of Jesus can be traced back to individuals who personally knew him. If I were to take a skeptical perspective that ascribes 1 John and 1 Peter to authors other than the apostles, I still must concede that these epistles emerged in communities where people trusted the words of those who had known Jesus and had experienced some contact with eyewitnesses. After all, even the most skeptical New Testament scholars find it difficult to press the authorship of 1 John and 1 Peter beyond the lifetimes of eyewitnesses. Add to this a passing comment in Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth which reveals that some of the initial eyewitnesses—along with their spouses—were traveling among the early churches (1 Corinthians 9:5).
When I bring all of this together, here’s what I’m compelled to conclude: The claim that Jesus never committed a sinful act was circulating in the early churches at a time when people who had actually known Jesus were circulating in these same churches.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that people who knew Jesus must have spread the claim—or, at the very least, supported the claim—that Jesus was sinless.
The Shocking Claim that Jesus Was Sinless Is Evidence for the Presence of Supernatural Power
The suggestion that Jesus never sinned is a jarring claim, particularly when you recall that the first adherents of this belief were Jewish. The Jewish Scriptures repeatedly affirm that everyone sins both intentionally (1 Kings 8:46; Proverbs 20:9; Ecclesiastes 7:20) and unintentionally (Psalm 19:12). And so, the initial spread of the belief that Jesus was sinless happened among people who assumed every human being sins.
What could possibly cause such people to come to the conclusion that they had known a man who committed no sins?
Consider this for a moment: Have you ever spent extended time with anyone about whom you would say, “That person is ‘without sin’”? What would you do if someone told you that an individual you knew personally had never committed a sin? I have known many people who were exceptionally faithful in their commitment to Jesus. And yet, you could never convince me that any one of them has lived a sinless life.
First-century Jewish persons assumed that every human being sins at some point. Yet Jewish eyewitnesses of Jesus—or, if you happen to be more skeptical about the New Testament texts, persons closely connected to eyewitnesses—concluded that one particular man never sinned. How could a group of individuals who knew Jesus arrive at such a conclusion unless there was something so extraordinary about Jesus that it upended their most basic assumptions about human nature? The more I think about this, the more confident I become that these claims of sinlessness provide a powerful defense for the belief that supernatural power was present in Jesus.
If Jesus was not sinless, he would have no right to judge the sin of any of us.