The Impossible Purity: Wrestling with the Sinlessness of Christ

J. Neil Daniels

The Scriptural Witness

The New Testament never wavers on the matter. Jesus is depicted as a man who walked, ate, wept, sweated, and died—yet also as one without sin. Hebrews insists he was “tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15). Peter, borrowing language from Isaiah’s Servant Song, writes with a kind of plainness that resists embellishment: “He committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth” (1 Pet 2:22). John sharpens the point even further: “In him there is no sin” (1 John 3:5). And Paul, always the theologian of paradox, connects Christ’s sinlessness directly to the cross: “He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor 5:21).

The earliest Christian confession did not hesitate to hold together two things that appear—on first glance—nearly incompatible: that Jesus was fully human, like us, and that Jesus was wholly unlike us in the matter of sin.

The early church fathers found themselves circling around these same texts. Athanasius, writing in the thick of the Arian controversy in the fourth century, argued that Christ’s sinlessness was no mere adornment of his life but the very condition for salvation. If Christ had sinned, he reasoned, he too would have needed redemption. But since “the Word himself took on flesh without spot or stain,” he could offer his life as the spotless lamb, echoing Leviticus’ demands for sacrifices “without blemish.”¹ That imagery of blemish-free offerings became a theological refrain through the centuries. What Hebrews says almost casually—“without blemish to God” (Heb 9:14)—was the fulcrum of entire soteriological systems.

Virgin Birth and the Enigma of Transmission

Almost immediately, Christians asked the next question: if every child of Adam inherits a condition of corruption, how was Jesus exempt?

Augustine (354–430) was pivotal here. In On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, he argued that Adam’s disobedience introduced a hereditary taint passed through ordinary generation.² Christ escaped this transmission, Augustine reasoned, because he was conceived not by a human father but by the Holy Spirit. Mary’s role was indispensable, but the divine initiative safeguarded the Son from inherited corruption. Later medieval theologians often echoed this Augustinian rationale, though not without adjustments.

Some postulated, more speculatively, that sin passes specifically through the paternal line, making the virgin birth the divine safeguard. That idea gained traction in popular preaching (one occasionally still hears it in pulpits), but it stumbles on the fact that Mary herself was hardly stainless. If sin were transmitted biologically, then surely her flesh would taint the one she carried.

This is where the language of Luke’s annunciation becomes pivotal. Gabriel does not say merely that Mary will conceive; he declares, “The holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). The holiness of the child is not a postnatal achievement but a prenatal fact, anchored in divine initiative.

Donald Bloesch later pointed out that Romans 5:12 does not explain how Adam’s sin relates to ours, only that death spread “inasmuch as all sinned.”³ That leaves some theological room: perhaps sin is not essential to human nature but accidental (in the Aristotelian sense). To be human is not to be sinful; it is to bear the image of God. Sin corrodes, distorts, and mars, but it does not constitute. On this view, Christ’s sinlessness is not an exemption from humanity but its fullest realization. He is not less human because he is without sin; he is more.

Essential or Accidental? The Anthropological Knot

The dilemma sharpened in the medieval period. Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), in Cur Deus Homo, insists that sinlessness is not optional for the Redeemer. Only a man without sin could make satisfaction for sin, since a sinner owes everything already to God. The debt requires one who is not himself indebted. In Anselm’s crisp formulation: “He must be sinless, for how shall he make satisfaction for the sin of others who is himself a sinner?”⁴

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) further developed this theme. In the Summa Theologiae, he maintained that Christ assumed all that belongs to true humanity, but without sin, which he calls a “privation of due order.”⁵ Aquinas carefully distinguished between concupiscence (which Christ did not have) and natural passions like hunger or fatigue (which he did). In other words, Jesus felt the pull of created appetites but without the disordered inclination toward sin that marks fallen humanity. This scholastic precision shows just how deeply medieval thinkers wrestled with the essential/accidental question.

In a sense, the whole debate boils down to this: if one defines sin as essential to humanity, then Christ is either not fully human or he is sinful. Neither horn is tolerable. But if one defines sin as accidental—something that happens to humans but is not intrinsic—then Christ can be fully human and yet sinless. Karl Barth leaned heavily in this direction centuries later, calling Jesus the “true man” precisely because he was without sin. In contrast, we are all distorted images, shadows of humanity’s intended glory.

The Debate over Peccability and Impeccability

But the thorniest question, at least in the history of theology, is not whether Christ sinned (all traditions agree he did not) but whether he could have sinned.

The impeccabilists point to divine ontology. James 1:13 insists, “God cannot be tempted by evil,” and if Jesus is truly God, then sin is an impossibility. Geerhardus Vos, Wayne Grudem, and many others have argued along these lines.⁶ Bruce Ware goes further, adding that Jesus resisted temptation in his humanity by relying on the Spirit, the Word, and prayer—resources available to all believers—while simultaneously standing as the impeccable Son who could not have fallen.⁷

On the other hand, peccabilists worry that impeccability empties temptation of its drama. If Jesus could not fall, what sense does it make to say he was “tempted in every way as we are”? David Allen argues that if Christ’s humanity mirrored Adam’s before the fall, then he was able not to sin (potuit non peccare), but he was not unable to sin (non potuit peccare).⁸ The temptations in the wilderness—bread, spectacle, and kingdoms—were genuine enticements, not theatrical illusions. Millard Erickson sums it up with paradoxical balance: Christ could have sinned, but it was certain he would not.⁹

The Reformers inherited this dilemma. Martin Luther, in his Lectures on Hebrews, emphasized Christ’s sinlessness as the foundation for his priestly work: “Christ was free from all sin, not only from actual sins but also from original sin.”¹⁰ Yet Luther stressed the reality of temptation, going so far as to say that Christ “was made to bear the weight of our sins, though in himself he was without sin.” That paradox underscores the drama of the cross.

John Calvin, similarly, declared in the Institutes that Christ was “like us in all things, sin excepted.”¹¹ He rejected the idea that temptation was mere playacting, insisting that Christ “endured all the temptations by which we are daily tried,” though always emerging sinless. Calvin, ever the exegete, returned repeatedly to Hebrews 4:15 as the interpretive key. For him, Christ’s sinlessness was not the negation of temptation but its victorious endurance.

Temptation in the Desert: An Experiment in Reading

Consider, for a moment, the temptation narrative (Matt 4:1–11). Satan approaches Jesus after forty days of fasting. The hunger is real, gnawing. The suggestion—“turn these stones into bread”—is no minor fancy; it addresses a bodily ache. If Jesus could not have sinned, is this scene anything more than theater? Yet the text insists this was a test. The stakes were real.

Gregory of Nazianzus famously quipped, “What is not assumed is not healed.”¹² If Christ did not assume a human will that could be swayed, then he did not redeem the will. His resistance to temptation mattered precisely because it was possible, at the level of human psychology, to waver. And yet, Gregory would never have countenanced that the eternal Logos could defect from the Father. Once again, the union resists neat categorization.

In my own reading, I sometimes think of this like a ship’s rudder bound fast. The rudder is real; it could turn; but it is joined unbreakably to the keel and hull. The possibility is there in abstraction, but in reality the structure holds it firm.

The Garden as the Counterpoint

If the wilderness is the proving ground, Gethsemane is the crucible. “Not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Here the language presses closest to peccability, because Jesus acknowledges a will distinct from the Father’s. He recoils from the cup. He pleads. Sweat becomes like drops of blood. No reader can doubt the genuineness of the struggle.

This moment has been a favorite text for those who emphasize Christ’s genuine humanity. The Son’s obedience is not automatic but chosen, forged in agony. To deny that is to flatten the emotional weight of the passion. At the same time, if we believe the Logos could simply slip into rebellion, then the very being of God becomes unstable.

One is driven again to Daniel Akin’s cautious conclusion: the Bible affirms both the reality of temptation and the fact of sinlessness, but it does not resolve the speculative “could he have” question.¹³

Sinlessness and Soteriology

Why, though, does this matter beyond speculative theology? Because Christ’s sinlessness is bound up with his role as mediator. Only one who is without blemish can stand as priest and victim in the heavenly sanctuary. Anselm, in Cur Deus Homo, insists that only a sinless man could offer satisfaction for sin, and only God could make that satisfaction infinite. Thus, the God-man’s sinlessness is not decorative but essential to atonement.

Aquinas added scholastic precision here: Christ’s sinlessness secured the infinite merit of his sacrifice, which could be applied to all believers. Luther thundered that Christ was “made sin” for us though he knew none, and Calvin tied the imputation of Christ’s righteousness directly to his spotless obedience. The seventeenth-century Reformed confessions, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), enshrined this language formally: Christ is “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.”

This logic trickles down into later debates about justification. If Christ had sinned, he would need a redeemer; if he could sin, then perhaps our salvation teeters on a knife’s edge. But because he is sinless, his righteousness is imputed to believers. Sinlessness, then, is not merely about Christ’s biography but about our destiny.

A Tangential but Illuminating Note: The Dead Sea Scrolls

Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, some sectarian writings speak of a coming priestly messiah who will be “clean of sin.” The Qumran community was obsessed with ritual purity, and their messianic expectations carried that obsession into the future. When early Christians proclaimed Jesus as “without sin,” they were not introducing a wholly foreign category but tapping into an existing messianic current. That resonance may explain why certain audiences found the message so compelling, while others found it absurd.

Christ as the Archetype of True Humanity

Christ’s sinlessness is not just a negative (the absence of sin) but a positive (the fullness of righteousness). To say “he committed no sin” is only half the story; the other half is that “he always did what was pleasing to the Father” (John 8:29).

The fathers sometimes spoke of Christ as the “second Adam,” not merely undoing Adam’s failure but fulfilling Adam’s vocation. Irenaeus framed this as recapitulation—Christ retraced the steps of humanity and lived them rightly. Luther, centuries later, described Christ as the “mirror of true righteousness,” and Calvin echoed Paul’s language of the “new Adam.”

This line of thought changes the question from “how could Jesus be human if sinless?” to “how could he be human if sinful?” He is the blueprint, we are the distortions. That inversion has profound implications for ethics. To imitate Christ is not to aspire to something beyond humanity but to return to it.

A Personal Aside

I recall once hearing about a seasoned professor who remarked, half in jest, “I’m not sure whether Jesus could have sinned, but I’m quite sure I can.” It is a reminder that our theological wrangling, however intricate, always circles back to a pastoral core. The church confesses a sinless Savior not to win philosophical debates but to proclaim hope for sinners.

The Modern Era: Sinlessness under Suspicion

By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the doctrine of Christ’s sinlessness was no longer taken for granted. The Enlightenment had ushered in a more skeptical spirit, and many theologians began asking whether a sinless man was even conceivable. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), sometimes called the father of modern liberal theology, affirmed Christ’s sinlessness, but in a very different key. For him, sinlessness meant that Jesus possessed a “perfect God-consciousness”—an unbroken awareness of and dependence upon God.¹⁴ Christ did not stand apart from humanity by an ontological exemption but by the fullness of religious consciousness. The old language of inherited sin was recast in psychological and experiential categories.

Not everyone was persuaded. By the time of Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), sinlessness was increasingly interpreted as a mythological way of speaking. Bultmann, ever eager to demythologize, did not deny Christ’s moral greatness but was suspicious of the ontological claims. To say “Jesus was without sin” was, for him, more a statement of the church’s faith than an objective biographical report.¹⁵ Sinlessness, in this light, was a theological projection—a way of saying that Jesus perfectly embodied obedience—but not necessarily a historical fact open to verification.

This shift unsettled many. For centuries, the sinlessness of Christ had functioned as the bedrock of soteriology. If that foundation was reinterpreted or dissolved, what would remain of redemption? Some theologians sought to safeguard the doctrine by anchoring it less in metaphysics and more in narrative. They asked not, “What was Jesus’ abstract nature?” but “How did Jesus live?” His unbroken obedience, culminating in the cross, bore witness to his sinlessness. This reframing allowed scholars to affirm the reality of temptation and struggle while preserving the confession that “he did not sin.”

Barth and the Reversal of the Question

Karl Barth (1886–1968) took a bold approach. In the Church Dogmatics, he insisted that sin is never essential to humanity. To be truly human is to be in covenant fellowship with God. Thus, Christ’s sinlessness was not an exception to humanity but the unveiling of true humanity. In Barth’s words, “He is the man who is not a sinner.”¹⁶ We are the distorted ones, not Christ.

This reversal is vintage Barth: he flips the categories so that Christ is not the anomaly but the archetype. In a sense, he echoes Irenaeus and Athanasius but with a modern dialectical twist. Jesus’ sinlessness does not place him above humanity; it locates him as the first real human being. All else is shadow. Barth was also careful to say that Christ bore our sin without becoming sinful. In his substitutionary role, he entered fully into the condition of sin and death, but he remained the sinless one who could take sin’s burden precisely because it was alien to him.

Twentieth-Century Evangelical Reaffirmations

Across the Atlantic, evangelical theologians largely held the line. J. Gresham Machen, writing in the 1920s against the encroachment of liberalism, insisted that if Christ were not sinless, the entire gospel would collapse. “If he was a sinner,” Machen argued, “then he needed a Savior. But a Savior who needs a Savior is no Savior at all.”¹⁷ That pithy aphorism became something of a rallying cry for conservative Protestants in the twentieth century.

Later evangelicals like Donald Macleod, in The Person of Christ, emphasized that Christ’s temptations were real but always met with faithful obedience. Contemporary systematicians like Wayne Grudem and Millard Erickson have defended the classical impeccability position, though often with pastoral sensitivity. Bruce Ware, as noted earlier, added the dimension of Christ’s reliance on the Spirit, highlighting that Jesus’ victory over temptation was not merely divine inevitability but a model of Spirit-empowered obedience.¹⁸

At the same time, some evangelicals have revisited the peccability debate. They ask whether a sinless Christ who could not have sinned risks becoming a moral automaton. These discussions often resurface in seminary classrooms, sometimes more as thought experiments than dogmatic stances. The enduring appeal of the peccability position lies in its existential resonance: Christ faced what we face, genuinely, not with divine cheat codes but with human vulnerability.

Sinlessness in Wider Perspective

It is also worth remembering how ecumenical this doctrine remains. Roman Catholic teaching, drawing on Aquinas, continues to stress that Christ assumed everything truly human “without sin.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms that “the Son of God… was made man in all things like us, yet without sin” (CCC 467), directly echoing Hebrews. Eastern Orthodoxy likewise holds firmly to Christ’s sinlessness, though with a stronger emphasis on theosis: Christ reveals the uncorrupted image of humanity into which believers are transfigured.

Interestingly, in modern Orthodox theology (e.g., Vladimir Lossky), Christ’s sinlessness is sometimes linked more to his unbroken communion with the Father than to debates about peccability or original sin. For the Orthodox, Christ’s humanity is the window into deification (theosis): because he is sinless, he can lead us into participation in divine life.

Contemporary Reflections: Psychology, Narrative, and Ethics

In more recent decades, some theologians have tried to bring Christ’s sinlessness into dialogue with psychology. Could Jesus really be fully human if he lacked the neuroses, complexes, and moral failures that seem to mark our shared existence? Theologian Donald Macleod responded sharply that psychological fallenness is not constitutive of humanity. Jesus experienced sorrow, anger, even a sense of abandonment—but never guilt, shame, or remorse for wrongdoing. His inner life was ordered, not disordered.

Narrative theologians, meanwhile, stress that Jesus’ sinlessness is not an abstract attribute but the story of his obedient life. Stanley Hauerwas has suggested that Christ’s sinlessness must be read through the practices he embodied—non-retaliation, truth-telling, prayer, enemy-love—rather than through metaphysical speculation. In this sense, the Gospels themselves are the testimony to his sinlessness.

Ethically, Christ’s sinlessness continues to haunt Christian moral discourse. If he alone is the true human, then every ethic is Christocentric. “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48) is not an impossible demand but an invitation into the life already lived by Christ. Sinlessness, then, is not merely a quality to admire but a vocation into which the church is drawn.

A Final Return to Mystery

And yet, for all the modern debates, the doctrine still circles back to mystery. Barth knew this, even Bultmann in his way knew it. The biblical writers never paused to philosophize about peccability; they proclaimed the astonishing news: here is one who is without sin. The church has never been content to leave that confession behind, even when the categories of transmission or temptation or ontology get messy.

To confess a sinless Christ is to confess not merely a point of doctrine but the scandalous reality that God entered history, walked among sinners, bore their sin, and yet remained the Holy One. It is, at bottom, the confession that salvation has come in human flesh. And that is why, whether in the desert, in the garden, or on the cross, the cry resounds: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

Conclusion: Holding the Mystery

In the end, the doctrine of Christ’s sinlessness stands at the edge of what can be neatly explained. Scripture affirms it without qualification. The church has defended it with vigor. Attempts to map its mechanics—via virgin birth theories, peccability debates, or anthropological distinctions—have clarified some aspects but never exhausted the mystery.

Perhaps this is fitting. For to confess a sinless Christ is to confess not merely a fact of history but the incursion of God’s holiness into the very fabric of human life. It is to say that in one man, finally, humanity was what it was always meant to be. And that, in itself, is a truth both impossible and indispensable.

Endnotes

Athanasius, On the Incarnation, trans. John Behr (Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 54.
Augustine, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and on the Baptism of Infants, trans. Peter Holmes, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 5 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 21–25.
Donald Bloesch, Jesus Christ: Savior and Lord (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997), 43–44.
Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, trans. Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson (Toronto: Edwin Mellen, 1974), II.7.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 15, a. 1–4.
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2020), 672–74; Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 339–42.
Bruce Ware, The Man Christ Jesus: Theological Reflections on the Humanity of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 73–89.
David L. Allen, Hebrews, New American Commentary 35 (Nashville: B&H, 2010), 308.
Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 657.
Martin Luther, Lectures on Hebrews, in Luther’s Works, vol. 29 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1968), 110–12.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1960), II.13.4.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 7 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 440.
Daniel L. Akin, “The Person of Christ,” in A Theology for the Church, rev. ed., ed. Daniel L. Akin (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2014), 418.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1928), §94.
Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Scribner’s, 1958), 35–37.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/2, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), 150.
J. Gresham Machen, What Is Faith? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1925), 101.
Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), 224–28.