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Was Jesus Sinless?

Fool

ALL in all
Premium Member
Can a mortal be without sin?

Why did Jesus pray to the Father; if he was sinless?

Matthew 6:9-13

"This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
 

Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
No, he dishonoured his parents and let his disciples gather on the Sabbath.

There's also this conspicuous gap from age about 13-30 where nothing of him is recorded and G-d only knows what he did then.
 
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Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
Can a mortal be without sin?

Why did Jesus pray to the Father; if he was sinless?

Matthew 6:9-13

"This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Yes... He was sinless. Adam was sinless until he sinned. He was sinless because he was created. Jesus was sinless as his body was also created as The Word entered into it and became Life Incarnate and sinless.

The reason he prayed:

First... he was teaching the disciples how they needed to pray. We have no record of Jesus praying "forgive me of my debts".
Second... he was a 100% man and had to hear from the Father to know what to do.
 

Fool

ALL in all
Premium Member
Yes... He was sinless. Adam was sinless until he sinned. He was sinless because he was created. Jesus was sinless as his body was also created as The Word entered into it and became Life Incarnate and sinless.

The reason he prayed:

First... he was teaching the disciples how they needed to pray. We have no record of Jesus praying "forgive me of my debts".
Second... he was a 100% man and had to hear from the Father to know what to do.


can anyone be human and not make mistakes?

to err is human but to forgive is divine?

ecclesiastes 7:20
Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins.

1 john 1:8
8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.


are you implying that jesus was fully knowledgeable from birth and not capable of sin from ignorance?
 
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Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
No, he dishonoured his parents and let his disciples gather on the Sabbath.
no
There's also this conspicuous gap from age about 13-30 where nothing of him is recorded and G-d knows only what he did then.
He was honoring his parents as the first born followed his father in working as a carpenter, growing in wisdom and favor until the appointed time.[
 
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Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
From the perspective of faith, the church answers in the affirmative that Jesus was "was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin" (Hebrews 4:15).

So Christians are bound by this teaching in conscience, if they intend to adhere to the central tenets of the religion.

Nonetheless, from a strictly objective and secular point of view, there are legitimate points of potential conflict with this dogmatic belief. For one, if Jesus were sinless, then why did he submit himself to the baptism of John “for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4)?

The earliest accounts of Jesus's life in the synoptics gospels and extra-canonical writings like the gospel of the Ebionites, appear to find this episode extremely embarrassing and problematic for their theological frameworks, such that they seek to variously bypass, undermine or point-black ignore this event in the life of Christ. It wasn't conducive to their apologetical ends.

Consequently, New Testament scholars frequently declare the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist to be one of the surest historical facts about Jesus’ life. [i.e. James D.G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, Vol. I, pages 350 (“This is one of the most securely grounded facts in all the history of Jesus.”); Robert H. Stein, Mark, page 55 (“Jesus’s baptism by John is one of the most certain historical facts we possess concerning the life of Jesus.”).]

If I might reference the explanation put forward by John Meier (the famous American biblical scholar and Roman Catholic priest):


A prime example is the baptism of the supposedly superior and sinless Jesus by his supposed inferior, John the Baptist, who proclaimed ‘a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.’ Mysterious, laconic, stark Mark recounts the event with no theological explanations as to why the superior sinless one submits to a baptism meant for sinners (Mark 1:4-11).

Matthew introduces a dialogue between the Baptist and Jesus prior to the baptism; the Baptist openly confesses his unworthiness to baptise his superior and gives way only to when Jesus commands him to do so in order that God’s saving plan may be fulfilled (Matt 3.13-17, a passage marked by language typical of the evangelist).

Luke finds a striking solution to the problem by narrating the Baptist’s imprisonment by Herod before relating the baptism of Jesus; Luke’s version never tells us who baptized Jesus (Luke 3:19-22).

The radical Fourth Evangelist, John, locked as he is in a struggle with latter-day disciples of the Baptist who refuse to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, takes the radical expedient of suppressing the baptism of Jesus by the Baptist altogether; the event simply never occurs in John’s Gospel. We still hear of the Father’s witness to Jesus and the Spirit’s descent upon Jesus, but we are never told when this theophany occurs (John 1:29-34).

Quite plainly, the early Church was ‘stuck with’ an event in Jesus’ life that it found increasingly embarrassing, that it tried to explain away by various means, and that John the Evangelist finally erased from his Gospel. It is highly unlikely that the Church went out of its way to create the cause of its own embarrassment.


Meier, op. cit., page 169.
 

Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
can anyone be human and not make mistakes?

to err is human but to forgive is divine?

ecclesiastes 7:20
Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins.

1 john 1:8
8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If you have an earthly father, you will make mistakes.

Jesus did have the potential to make a mistake (as did Adam). Adam yielded and Jesus did not.

The greatest potential for Jesus to yield to tempation was in the Garden of Gethsemane where three times he said "but not my will but thine be done". His prayer was so intense, as was the pressure, that the capilaries on his forhead burst and mixed with the sweat of his prayer effort.
 

Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
He was honoring his parents as the first born followed his father in working as a carpenter, growing in wisdom and favor until the appointed time.
You have absolutely no way of knowing this.

Also,

Matthew 12:1-2


At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Can a mortal be without sin?

Why did Jesus pray to the Father; if he was sinless?

Matthew 6:9-13

"This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
If you read the Apocrypha you will find Jesus to be like Damian from the Omen.
 

Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
Nonetheless, from a strictly objective and secular point of view, there are legitimate points of potential conflict with this dogmatic belief. For one, if Jesus were sinless, then why did he submit himself to the baptism of John “for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4)?
That isn't hard to understand as John also said "It is I who needs to be baptised by you" initmating that it was John that had sin.

Jesus replied "To fulfill all righteousness" or to say "Because it is the right thing to do".

As a CEO, I clean toilets every now and then. I don't have to but I do it to show people that no one is above serving when needed. Becuae "it is the right thing to do" or "to fullfill all righteousness"/

Quite plainly, the early Church was ‘stuck with’ an event in Jesus’ life that it found increasingly embarrassing, that it tried to explain away by various means, and that John the Evangelist finally erased from his Gospel. It is highly unlikely that the Church went out of its way to create the cause of its own embarrassment.

Meier, op. cit., page 169.
To say that "John finally erased from his Gospel" is wrong on many points.
\
  1. He wasn't an Evangelist, he was an apostle
  2. To say he erased it means that there is a Gospel of John where it still has it... there is not one that has it
  3. The author wasn't with John to be able to see that "he was embarrassed"
  4. The author is conjectoring and obviously was the one that was embarrassed and needed to come up with his excuse to feel better.
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
You have absolutely no way of knowing this.

Also,

Matthew 12:1-2


At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day.

If one is a legalist (and I should know something about that, being a commercial lawyer by profession), obsessed with arcane and burdensome rules that restrict the scope of human freedom, I can appreciate why one would find Jesus's flagrant digressions 'offensive' or 'shocking.'

But I am not so minded.

In the grand scheme of things what is more important: that someone obediently abides by the bare minutiae and letter of an ancient religious prohibition, originally designed to give people "a day of sabbath rest" (Leviticus 23:3) from hard work, or let poor people faint or even perish from lack of food because of it?

Clearly, the commandment had become abused by the religious authorities to imply that Galilean peasants about to faint from hunger after days wandering with few possessions on the road, were not to be permitted to satiate their own bodily needs for survival. Reality check but itinerant people without home or any great personal belongings doing what they need to do to survive, should not be considered "work". If you don't have daily or weekly wages or a house to store food, the same logic applied to Jewish householders simply cannot apply in your extenuating case.

It's easy for the religious leaders in question, sitting in their homes and synagogues with food already prepared in advance for consumption on the sabbath and so with no need to derive their means of sustenance with the sweat of their own hands, to preach to Jesus's wandering band of mendicant-like followers.

As Jesus responded:

"The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mk 2:23-28; Mt 12:1-8)​

Your accusation of Jesus committing an ethical wrong based upon this episode are, in my humble opinion, misplaced (there are far better examples, such as the fig tree episode). The particular Pharisees in question are the ones with the real problem: subordinating human needs and welfare to the scrupulous observance of misguided and overly onerous interpretations of old religious diktats.

I regard human welfare, human rights and human needs as the kind of things which law exists to uphold. If the letter of the law infringes upon human welfare, human rights or human needs then it is either a misapplied/misinterpreted law or a law in need of redaction.
 
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Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
If one is a legalist (and I should know something about that, being a commercial lawyer by profession), obsessed with arcane and fundamentally burdensome rules that restrict the scope of human freedom unduly, I can appreciate why one would find Jesus's flagrant digression from such scrupulosity 'offensive' or 'shocking.'

But I am not so minded.

In the grand scheme of things what is more important: that someone obediently abides by the bare minutiae and letter of an ancient religious prohibition, originally designed to give people "a day of sabbath rest" (Leviticus 23:3), from hard work, had become abused by the religious authorities to imply that Galilean peasants about to faint from hunger after days wandering with few possessions on the road, were not to be permitted top satiate their own bodily needs for survival.

As Jesus responded:

"The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mk 2:23-28; Mt 12:1-8)​

Your accusation of Jesus committing an ethical wrong based upon this episode are, in my humble opinion, misplaced. The particular Pharisees in question are the ones with the real problem: subordinating human needs and welfare to the scrupulous observance of misguided and overly onerous interpretations of old religious diktats.

Those 'old religious diktats' are given by the G-d you say you believe in, the one your man believed in and those who followed him during his ministry. G-d clearly is concerned with laws and rules - He gave His people a whole bunch of them and sent them prophets again and again to reinforce the fact. Then, according to your faith, an itinerant upstart from nowhere comes along thousands of years later and effectively tries to overturn the system that G-d said would be in place for His people forever.

Furthermore, your man appears not even to know the Law to begin with, as he seems to think it's not allowed to heal or rescue on Sabbath, which is not true. He argues with imaginary Pharisees over this (I'm pretty sure real ones would have known Jesus' error and not bothered him). Saying cute things like 'The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath' doesn't' really cut it. That's a pretty poor argument for trying to justify breaking it (mostly because what does that even mean?), moreover G-d said:


Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed. (Ex. 31:16-17)


You don't just get to annul it with fancy words.
 
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Faithofchristian

Well-Known Member
Can a mortal be without sin?

Why did Jesus pray to the Father; if he was sinless?

Matthew 6:9-13

"This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.


Seeing Jesus is our example to follow, therefore when Jesus prayed to the Father, Jesus was in giving the example as to how we are to pray to the Father.
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
Those 'old religious diktats' are given by the G-d you say you believe in, the one your man believed in and those who followed him during his ministry. G-d clearly is concerned with laws and rules, He gave His people a whole bunch of them and sent them prophets again and again to reinforce the fact. Then, according to your faith, an itinerant upstart from nowhere comes along thousands of years later and effectively tries to overturn the system that G-d said would be in place for His people forever.


Does the theocratic legal system in question exist to deprive poor, homeless itinerant people of their only means of survival? Was that what the Torah intended?

No, it wasn't.

In law, we have the concept of equity based upon conscience, which comes in to mitigate the draconian excesses of the letter of the law when failure, in extenuating circumstances, to abide by those formalities would typically result in censure, punishment or a fine - on the understanding that to apply the law so severely would be unconscionable in the given circumstances.

In this case, it would have been unconscionable and thus inequitable.
 

Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
Does the theocratic legal system in question exist to deprive poor, homeless itinerant people of their only means of survival? Was that what the Torah intended?

No, it wasn't.
Well done.

But still not an excuse for breaking Sabbath in this context.
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
Well done.

But still not an excuse for breaking Sabbath in this context.

Do you think that the bare letter of the law - if universally applied without nuance - accommodates the unique situation of people who are dispossessed and itinerant; such that they have no kitchens, storehouses or ladder to pre-pepare vitals for the sabbath day?

Do you think it is morally right to let such people, who have been travelling on foot potentially for months and are already malnourished, become ill from hunger when they have no recourse to any foodstuffs stored in houses and are compelled, by biological necessity, to acquire it by physically reaping corn?

It was for inequitable situations like this, that English Common Law developed the concept (derived from the Christian natural law tradition) of claimants being able to receive redress under equity (the "conscience of the king or court") if the law failed them, as the judgement in the Earl of Oxford's Case (1615) explained: “The cause why there is a chancery [for equity] is, for that men’s actions are so diverse and infinite, that it is impossible to make any general law which may aptly meet with every particular act and not fail in the circumstances, The office of the chancellor is to [...] soften and mollify the extremity of the law.”

Jesus, in this example, made an appeal to conscience and equity on behalf of the extenuating circumstance of his disciples' itinerant way of life, because if applied "generally" the Sabbath moral law would fail to accommodate their "particular" situation. He thus intended to "soften and mollify the extremity of [a far too strict interpretation] of the law".

The same Torah solemnly tells us: “You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly.” [Lev. 19:15.]

How can it be just, impartial and fair to let homeless people suffer grievous want when they have no means available to them of adhering to the commandment in the same way as householders?
 
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Fool

ALL in all
Premium Member
No, he dishonoured his parents and let his disciples gather on the Sabbath.
unfortunately parents can be wrong. honoring right behavior would be acceptable. honouring abusive or wrong behavior would be unacceptable.

There's also this conspicuous gap from age about 13-30 where nothing of him is recorded and G-d knows only what he did then.
he was supposedly out traveling the world and learning more about God
 

Rival

Si m'ait Dieus
Staff member
Premium Member
Do you think that the bare letter of the law - if universally applied without nuance - accommodates the unique situation of people who are dispossessed and itinerant; such that they have no kitchens, storehouses or ladder to pre-pepare vitals for the sabbath day?

Do you think it is morally right to let such people, who have been travelling on foot potentially for months and are already malnourished, become ill from hunger when they have no recourse to any foodstuffs stored in houses and are compelled, by biological necessity, to acquire it by physically reaping corn?

It was for inequitable situations like this, that English Common Law developed the concept (derived from the Christian natural law tradition) of claimants being able to receive redress under equity (the "conscience of the king or court") if the law failed them, as the judgement in the Earl of Oxford's Case (1615) explained: "The Lord Chancellor held: "The Cause why there is [Equity] is, for that Mens Actions are so divers[e] and infinite, that it is impossible to make any general Law which may aptly meet with every particular Act, and not fail in some Circumstances."

Jesus, in this example, made an appeal to conscience and equity on behalf of the extenuating circumstance of his disciples' itinerant way of life.

The same Torah solemnly tells us: “You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly.” [Lev. 19:15.]

How can it be just, impartial and fair to let homeless people suffer grievous want when they have no means available to them of adhering to the commandment in the same way as householders?

Could those wandering people not have stopped at almshouses or other places? Is it impossible that they could have gone into a village and asked help? There was food specifically for the poor, the poor were allowed to glean from the fields that which fell naturally and they could have stored this. Also, one is not obliged to give beggars money, but food he is obligated to give if asked.
 
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