(Too dressed-down to do a video today. )
I present this drash today only as something interesting to think about.
Did Yeshua ever sin? The answer has to be a very loud, “NO!! He was the sinless lamb of God; he was in perfect obedience to the Torah his whole life; he couldn’t have sinned. Ever. NO! NO! NO!”
But, still and all, if he had once or twice committed a sin couldn’t he still have died a sinless lamb of God?
Let’s look at what God says about his forgiveness of sin:
“…on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins.” – Leviticus 16:30
“…as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” – Psalm 103:8-12
“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. – Isaiah 1:18
“In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back.” – Isaiah 38:17
“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” – Jeremiah 31:34
“Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. – Micah 7:18-19
These passages show us that once God forgives a sin it is as if that sin never happened. There are many other bible passages that prove this; I didn’t quote any New Covenant passages because everything in the New Covenant is just quoting or paraphrasing what is already said in the Old Covenant.
Now let’s go back to my original question: Did Yeshua ever sin? The bible doesn’t give us any information on this but it does tell us that he underwent B’rit Milah (Circumcision) and that he was in Jerusalem for the festivals, as required by the Torah. We know that he observed all the laws and commandments in the Torah, so if he did sin we can be certain that he would have obeyed the Torah and presented a sin sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem. So if this ever did happen, what then?
According to what God says, if Yeshua had sinned and went through the process of sacrificing an animal to have his sin forgiven then he would be as clean as if he had never sinned. He would be a sinless lamb of God.
Otherwise God would have lied when he told us that when he forgives a sin it is as if it never happened. We could never be “as white as snow” and our sins would never be “put behind” his back. All that we were told about forgiveness would be a lie.
Personally, I don’t believe God lied about his forgiveness and I don’t believe Yeshua ever committed a sin. But I am open to the idea that he might have. After all, doesn’t Isaiah 53 tell us:
He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
With all that going on in his life, who is to say he didn’t have a lapse of righteousness now and then and maybe did something wrong? If he had sacrificed then wouldn’t that sin be gone? Wouldn’t he again be sinless and clean before the Lord? An acceptable sacrifice?
My contention is that he would still have been the sinless lamb of God even if he had sinned, so long as he made the proper sacrifice at the Temple before he was crucified. I say this based on God’s promise that when he forgives a sin it is as if it never happened. And I will go one step further: if Yeshua had sinned and had been forgiven under the sacrificial system, he was (and is) the only human who could have continued to be sinless after that. We can be forgiven our sin, but we will sin again. Thank God (and Yeshua) that when Yeshua replaced the sacrifice at the Temple with his personal sacrifice, we can be forgiven every sin we commit and repent of for the rest of our life.
I feel so sad for those who do not accept Yeshua and, because the Temple no longer exists cannot be forgiven of their sins.
Hum! You certainly think outside the box. Having just finished reading Hebrews 1 through10, I think the Hebrews author may have been faced with this same question and rejected the thought of Jesus having any sin from which he needed to be cleansed
Linda,
It is an interesting thought, isn’t it? The letter James wrote was to Jews who had accepted Yeshua, so it is more from a Jewish perspective than most of the epistles Shaul (Paul) wrote. As I say in my post, I believe Yeshua did live a sinless life, but I wouldn’t put away, totally, the idea that he may have sinned and been granted forgiveness. In some way it seems like he should have sinned, at least once in order to understand what it was like to do so.
This thought came to me after I posted this message: If Yeshua was incapable of sin, then living a sinless life would not have been difficult for him. In fact, it would have been all he could do, rendering his “sinless lamb of God” appellation as impotent. If I cannot sin, then what’s the big deal when I live a sinless life, right?
I think he was capable of sinning but didn’t, which really shows the power of the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) as a guiding force in our life when we listen to it.