THE SINLESS JESUS TEXTS
 

Does the Bible really say that Jesus was always sinless? If it or the Church does then shame on them because that is just their view and they have no right ordering others to agree with them or saying that God orders it for it all depends on what we like and dislike and we are all different. What is considered good for one is considered bad for another. You cannot expect Roger to have the same perception of your wife as you do. You can’t expect him to judge her as you do. 

Jesus is not really a good example - we don't even know much about him.  Nobody today's knows the historical Jesus personally to be inspired by him.  Allegedly, we can know the risen Jesus but it is easy to feel you are in a relationship with a god who does not in fact exist.  The boast that Jesus is sinless is purely about scoring ideological points against other deities and religions and not about inspiring people  in the best way.  The good is the enemy of the best here.  The okay, which Jesus would have been at best, is often the enemy of the good.

Nowhere does the Bible say that Jesus was impeccable all his life.

The person who wrote Mark’s Gospel never knew if his gospel would survive or if there would be any other ones. That he never said Jesus was sinless means we should assume he was just a man with sins and a bad side like us all. That is natural.

Mark does not call Jesus a sinner but he does tell stories about him, eg the attack on the Temple and the hate speech against a possessed girl from another race, that as good as say it.  Mark's gospel is where Jesus objects to being called a good teacher - a good teacher not a good man on the basis that only God is good.

If the gospels were not hinting about his sin, remember that is what you would expect.  They would not recount his sins when he was their hero and was focused on making an exemplar of him.

If you are God or wholly in touch with him you can do things that look evil like killing a child and still be good provided this was needed for a good purpose that nobody else can make out. Jesus could have been as evil as Genghis Khan and still have been considered to be the impeccable Son of God. Perhaps Jesus had to refrain from such deeds because if he behaved normally that would be nothing marvellous. But if Jesus had seemed to be a sinner that would be stronger evidence that he was God’s Son than impeccability. Why? Because such acts would be what one would expect of one who had mysterious godlike purposes to take care of. If he abstained from such acts it would contain an element of showing off and being false. It makes his life into an immoral performance while he was supposed to do good for its own sake. Perhaps since Jesus might be good to impress us or might be seemingly bad for the purpose he could pick either one or the other. But it is clear that neither would convince us that he was indeed God’s immaculate son.

Jesus did things as bad as murder if he was God or had supernatural power. He did not use his alleged healing powers on the dying. He then killed people by sending killer viruses to them. And yet Christians say they would not believe in him if he committed murder. He stated that sinful people should go to Hell forever. Such is the hypocrisy inspired by Christ that if he killed people with a knife many Christians would turn against him.

Isaiah 53:9 says that somebody was killed though he had done no wrong and told no lie. This is supposed by the superstitionists to be about Jesus. But we can say that a man who did wrong and died was executed though he had not sinned or lied meaning that he did not deserve what happened to him or that he didn’t sin or lie so as to deserve to die. The other sins and lies are irrelevant and are not being denied - or affirmed either.

John 8:46 says that Jesus asked the Jews if any of them could convict him of sin. He meant that he was not a sinner but only as far as they could tell and they did not observe him all the time for the answer to this rhetorical question is no. But the line before and after shows that he meant sin in the sense of lying or contradicting what he knows to be the truth. He did not claim to be absolutely sinless here. You can convict people of certain crimes but minor acts of badness are often hard to prove and it is easy to put them beyond proof as long as one avoids meeting people when one is in a bad mood. Jesus took plenty of time to unwind.

And if he did say he was without sin, he could only have been referring to the teaching he gave at that time. He was saying that he was sinless at that time.

Romans 6:9,10 says that Christ will never die again because he died to sin by dying on the cross. Some say, “Since he never said that Jesus was a sinner he means that Jesus died to the sins we have committed and not his own”. But Paul linked death to sin and if Jesus cannot die anymore because he is dead to sin then Jesus died to his own sins. Jesus could not die to other people’s sins.

Romans 8:9,10 says that Jesus is dead to sin and now alive to God. The contrast implies that Jesus wasn’t dead to sin before. Then we are instructed to be dead to sin like Jesus meaning we must abandon all the sins we have. So our situation and Jesus’ are the same. Christians reply that Jesus being dead to sin doesn’t mean that he sinned and turned away from it but only that he never sinned. But the contrast. Jesus is now described not as dead to sin but as alive to God. With their interpretation he would have been alive to God all the time and dead to sin now as well. The contrast incidentally implies that Jesus is not God for God cannot sin.

Paul said that we must be dead to sin in the same way that Christ was, meaning that Jesus repented and was forgiven. He contrasts Jesus’ death to sin with his being alive to God in holiness now as if Jesus was not alive to God before.

In First Peter 2:22 Jesus was said to have been sinless and truthful in all things but the context is about Jesus’ example during his passion. It may only be saying that Jesus was free from all sin when he was suffering under Pontius Pilate.

1 John 3:5 says that there is nothing sinful in Jesus Christ meaning now. A sinner who is in Heaven is sinless now according to Christian theology.

The verses are meaningless if Jesus is God for God cannot die to sin for God cannot even sin. Christians say they mean that Jesus died to temptation but temptation is not sin and if Jesus could not sin he could not be tempted. Some would say that Jesus could sin but did not and died to sin in the sense of becoming unable to sin when he died. But if Jesus has free will there is no such thing as becoming unable to sin. Paul did not mean that Jesus lost his free will. This answer says that Jesus was always dead to sin. Paul’s declaration can only mean that Jesus had been a sinner. Jesus was forgiven and by becoming sinless and agreeing to die on the cross he saved us by his obedience.

Jesus said that nobody was good only God. And his disciple Paul preached that man was naturally antagonistic towards real love and towards God suggesting that Jesus did the same. With all this cynicism, we should not be expected to believe in Jesus’ sinlessness on the basis of the skimpy New Testament accounts and the Church has a cheek to ask us to. If human beings are so bad then we need a lot of convincing before we can designate any man as sinless. It would be blasphemy not to.
 
Also, when the writers of the New Testament were sinners how can we trust them? If people are biased towards self and not God they would go to any lengths to destroy God’s plan. They would be open to Satan and his genius to get inspiration to how best to do this.
 
Jesus said to the world, “Follow me” (Luke 18:22). He was not even raised from the dead at this stage so he was asking the Jews to break the commandment that trust must be put in God not even in Moses but in the God speaking through him (Jeremiah 17:5). None of the biblical prophets believed they had the right to ask people to follow them. Sinless and therefore humble? I don’t think so!

HOW LITERAL?

Job and Lot are examples of people who were called sinless but not regarded as literally perfect.

God said that David kept his commandments and that he did ONLY in his sight what was right. Read 3 Kings 14:8. It shows that though the Bible admits David's sins it talks as if he were sinless. Notably the commandments in those days were definitely interpreted as condemning homosexuality so that is important to note too. By the laws of interpretation, you read statements in the light of how David would have understood them, it is definite that homosexuality is condemned by the Bible.