Dean's Letter

January 2006
From The Very Reverend David Bird, Ph.D., Dean and Rector

Was Jesus sinless and can we be sinless?

We begin with one of the most compelling statements of the Bible: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

The central idea of Christmas is that in Jesus Christ, God completely expressed what human life should be. Jesus of Nazareth is not like some Greek god who comes down to earth and plays for a while yet always is a god and is not in any way subject to fully human conditions. Jesus of Nazareth is truly and fully human. Only by being truly and completely human can he reveal to us what God considers the Christian life to be.

Could Mary disregard regular feeding times for the baby because he was Son of God? The answer: absolutely not. Could Jesus, because he was Son of God, ignore warm clothes in the height of winter and never get sick? Absolutely not. When Jesus was on the cross did he feel pain differently because he was Son of God? Absolutely not. Jesus felt pain absolutely as we feel pain.

What we celebrate at Christmas is that God’s idea of how human life should be led was given to us in a human person, Jesus of Nazareth.

Does that mean Jesus was always perfect? Yes and no. No, he was not always perfect according to some of the conventions of human behavior. He was forthright in his comments: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites all” is not a gracious opening to a conversation. He broke with human conventions. He spoke harshly and directly when he believed it appropriate. No, he was not always perfect.

Yes, he was always perfect in that in everything he did, he sought to do God’s will. That is to be sinless. To be sinless is not necessarily to obey all the rules of society. To be sinless is not to be charming. To be sinless is always to do what we believe God is calling us to do, even if that action does not seem apparent to others. He was perfect in the sense that he always sought to discern and do God’s will. It is in this way that Jesus of Nazareth is our model of sinless behavior.
How did he develop his sense of what God was asking him to do? Not by magic, but through his thorough-going command of the religious teachings available to him in his day; his constant meditation upon their meaning; his study with those who knew the tradition well; and his discipline of prayer. His sinlessness was not just based upon doing what he “felt” was right, but upon the broadest possible exploration of all the human gifts of thought, reflection, emotion, interaction and experience available to him.

We too are held sinless when, after all possible exploration of ourselves, we finally come to a decision that we must take a particular action or else we are untrue to God’s call. Sometimes our decision will be seen by many others as objectively wrong. The Church, in its teachings, may even corroborate that something is objectively wrong. The state may judge against us. The matter before God, however, is that we have exhausted every possible avenue of reflection, thought and prayer in order to come to our final decision as a Christian. Then we are held blameless before God.

Knowing that the Ten Commandments forbid both killing and lying, let’s take a well-tried example. An enraged gunman arrives at the front door, demanding to see our sister who we know is upstairs. The gunman is clear that our refusal to state where our sister is will lead him to kill us instead. Do we say, “My sister has gone to the drug store and then is on her way to Sacramento” and, assuming he goes off toward the drug store, call and inform the police?

Or do we say, because we cannot tell a lie, “my sister is upstairs” and risk that he will force his way upstairs and kill her? Whichever we do, if we do it out of Christian conviction and make our decision from the depth of our being, asking what we think God would have us do, we are held blameless before God.

The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us so that we can grasp something of what it means to be God’s children. In what I have said here I have tried to focus on one aspect of Christ’s nature, his sinlessness. This is not some magic power which he had. It was rather his ability to focus all his attention and all his conscious and unconscious power and understanding upon trying to do what God wanted him to do in every given moment. Whenever we too do that, we also are held to be sinless before God in the sense that we have engaged our whole being in trying to make an appropriate Christian decision in a given circumstance or situation.

— David

>> Back to Dean's Letters

who we are . worship services . iglesia de guadalupe . ministries . children & families
calendar . news . sermons & ideas . join us . sitemap . home

Trinity Episcopal Cathedral
81 North Second Street, San Jose, California 95113 . 408-293-7953
trinicat@pacbell.net . www.trinitysj.org