Did Jesus Sin?

Jesus was twelve years old (Luke 2:42). He should have known by that age that he was supposed to be respectful of his parents. He should have known better than to just stay behind in Jerusalem while his family hit the road to return to Nazareth. He put a huge imposition upon his mother and father, making them return in search of him. The young boy Jesus adopted the practice that many of us engage in. It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission. If a half lie is really a full lie, then perhaps masked disobedience may be full disobedience. Did Jesus sin?

When his parents found him his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you” (Luke 2:48). Jesus gave them an answer, an excuse for his disrespectful behavior, saying that he had to stay behind in the temple, in his Father’s house. Again I ask, did Jesus sin?

But you say that Jesus had to be sinless to be the sacrifice for our sins. Maybe this disrespectful behavior, if it was a sin, was forgiven. Like a sacrificial lamb in the temple worship, the small blemish was surgically removed and the Lamb of God was pronounced perfect.

You don’t buy that?  Neither do I. Jesus was the perfect Son of God (Hebrews 5).

The point of the argument is this. If we were to judge Jesus’ behavior on the basis of right and wrong, black and white, legalistic and moralistic obedience, we should probably say that Jesus sinned. But we know that his faith-relationship with His heavenly father, even at the age of twelve, moved him to do what he did. And we justify it based on standards of trust and surrender that we are reluctant to apply to others. For Jesus we can freely grant grace, but for the many who believed God and walked in faith (Hebrews 11) we hold them to moralistic standards of law and obedience.

I recently heard a sermon about the belt of truth, which the speaker mysteriously made into the belt of truthfulness. Our own obedience, he suggested, not an armor supplied by God, is our defense against the fiery darts of Satan. As an example he made Abraham out to be the Father of Lies, not the Father of Faith that the Scriptures declare. Oh how my heart was grieved.

The law demanded obedience, a standard that was impossible to attain. God’s glory still shone through that old covenant of impossible demands. But how much greater is the glory of the covenant of grace (II Cor 3:8-11).  How much greater is the glory of living in the righteousness of Christ, than in our own self-effort.  How much greater is the glory of living in surrender to the love of God than in pretense and self-righteous obedience.

When obedience is the measure of faith then men pretend and they hide. They glory in their self-righteousness while looking down on others who don’t measure up. They fail and then live in guilt and shame. They give up. Or worst of all, they want nothing to do with the moralistic demands of a religion that they cannot live up to. As one young man said to me recently, “I have decided that I do not want to be a Christian. The expectations are too much, and I know I would fail. And then everyone would say to me that you said you were a Christian, but look what you did.”

It is the goal of my Christian walk to ever increase in my knowledge of living in relation with God by faith – that is by trusting grace rather than observing the law, by living in surrender rather than mere obedience, being empowered by the Holy Spirit rather than self-effort, being motivated by the incredible love of God and the far-reaching forgiveness that is the heart and soul of His grace. His truth gives me direction as I surrender to His great love. But if we put obedience as the measure of faith, we can call Abraham the Father of lies, and we might even have to conclude that Jesus sinned when he was disrespectful to his parents.