Thursday, January 05, 2006

Perfect vs. Sinless

My whole life growing up I heard the statement. "No one is perfect, except one person. Jesus was the only perfect person who ever lived."

I've been thinking lately about how the statements I grew up with, those things repeated to me over and over, have become a part of my the thinking patterns I have which may be just plain WRONG. I mean, was Jesus PERFECT? He was sinless. But does being sinless mean you are PERFECT? I guess this is important to me because of trying to reconcile being God and Man and in growing spiritually and hopefully becoming more Christ-like, does that mean I'm becoming more perfect, less sinful, or something else entirely?

I posed this question to one of my very best deep-thinking and theologically trained (as in degreed) friends today and received his very quick and off-the-cuff response. I qualify his response to let you know this is what he came back with in a matter of probably 2 to 5 minutes. So keep that in mind...even though I think it's great.


Did Jesus ever make a mistake? Consider Luke 2:41-51

One could also argue that Jesus could not have been perfect.
Obviously his body changed after the resurrection. If the old one was
perfect, then why did he get a new one?

I would say no one can be perfect as long as they live on earth. I
would say that even Jesus was not perfect on earth. No one can be
sinless either. However, Jesus was sinless in his imperfect state
(even more remarkable when you think about it).


Food for thought...for me, at least.

grace



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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're bordering on heresy, young lady! ;-) As a theology professor friend says, "It's hard not to be a heretic!"

I hear what you're saying about this. I've struggled through some of this talk of "Fully God, Fully man". I mean, if Christ disrobed himself of the majesty and glory he is due to become a human, was he FULLY God? I mean, isn't glory part and parcel of being God? I know it's bordering on theological death-penalty to even suggest that, but I think these are pretty important things to think through.

hmmm... More later, hopefully.

grace said...

fully God, fully man sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? i'm glad i'm not the only one who seems to have difficulty with this...i don't mean difficulty in that i don't believe it...i can accept it as being something higher than my human understanding...what i have difficulty with is applying is to my own journey toward becoming more Christlike and what that really looks like. if that makes sense. thanks guys for commenting. it's about TIME you acted like you were still reading my blog EMERY!! ;)
grace