Argument: Jesus could feel the full force of temptation and maybe felt he
could give in though he was impeccable by nature and that would not happen. A
person is still a model for us as long as they do good even if they feel no
strong temptation to be bad. Therefore Jesus though he is not an example of
fighting inner corruption is an example for us that do. Jesus is not showing
us we can be like him but that he is the direction to aim toward even if we
never match it fully.”
Reply: If we are suffering inner corruption and
temptation is connected to that and often leads to us giving in we need a
person who has the real potential to be evil but who resists the worst of
temptations and that is that.
Jesus being unable to sin is not the
same as a person who can be corrupt and who does not feel any temptation to be
evil but does only good. There is no evidence that this Jesus is
psychologically or spiritually relevant as an exemplar.
Nobody knows
Jesus’ psychology when he experienced alleged temptation. Arguably out of
respect for him and how personal that issue would have been, Christians should
not be guessing that he did feel the pull towards sin but not the sense that
he might give in.
If the Holy Spirit
were giving Jesus information to deter him from the evil – eg visions of what
would happen if he did – he would not be a relatable model for us.
We
should clearly be focusing on somebody normal – not on Jesus. Saying he is the
Son of God, the way to God, is harmful for it puts him at the centre.
And “he is the direction to aim toward even if we never match it fully”
matters little if our steps are too slow and too short and we keep stepping
back. All people tell themselves that they are stepping into moral progress
when it is not true. It is too subjective – people will imagine they would be
worse without the Jesus role model. It is nothing to be guessing about and can
cause untold harm.
Also nobody knows Jesus personally and not even
Jesus himself could be sure he never sinned. We are filling in the blanks with
our own notions – our projections. Our Jesus says more about us than Jesus.
Jesus thus is treated as corrupted – we push that to the back of our heads and
deny it.
It gets worse if you consider how Augustine and others said
that we are not sinners because we sin but are sinners by nature. Dogs bark
for they are dogs. We sin because we are sinners. This view would imply that
God set it up that we would be fractured inside. He designed how evil would
affect us. They answered that this creates tension between responsibility and
what we are. Can we be truly and fully blamed for our evil if it is part of us
and inevitable? If you have to be evil surely you may steal from the
supermarkets? If it stops you say becoming violent then why not? If the evil
has to come out anyway why not?
Plus if we are sinners because we sin
and not the other way around – in time the sinning will become part of us so
we effectively remake ourselves with an evil nature.
Such teachings
easily become an excuse for avoiding attempts at transformation.
Some
theologians argue that understanding temptation doesn’t require the ability to
fail—it requires experiencing its full force. That is confusing temptation
with feeling tempted. There is a subtle but important difference. You can feel
sick without being sick. You can feel an urge but it is not a temptation
unless it is, “I know I can give if even if I do not.”
Finally read
and reread this.
A person who has no inner corruption but who could
give into temptation is one subject.
A person who has no inner
corruption but who literally cannot give into temptation is another.
A
person who has inner corruption but who does not give into temptation is
another.
That is three. None of them can truly understand the other
two. Period.
Jesus if he was God and/or consented to the life God offered him as the
Bible says, made the conditions under which his flesh and Satan tempted him.
Walking into temptation is an evil - it is the principle. If Satan
freely chose to tempt, God set the time and the limits. A loose limit is
still as much a limit as a tight one. God/Jesus is still to blame.