1See how great a love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God! For this cause the world doesn’t know us, because it didn’t know him. 2Beloved, now we are children of God. It is not yet revealed what we will be; but we know that when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him just as he is. 3Everyone who has this hope set on him purifies himself, even as he is pure.
4Everyone who sins also commits lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. 5You know that he was revealed to take away our sins, and no sin is in him. 6Whoever remains in him doesn’t sin. Whoever sins hasn’t seen him and doesn’t know him.
7Little children, let no one lead you astray. He who does righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. 8He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. To this end the Son of God was revealed: that he might destroy the works of the devil. 9Whoever is born of God doesn’t commit sin, because his seed remains in him, and he can’t sin, because he is born of God. 10In this the children of God are revealed, and the children of the devil. Whoever doesn’t do righteousness is not of God, neither is he who doesn’t love his brother. 11For this is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another— 12unlike Cain, who was of the evil one and killed his brother. Why did he kill him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s righteous.
13Don’t be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. 14We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. He who doesn’t love his brother remains in death. 15Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.
16By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17But whoever has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, then closes his heart of compassion against him, how does God’s love remain in him?
18My little children, let’s not love in word only, or with the tongue only, but in deed and truth. 19And by this we know that we are of the truth and persuade our hearts before him, 20because if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. 21Beloved, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have boldness toward God; 22so whatever we ask, we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight. 23This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, even as he commanded. 24He who keeps his commandments remains in him, and he in him. By this we know that he remains in us, by the Spirit which he gave us.
Jesus Christ was fully God and fully human and these facts raise the question of the potential for sin in the life of Jesus. Since Jesus was fully human, does that mean there was a sinful nature? The issue of the possibility of Jesus Christ yielding to temptation and sinning deals with the theological terms peccability and impeccability and come from the Latin word peccare, “to sin.” If one holds to the peccability of Jesus, then their position is that Christ could sin, but didn’t do so. If one argues for impeccability then the position is that Christ could not sin. The discussion is one regarding the phrases “able not to sin” and “not able to sin.”
In accordance with the teaching of Scripture, both views acknowledge that Christ’s temptations were real (Heb 4:15), Christ experienced struggle (Matt 26:36-46), and Christ did not sin (2 Cor 5:21; Heb 7:26; James 5:6; 1 Pet 2:22, 3:18; 1 John 3:5). Those who argue that Christ could sin contend that it is a logical deduction that if and since Christ was tempted, He could have sinned. To say that He could not sin is to say the temptations were not real and that ultimately He cannot truly sympathize with humanity. They also contend that if the possibility of sinning did not exist then Jesus did not have freedom of the will.
In response, the fact that Jesus could be and was tempted does not mean that He was susceptible to sin. By analogy, we note that just because an army can be attacked, that does not mean that the army can be conquered. Because of Christ’s unique nature (without a sinful nature), that which applies to us (temptation and susceptibility) does not necessarily apply to Christ. Christ can understand and sympathize with human suffering and temptation because although His temptations were not always exactly parallel to those that we experience, His human nature was tried. The temptations of Christ were in every way like ours except that they did not originate in Himself; He was tempted from without, not from within. Jesus Christ manifested His free will by not sinning. Although tempted like us, Jesus never sinned. Because Jesus uniquely had two natures, fully divine and fully human, those natures existed and functioned simultaneously. Had his human nature existed independently then theoretically Jesus could have sinned. However, it did not exist as such. Both the human and divine natures existed fully in Jesus from the moment of conception. Had Jesus sinned, the act would have involved both natures and Jesus would then not have been truly God. Our conclusion must be therefore that it was not possible for Jesus to sin. The temptations of Jesus were real because He did not give in to them. We must always remember that when thinking about issues such as these we are dealing with Jesus as fully God and fully human—something that never has been and never will be true of anyone else. It is also something that we are unable to fully comprehend. We must affirm the teachings of Scripture and do so knowing that our understanding of them is true but incomplete.