(Im-)Perfection? The Case for a Sinning Christ

This past Sunday we celebrated the Baptism of our Lord.  And we sang a hymn that said, "he did not come for pardon, but as the sinless One."  Now, I know that it has been orthodoxy since pretty much the beginning of the church, but I've just never been big on the belief that Jesus never sinned.

Rather than being sinless, I think Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, who then had to be made to fit the mold of what was expected by those who were (and are) expecting something.  In other words, his life first convinced people that he was the long-awaited one and then his followers had to make sure that he lived up with the hype that had been building for a thousand years.

There was a lot of expectation.  But everything we know about Jesus is that he broke the mold of what was expected!  If anything, his life was about teaching people to expect the unexpected!  And those who were not (and are not) expecting anything - you think they really cared about the expectations for the Messiah?

You see, there were (and are) some people who know better than to expect anything from anyone.  These are the people who have been taught by the harsh realities of life that they can stop expecting anything because they aren't even going to get anything.  Instead of expecting, they hope.  They hope beyond hope.  And, no, they are not hoping for President Obama or anyone else to come to their aid, for they have long given up on politicians.  They hope, rather, for something to break into our world and shake things up.

So, when Jesus comes and does just that, announcing that the poor are blessed, inviting criminals and all sorts of "bad" folks to the dinner party, turning over tables, and pronouncing the day of Jubilee - you think those outcasts of society cared a lick if he had ever sinned?  If you're not sure, let me help you out: No, hell no, they did not.  All they cared about was that this man fulfilled their wildest hopes.

Sure, there are some passages in the Bible that state or allude to the fact that Jesus is without sin.  They are found in what Christians call the New Testament (NT) and most of them rely on a sacrificial theology from what we call the Old Testament (OT).

But there are a couple of issues here.  One thing is that I have already expressed my doubts about the idea of God requiring blood sacrifice.  (See here, here, and here.)  There are some dissenting voices in the OT on this issue as well.  (See, especially, the Prophets.)  Without the logic of sacrifice, without a God who desires blood, without the necessity of an innocent to die for the sins of the guilty, the idea of Jesus being sinless isn't all that important.

I don't know if Jesus sinned or not.  All I'm saying is that the case seems kind of skewed.  It seems like the NT authors looked back to the sacrificial theology of (parts of) the OT, some of which was sometimes used to describe the anticipated Messiah, and made Jesus fit the mold of expectation.  The NT authors, especially Matthew, did this quite often - they took looked at what the OT said about the Messiah and then found a way to incorporate that into the story of Jesus, even if it had to be forced.

Here's the kicker, though: If Jesus did sin, that is actually more meaningful to me.  The humanity of Jesus is supposed to make us relate to him, and him to us, but I don't (can't?) relate to sinless humanity.  I don't know about you, but I can't even imagine sinless humanity.  And, even more importantly, I don't think a sinless human can really experience humanity as you and I do.

"What if God was one of us?" asked Joan Osbourne, to which a bunch of church folk answered that he was in the person of Jesus.  But, for me, "one of us" means flawed like us, struggling with imperfections like us, trying to find a way to get back up after falling down yet again like us.

A sinless Christ, however, is not like us.  A sinless Christ is above us, better than us, aloof to our experience, oblivious to our needs.  A Jesus without sin can't relate to the struggles of us everyday people.

I like the idea that Jesus has the ability to bring salvation because he was one of us; I just have a different understanding of what it means to be one of us.  And so I think it is only a sinning Jesus that can be truly called the Christ.

We need someone like us and I believe Jesus really was like us, imperfections and all.