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THE SINLESS FRIEND OF SINNERS #4

SIX BILLION TEMPTATIONS

There's an old book, dating back to 1957, entitled The Day Christ Died, by Jim Bishop. It's filled with lots of Scripture, of course, but also many, many details gleaned from history, from ancient Jewish writing — and maybe also a bit of sanctified imagination here and there.

But there's one thing this gifted writer captured for sure. He writes how Jesus was able to look into a person's heart — any man, any woman — and immediately know everything that was in there. Here's what he says concerning how Christ felt about His own betrayer:

"The mind of Jesus could look into the heart of Judas and see every scar, every soiled tissue, but He would say nothing hurtful to this man even when He knew that Judas was stealing from the common purse, even when He knew that Iscariot no longer believed in Jesus."

How could Jesus look into those darting, duplicitous eyes, see the sin lurking there . . . and say nothing? We've marveled for three days now that a holy Savior who hated sin, reacting against it much more than you and I do, still loved the sinner. Here's another line from the next page in the book:

"No one understood the weaknesses of the human heart as well as Jesus, and no one was as willing to spend time trying to save one contaminated soul while the healthy and righteous ones grumbled outside the door."

But really, what does the holy, innocent Jesus truly know about sin? What does He know about the driving addictions that are inside of us, the push toward evil, the momentum sin has in our lives? He's never experienced addiction, or a bad habit. You and I have a natural inclination to sin, both by heredity and by years of practice. Christ didn't have that, so how can He understand it in us? We get both encouragement and bafflement by a wonderful but mysterious verse found in the book of Hebrews, chapter four:

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet was without sin."

The King James Version says: "in all points tempted like as we are." The Message, a popular paraphrase many of us are reading these days puts it this way:

"He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all — all but the sin."

We know, of course, about the one-two-three punch of Lucifer's temptations directed at Jesus in Matthew chapter four. And certainly Satan, the prince of darkness, was there in the darkness of Gethsemane, assailing Jesus with doubt and discouragement and the desire to leave us in our sins and return to His heavenly home. But was Christ ever tempted in all points, all temptations, all addictions and afflictions, just like us?

Christians of all persuasions love to debate the nature of Jesus, and exactly what He went through in life. We have here in our office a book going back to the archival years of my own denomination, where people of good will got rather pointed in their assertions. One very able theologian — some of you listeners would recognize his name — pointed out that what tempts one person doesn't faze another Christian at all. Simply because of background or personality or makeup, that particular vice is, in his words, "no more to me than a zephyr in a summer day." Zephyr meaning the slightest whisper of a breeze.

But then he goes on to make the assertion that Jesus had a bent toward, an inclination toward, not just Mr. X's kinds of sins, but Mr. Y's and Mr. Z's, and EVERY person's particular areas of weakness. Jesus felt, he said, a driving passion, a desire for ALL sins. Here's the quote:

"In order to help me, Jesus must be where He can feel what I feel, and be tempted in all points where I could be tempted with any power at all. But as things that tempt me may not affect you at all, and things that affect you may not affect me, Christ has to stand where you and I both are, so as to meet all the temptations of both. He must feel all those which you meet that do not affect me, and also all those which I meet that do not affect you."

And this well-meaning Christian writer expands that to surmise that Jesus felt the craving, the temptations, the specific weaknesses, of every single member of the human race. In terms of our discussion yesterday, Jesus, then, would feel a burning desire to blow up a Columbine High School and kill 500 fellow students. In terms of lust, He would relate to the craving, the temptation, to commit adultery. Both heterosexual and homosexual desires would burn within Him, plus a leaning toward child abuse and perversion.

Well, friend, I must say as respectfully as I can that I disagree with that conclusion. I stand instead with the gospel writer yesterday who asserted that Jesus Christ, who is the Holy Lamb of God, found sin hateful, not desirable. He shrank away from evil. And yet, somehow, here in Hebrews, we not only found that Jesus was tempted in all areas, but that He has a great love for you and me, an identification with us as we struggle with our own lusts and weaknesses. The very next verse there in chapter four invites us to come "boldly," the Bible says, to approach this gracious Friend who sympathizes with our weaknesses. As we've said for four days now, this incredible Jesus hates sin but has a baffling but wonderful love for sinners. He is the sinless Friend of sinners.

Friend, we have to be very, very humble in studying this powerful mystery. What does Jesus really know about sin? Just two chapters earlier, still in Hebrews, we're told this:

"Since the children [meaning us, you and me] have flesh and blood, [Jesus] too shared in their humanity so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil."

So Jesus was human. He had a body; He had flesh. The Bible tells us He knew all about hunger and about thirst and about fatigue. He got tired; He went to sleep in the back of a boat even during a fierce storm. He could be afraid of dying just like the next person. One of my favorite quotes, outside of the Bible, comes from a classic old book called The Desire of Ages. Here it is:

"In taking our nature, the Saviour has bound Himself to humanity by a tie that is never to be broken. Through the eternal ages He is linked with us . . . He who is ‘holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,' is not ashamed to call us brethren."

Let's think a bit more about how the perfect, holy Jesus understands sin. Friend, I would suggest that Christ understands sin better than any of us do. I marvel, sometimes, how a good auto mechanic can listen to my car's engine and immediately spot the problem. He understands what a broken water pump sounds like, because he's intimately familiar with a good one. He knows the symptoms of a bad timing belt because he's installed hundreds of factory-fresh, blemish-free ones. The designer of the car, naturally, would even be quicker to comprehend an engine's faults, because he is the one who crafted the original.

Isn't it true that a skilled mathematics teacher, who never makes mistakes himself, is the best one to point out the student's? "You did this part wrong right here," he graciously suggests, and he knows it's wrong because he's so in tune with the particulars of good math.

Here's yet another point. When a person is steeped in sin, he or she is totally UNequipped to understand its destructive power, its deadliness. C. S. Lewis comments on this in his book, Mere Christianity, in a chapter ironically titled "Morality and Psychoanalysis." Notice:

"You understand sleep when you are awake," he writes, "not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic" — speaking of math — "when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk." And then this telling diagnosis: "Good people know about both good and evil; bad people do not know about either."

It stands to reason, then, that our Friend Jesus understands sin better than any of us. He has none of the fog of our addictions, none of the self-denial of our bad habits, none of the confusion and twisted thinking, the self-excusing and blame-it-on-others syndrome that immorality and disobedience puts in our minds, as it instantly did in the Garden of Eden.

So Jesus looks into the eyes of Judas, and perfectly comprehends thievery and betrayal, even though He's never done either. And — miracle of all miracles! — He still loves that thief, that slippery little man with the 30 silver coins already tightly wrapped up and hidden in his deepest pocket where they won't jingle and give him away. Jesus loves Judas; He washes His feet; He continues to invite him into the kingdom.

Just as He does every day for you and for me.