Lesson Five: Jesus Was Sinless
Pastor Philip Piasecki
The 21st century has had its fair share of amazing technological developments. I would argue that there are none greater than grocery delivery apps. One minute, you are on the couch, filling up your grocery cart on your smartphone, and in the next couple of hours, it is waiting for you at your doorstep. We utilize this often (maybe too much), but it does not come without occasional issues. I will never forget the time they delivered groceries to my parents’ house and said that they “put them by the back door.” Well, they were nowhere to be found. We assumed they accidentally sent them to our neighbor’s house, but they were not there either. After searching for a while, we finally had to have them redeliver the same order. After about a month, we started smelling this horrible stench in the garage. There, in the back corner of the garage, behind bikes and boxes, we found our groceries. At this point, everything was spoiled, with spots and blemishes covering every part of the food. Needless to say, it was no longer acceptable for our family to eat.
In 1 Peter 1:18-19, we are reminded “that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”
Here, we see Jesus Christ Himself described as “a lamb without blemish or spot.” One of the foundational truths of Christianity is that Jesus was sinless. This truth is also professed throughout the Scripture we see in this devotion and in verses like Hebrews 4:15, 1 Peter 2:22, Hebrews 7:26, 1 John 3:5, and so many more. He lived for thirty-three years on this Earth, tempted as we all are, yet He never sinned. We are all like those groceries sitting in the back of the garage, spoiled with spots and blemishes. We are not acceptable to be in the presence of God. We were born into sin, and have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). We all deserve the punishment for our sins. However, Jesus stepped in, as the spotless lamb, to make right our relationship with God by removing the debt that we owed, paying for it Himself. In 1 Peter, we see that we could not be ransomed by things like silver or gold; earthly things would not be able to pay for the debt that we owed. It would take a perfect sacrifice, and Jesus provided Himself for us.
In 2 Corinthians 5:21, we read, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” We see again that Jesus knew no sin, yet He took our sins upon Himself on the cross. The result of this beautiful substitution is that, as believers, God can now look upon us and see us as righteous instead of seeing our sins. Jesus was not just a man; Jesus was and is God. Jesus was not just a good man; He lived a sinless life. God with us here on Earth lived a perfect life. His perfection as the Lamb without spot or blemish made it possible for Him to be the sacrifice to ransom us from our futile ways. We stand firm in our belief that Jesus Christ was without sin; this truth is what makes His sacrifice so effective and meaningful for the Church throughout the world.