“Jesus’ Sinless Nature”

Biblegems #205

Question: I have heard it taught that Jesus, born of the virgin Mary, did not receive the sin nature because that is passed down from Adam through human fathers. 

Here’s my problem with this teaching: Don't we all have sin natures? How can the sin nature be passed on only through fathers?

Your problem with this teaching is well founded! The sin nature is passed down through both parents, not just the male.

So how did Jesus remain sinless since he was brought into the world by a sinful human mother? 

Jesus’ sinless nature is the result of God implanting and bringing to conception within Mary a “seed” uncontaminated by sin:

         Luke 1:35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

In effect, God allowed Mary to serve as a surrogate mother. She was not impregnated by a man but by the Holy Spirit. Consequently, what would be conceived in her would also be holy. There would be no sin nature.

Just as God first created Adam (the first of the human kind) in the Garden of Eden, so now God was bringing into the world a new “Adam”—a human whose nature was uncontaminated by the sin transmitted from Adam and Eve through their descendants. And just as God breathed life into the physical body of Adam and created a living “soul” (Gen 2:7), so now God "made" a physical, human body within Mary's womb and imparted His own Holy Spirit into that new life—God in human form. The fact that Mary carried Jesus in her womb does not mean she passed on her sinful nature to him. She was a vessel; God alone gave Jesus life:

         Phil. 2:6-7 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  

This new “Adam”—Jesus—would then be able to pass on His holy nature to others, not through biological means but through the working of the same Holy Spirit that had brought him into the world:

         1Cor. 15:45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.

This is the believer’s wonderful assurance, that when a person surrenders all to Jesus he or she becomes a new creature in Christ. This is not a metaphor but a transformation of our fallen, sinful nature into a new nature created in Christ Jesus:

1Pet. 1:23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

What great news! We are no longer under the control of the sinful nature passed down to us through our parents and ancestors. We have the power through Christ who lives in us “…to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age” (Titus 2:12).