“IN THE LIKENESS OF SINFUL FLESH”
ROMANS 8:3

In 1854, the Catholic Church officially established the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary—that the birth-mother of our Lord Jesus Christ was herself born without original sin. Pope Pius IX in his bull, Ineffabilis Deus , declared “the most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception…preserved immune from all stain of original sin…”

Foundational to Catholic concerns (which concerns Protestants have also shared) is the preservation of our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary's birth-son, from the taint of original sin.

“Original sin,” we observe, is not exactly a firmly establish biblical doctrine, however. Poetic passages such as Psalm 58:3 and 51:5 are chief supports for this doctrine, though the latter passage may refer to David's own possible illegitimacy, rather than support for the doctrine of original sin. Clear doctrinal statements such as Romans 5:12 (“death came to all men, because all sinned”) and Ephesians 2:1 (“you were dead in your transgression and sins [not Adam's]” would lean more toward our personal and individual accountability for our own lostness, rather than because we inherited Adam's sin. “Original sin,” though not well supported from Scripture, found a wide place in the doctrine of the evolving Catholic Church, primarily as the underpinning of the doctrine of infant baptism, which allegedly washed away all original sin from the soul of the newborn. Historian Williston Walker, in contrast, observed: “The first mention of infant baptism, and an obscure one, was about 185, by Irenaeus…Why infant baptism arose there is no certain evidence. Cyprian…argued in its favor from the doctrine of original sin. Yet the older general opinion seems to have held to the innocencey of childhood …Infant baptism did not, however, become universal until the sixth century…” (1)

The doctrine of inherited original sin indeed rests on few—if any—clear biblical supports. Revivalist and theologian Charles G. Finney (1792 – 1875) opted rather for a physical depravity by birth as over against a moral depravity by birth—that all humanity is born with certain i nherited physical weaknesses which make man more susceptible to sin, but that no one is born inheriting the guilt and the sin and the moral depravity of Adam and of our whole human family—passed on from generation to generation through the flow of the human bloodstream. Moral depravity is presented in Scripture as a matter of personal willful choice and personal accountability; sin is not an inky black substance inherited from Adam, but rather a personal and willful “transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4)

If the doctrine of “original sin” is not actually a biblical doctrine, and if mankind does not inherit Adam's moral depravity by birth, then Mary's “Immaculate Conception” is unnecessary and we must even examine the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ itself in a fresh light. Some historians naively believe that the post-apostolic Catholic Church uprooted the first-century incipient gnosticism that was exposed by Paul in Colossians and by John in 1 John. John particularly counteracted the gnostic aberration, docetism (from diokein : “to seem”: the teaching that Christ only seemed to have a human body). Docetism is cited by historian Lars P. Qualben as believing: “Sin was conceived of as residing in matter, or the body, and not as the Christians believed, in the heart or in the moral nature of man… (2) Consequently, the humanity of our Lord Jesus was viewed by the gnostics not as a real humanity of flesh and blood, but rather as a “phantom” body that only appeared or seemed ( dokein ) to be human. Is it not plausible then to see that this whole “original sin” issue may really be not much more than a further hybrid of docetic gnosticism itself? But how would this affect our understanding of the incarnation of Jesus?

How real exactly was the humanity of our Lord Jesus? How actual were His temptations? There is no question that Jesus walked through this human experience “holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.” Consequently, “unlike the other high priests, He [did] not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for His own sins [for He had none], and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when He offered himself” (Hebrews 7:26–27). Though He himself was sinless, what does it mean that “He had to be made like His brothers in every way , in order that He might become a merciful and faithful High Priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people”? “Because He himself suffered when He was tempted , He is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:17–18). In what way do we “not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are &emdash;yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15)? Can we not conclude from this that Satan's temptations against Jesus were not merely “toy arrows,” but the real thing? Can we not also conclude that the humanity of Jesus—though without moral stain—did have inherited physical weaknesses and, therefore, susceptibilities to sin, just like the humanity of any other human being? Do we go too far to believe this?

Paul uses an interesting phrase in Romans 8:3—“God…[sent] His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering…” The Greek word for “likeness” is homoioma , from homos , meaning “the same.” The word actually means “sameness,” perhaps even more than “likeness.” Consequently, Bishop H.C.G. Moule in his Epistle to the Romans (p. 211) understands these words of Paul to mean, “Incarnate, in our identical nature, under all those conditions of earthly life which for us are sin's vehicles and occasions.” Eugene Peterson in his translation, The Message, translated Romans 8:3–4 in this way: “God went for the jugular when He sent His own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In His Son, Jesus, He personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all.”

This same Greek wording used by Paul in Romans 8:3 is also used by him in Philippians 2:7: “being made in human likeness ” (“sameness”). The writer of Hebrews in 2:14 articulates a similar insight about Jesus: “He too shared in their humanity.” The Greek word translated “shared” is metecho , “to take part in”—Jesus “took part in” our humanity. The Greek word homoioma is then used by the writer in verse 17: Jesus was “ made like [the same as] His brothers in every way…”

Apparently, to the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, for God to have entered the stream of our human existence with a humanity in any way other than ours would have collapsed the whole purpose of the incarnation and rendered Jesus unable to be our sympathetic High Priest, who “ because He himself suffered when He was tempted , is able to help those who are being tempted.” Jesus was “ tempted in every way, just as we are —yet without sin” (Hebrew 2:18; 4:15)!

Modern-day studies in human genetics are suggesting some surprising conclusions (but not unlike the same conclusions of Charles G. Finney of some 150 years ago). Propensities toward certain sins may have genetic roots. It is believed, some people have genetic susceptibilities toward alcoholism, toward depression, toward certain sexual behaviors, and toward certain criminal behaviors. If these conclusions are valid, we must then further ask, did Jesus have perfect genes ? or did He also have genetic susceptibilities that could have led Him into sin had He yielded to them? (Though well can we praise God that Jesus overcame all sin and never once yielded to its pull by adding His willful choice to any human weakness or to any satanic temptation!)

Matthew's curious genealogy may shed some further light on the above questions about Jesus' genes. What was the significance of Matthew's uncovering these four skeletons in Jesus' ancestral closet: Tamar, the prostitute (Matthew 1:3), Rahab, the harlot (v.5), Ruth, the Gentile outcast (v. 5), and the adulterous Bathsheeba, “Uriah's wife” (v. 6)? While it is true that Matthew's genealogy may be that of Joseph (v. 16), who had no direct genetic involvement in Jesus' life, it is also true that Luke's genealogy (see Luke, Chapter 3) is probably that of Mary, Jesus' birth-mother, and that Mary's genealogy only branches into another line after King David, leaving both Mary and Jesus as the genetic recipients of the genetic weaknesses of these skeletons—as all their flawed DNA was swept forward and onward toward the point of Jesus' conception.

The insistence of Paul in his writings and that of the book of Hebrews is that our Lord Jesus Christ, in His incarnation, was not nearly like us, but exactly like us&emdash; except without sin (which Scripture defines as willful choices against the holy law of God). If it is true that Jesus painfully struggled with the same temptations which now face us, and if it is true that He wrestled with the same propensities and bents and leanings that we now wrestle with—then indeed, and only then, are we able to “approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). Because “He himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:18). Praise God that this kind of Jesus “always lives to intercede” for us! He understands! He overcame! He prays for us! And He lives within us to overcome again!

“I cannot tell how silently He suffered,
As with His peace He graced this place of tears,
Or how His heart upon the Cross was broken,
The crown of pain to three and thirty years.
But this I know, He heals the broken-hearted,
And stays our sin, and calms our lurking fear,
And lifts the burden from the heavy laden,
For yet the Savior, Savior of the world is here.” Amen.
      —W.Y. Fullerton

(1) Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959, 87-88)
(2) Lars P. Qualten, A History of the Christian Church (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1933), 77