Morning Sermon - 27th September 2026 - The Sinless Saviour: Origin, Evidence, and Certainty

Now we turn in our Bibles to Luke's Gospel, Luke's Gospel chapter four and we're going to read the first 13 verses.

Luke chapter four reading the first 13 verses and this is God's word.

And Jesus full of the Holy Spirit returned from Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days being tempted by the devil.

And he ate nothing during those days and when they were ended he was hungry.

The devil said to him, 'If you are the Son of God, command a stone to become bread.' And Jesus answered him, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone.

And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to him, To you I will give all this authority and their glory for it is being delivered to me and I give it to whom I will.

If you then will worship me it will all be yours.

And Jesus answered him, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.' And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.

For it's written, he will command his angels concerning you to guard you and on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.

And Jesus answered him, it is said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Amen.

Now in a Essian criticism in the famous eighteenth century poet Alexander Pope said this, he said, To is human.

To is human.

And it's the idea that imperfection is bound up with our human nature.

We're finite creatures, we all make mistakes, we intellectually and not only that but moral failure to some extent is inevitable as well.

To is human.

And very few people, if they're really being honest, would ever claim perfection.

Many would admit, maybe you've heard them say it, well, I'm not perfect.

And usually that's followed by a but, but I'm not perfect.

And the danger is to say, well, I'm not perfect, and you use it as an excuse.

And you know the mantra very well, imperfections, yes of course I've got imperfections and I've never claimed to be perfect.

I do make mistakes.

I do get things wrong.

I do and say things I shouldn't.

I'm only human.

And you know these platitudes are offered as an excuse some would argue.

Well you can't expect perfection.

That's just the way human beings are.

And then you begin to go down a slippery slope when you start taking that line of argument because you can't blame people for their intellectual mistakes and you can't blame people for their moral failures, can't blame them at all, and the person who says that is really working to an agenda.

Well you can't blame me, I'm just human, I'm not perfect, I never said I was.

To is human.

In Hebrews chapter two and verse 17 we read that the Lord Jesus had to be made like His brothers in every respect.

And that ties into your sermon from last week when we were thinking about the Savior's true humanity.

That He has a human nature, a body and a soul exactly like us in every respect with a single exception.

And we said that exception is sin.

And if he's truly human does that imply that he was a sinner?

If he was like every other human being, he was made like his brothers in every respect, well he's also an imperfect human being.

The question is put out there, is that where the case is at?

Would the implication not be that, well if that was his case, that he wasn't in any way perfect or there was some form of imperfection with him, well, that would question his whole ministry as a savior.

Surely he couldn't be a sinner to save sinners because that doesn't seem possible.

So this morning we're coming to this third message in our series exploring the wonder of salvation.

In a previous message we looked at the Savior as fully God.

Last week we looked at the Savior as fully human and today we're going to look at the Savior who is sinless and here another vital and essential element of the perfect the perfect perfection and person of Christ is brought before us.

And we said at the beginning of the series that the person of Christ and the work of Christ are intertwined.

They're inseparable.

The work that He does to save us is actually rooted in who He actually is.

And I trust we have seen in these earlier sermons of the person of Christ that He is a Savior without sin.

And these are three truths that are essential that we look at this morning.

Three truths that are set out for us regarding our sinless savior.

What are these three truths that we need to look at as we think of the Lord Jesus Christ being the sinless savior?

Well, first of all, we need to think about the origins of Christ's sinlessness.

Then we need to think of the evidence of Christ's sinlessness.

And then we need to think of the certainty of Christ's sinlessness.

So let's think first of all of the origins of Christ's sinlessness.

The origins of Christ's sinlessness.

Now the Bible shows us that every human being and where we are no exception to this is born with a corrupt inheritance from Adam our forefather the first human being.

We have thought about that in different occasions, many occasions in fact, we looked at the Bible's covenant story and we saw that Adam in the Garden of Eden, of course, represented all his descendants, the whole human race.

And we know in the Garden of Eden, God made with Adam and with Eve a covenant of works.

And that structured the relationship between God and human beings.

And in the covenant of works, Adam represented the entire human race.

And it meant that what Adam did for good or for ill would implicate all of his descendants.

Let me share you a little analogy to help you understand it.

If you think of the actions of our government, when the government makes certain decisions, perhaps if they decide to declare war on state, every citizen is implicated in that particular decision.

The government represents the people, and it means that everyone is included in the covenant made in the Garden of Eden.

What Adam did as our representative implicated all of us as well.

And you know what he did?

You know that he broke the covenant in Eden.

He disobeyed God's command, and he plunged the whole human race into sin.

And that's what lies behind what Paul tells us in one Corinthians twelve twenty two, In Adam all die.

We are all in Adam.

We die physically, death came into the world at that point.

But at a deeper level, we die spiritually, we're dead in Adam, our forefather, and we're all implicated in that broken covenant.

So we're born into this world guilty, morally corrupt, and sin is rooted in our first moments of existence.

And David talked about sin being rooted in our first moments of existence when he sings in Psalm 51 that he was sinful from the moment of his conception.

In my mother's womb, I was born in sin.

He didn't have to learn to sin and you don't have to teach a child to sin.

You know that.

Might say it comes naturally and it comes naturally because we've all got a twisted fallen nature.

We're descendants of Adam, not just physically but spiritually, so in Adam all die.

And you know the Lord Jesus is different.

He's the single exception to that principle in all in Adam all die.

Why?

Because He's different.

And to understand how the Lord Jesus is different, we need to go back to what we mentioned last time, the virgin conception.

Yes, we're all familiar with the term the virgin birth and when we understand that in the context, yes, that's fine, but it was at his conception, it was at that moment when he was conceived in the virgin Mary that He was fully human and fully God and fully perfect and without sin.

At that point the powerful working of the Holy Spirit sanctified His human nature from any stain of sin from the very point of conception.

Isn't it interesting that we're talking this morning about conception?

Life begins at conception.

And we have in the city hall tomorrow being lit up celebrating abortion.

And yet the Word of God clearly tells us that life begins at conception.

It's so sad.

His human heart was free of all pollution, of sin, of guilt, and that was the beginning point of his sinlessness, the moment of conception.

And there never was a human being, Jesus, who was not united to a divine nature, to the Son of God.

It's not as if God adopted a human being who had already existed and who'd been sinful and fallen.

From the very moment, the first moment of His existence, Jesus was free from all sin.

One exception in the human race, no pollution, no guilt, no sin resting upon Him.

There's a mystery in that.

How did that happen?

How did God do that?

No doubt we're dealing with things that are beyond what our little minds can really comprehend and we don't fully understand how sin is passed on from generation to generation.

If we could, and if God wanted us to know, He would have told us so.

But the virgin conception of Jesus is so important because it represents a break in the line of Adam.

He was not born in the conventional way.

You go to the shorter catechism.

Question 16 gives an exact answer.

Question 16 says, Did all mankind fall in Adam's first transgression?

The answer comes back, All mankind descending from Adam by ordinary generation sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression.

Note the phrase ordinary generation.

That matters.

The ordinary process of conception, development and birth has been spoken about here.

Jesus, we have seen and looked at that from the point of conception, He was without sin.

He didn't descend from Adam by ordinary generation.

He didn't have a human father, so the link was broken, and he was holy from the very first moment of his existence.

A possible understanding of course of this or the real understanding is found in Scripture when the angel appeared to Mary and said, The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.

And the Spirit was working from the very moment of the existence of Jesus' human nature.

He did not descend from Adam in the usual way as we all do.

In a spiritual sense, the Lord Jesus was not in Adam and He didn't bear the guilt and the sinfulness of Adam as we do.

He wasn't a covenant breaker like we are.

And that's why the virgin conception is so important theologically.

It's not just a curiosity about Jesus's origin.

It matters profoundly because it means the link is there with Adam set down the link that is actually broken.

The Lord Jesus from his first moment was free of all sin.

He escaped guilt, the corruption that all the rest of us share in and that means he has no sin of his own for which he needs to atone.

And if Jesus had been sinful he would have to pay the price for his own sin and he couldn't help any of us because he would have had the burden of his own guilt to deal with.

But because he's free of any guilt of any sin then he is equipped to be the savior of sinners.

That's not a sinner saving other sinners.

That's impossible.

It's the sinless one saving other sinners and that's our Savior.

He is without sin and He is able to save people like us.

In Adam we're dead.

We have no hope in ourselves.

The origin of Christ's sinlessness is right back at his conception.

The very moments of the existence of that human nature.

He doesn't carry the burden of sin and guilt that we do when we come into this world.

So get something straight this morning.

As we think of our Savior He is sinless and we see the origins of His sinlessness because of His conception.

And that leads us to think secondly about the evidence of Christ's sinlessness.

The evidence of Christ's sinlessness.

And in that testimony we look to the Bible when we think of this.

We get a testimony in the Bible and the Bible is very clear.

It gives us clear evidence with regard to his sinlessness.

Take for example Hebrews chapter four and verse 15.

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

He was tempted in every way just as we are yet without sin.

And that's an amazing statement isn't it?

That He was tempted.

He underwent the temptations.

That's why we read from Luke chapter four.

It's one of the reasons we read from this passage.

He knows the battle with temptation but he never gave in.

He's free of sin.

It's a reminder that sin is not an essential part of human nature.

In fact sin actually reduces and undermines our humanity.

Human beings are most fully human when they're in fellowship with God and if they're in fellowship with God that isn't spoiled by sin.

They are as human as they can be.

And that was Adam and Eve if you remember in the garden.

In a certain sense, Adam and Eve were more fully human than we are because they enjoyed fellowship with God, no sin to spoil, nothing to take away from it.

And when God walked in the cool of the day in the garden they would go and they would meet Him and they would talk with Him and it must have been amazing.

They were fully human.

They were the people of God and the people of God were such that well we have here the fact that they were free from sin.

Adam and Eve were free from sin.

They perfectly reflected the image of God.

And the Lord Jesus Christ free of sin is indeed perfectly human to a degree that we are not.

Imagine that our Savior is more human than we are.

Usually don't think of it in that particular way, but it's true.

There's no sin to spoil the image of God that He actually bore.

You read the gospel records that you see over and over again in different settings and different circumstances, the sinlessness of Jesus is clearly taught to us.

It stands out in contrast to the sin of the people around Him, even His own family.

In His childhood we're told in Luke chapter two and verse 40, the favor of God was upon Him.

Even his enemies had to acknowledge sinlessness.

They didn't want to acknowledge that but it was true and if they could find one little imperfection, if they could find one little sin they would have pointed it out but they couldn't.

In John chapter eight verse 46 he looked around at the crowd, he looked at the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the men that hated him, the men who would eventually plan his death.

They would be the instruments of his condemnation and his death and he looks at them and he says, Which of you convicts me of sin?

Can you imagine that?

Could you imagine saying that to a group of people who hated you and loathed you who would find any fault in you?

Could you turn right and say to them, Which of you convicts me of sin?

You wouldn't dare do that.

But Jesus did.

And nobody could say a thing.

If they could find a fault they would.

But there was no response possible.

That set the pattern for his life and it begins right back here in the passage we read from Luke chapter four in the temptations.

Satan, not just in this occasion we're told at the end of the reading, he left him until a more opportune time.

And Satan would come back and come back and come back, trying and trying by any means possible to draw Jesus into sin.

And over and over again, the Savior stood fast and here in these three temptations, each time Jesus we know quotes from the book of Deuteronomy and that's an interesting place to go for an answer to temptation.

Some of us might have maybe gone to the book of Deuteronomy for that, but Jesus did.

But He stood fast in the face of temptation.

And you see the same thing in the claims that Jesus made about himself.

Jesus said in John chapter eight and verse 12, I am the light of the world.

He was coming and saying, look I'm the source of all truth.

He was saying, look, I am the very essence of holiness in the world.

Who would dare make such a claim?

Not one of us would dare to say and stand up and say, I am the light of the world.

We're too conscious of the darkness of our own hearts but Jesus did and He could and it's a claim that no sinner could credibly make and yet here Jesus made it.

He goes on later in the chapter in John chapter eight in verse 29, he says literally, I always am doing what is pleasing to my Father.

I am doing always what is pleasing to my Father.

Now again, we know our own hearts.

Can we really say that?

All the things that we do are pleasing to our Father.

We might be willing to say, well, we're doing our best.

That even might be an exaggeration, but not for Jesus.

He could say, I always do what pleases Him.

And what a claim He knew He was completely free from sin, no guilt, no stain, no mark of wrongdoing.

He continually and habitually did His Father's will, walking in righteousness in a way we never do.

And that's the view of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that was the view preached by the early church.

When we move in on from the Gospels into the book of Acts, we start to listen to the apostles and others preaching the gospel and it's significant how they refer to the Lord Jesus Christ.

They speak of the Lord Jesus Christ as being the Holy One, as the righteous one.

And without any sense of inappropriateness, the church is always talking about Him as the Holy One, as the Righteous One.

And they knew that nobody would be able to contradict the verdict that they had come to.

In Acts chapter three and verse 14, he's called the holy and righteous one.

Or when Stephen, if you remember, is defending himself against the hostile crowd in Acts chapter seven, he refers to Jesus as the righteous one, and that's who he saw at the Father's right hand as he left this world and his life passes into glory.

He sees the righteous one.

Now the people who were being addressed by the apostles and by Stephen, many of them would have remembered Jesus.

Some of them at least would have known about him, and the church had no qualms about proclaiming the sinless one.

They presented the sinlessness of Jesus as a fact that nobody could contradict.

And now you know of course there have been religious leaders over the years who have said that they were perfect and well of course time goes by and they're exposed.

They're a fraud, they're immoral, they're ungodly people.

And the church had no fear that their claims about Jesus would ever be exposed as false because He was the righteous one.

He was the holy one.

And those who preached the gospel were fully conscious that nobody could deny that particular fact.

They might not believe in Jesus but they couldn't find fault.

They couldn't expose any sin in Him.

And there are many other texts in the New Testament that we could turn to but we don't have time to this morning.

But just a few examples, Hebrews seven and verse 26, Jesus is described as holy, innocent, unstained, separate from sinners.

He's like us in every way, but He's separated in one respect.

He's free from sin.

He's free from guilt.

In first Peter chapter two in verse 22, Peter who lived with Jesus for three years along with the rest of the disciples, he heard Him, he watched Him, he saw Him, and when He was in public ministry and when He saw Him in private and when He saw Him in unguarded moments, Peter was able to say in one Peter chapter two and verse 22, He committed no sin, neither did any deceit come out of his mouth.

We think of the most godly people that we know and we wouldn't dare say of that person, He has committed no sin or She has committed no sin.

But here's Peter knowing Jesus as well and Peter so conscious of his own sins and feelings can say of the Lord Jesus Christ, He committed no sin.

The evidence of Christ's sinlessness.

It's everywhere you look in the New Testament, in the Gospels, in the Acts, in the letters, over and over in the church is this profound conscious fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is sinless.

It's a fact that could not be disproved by anybody that Jesus was free of all sin.

He battled temptation and we see those temptations in Luke chapter four and another Gospels yet without sin.

The origin of Christ's sinlessness.

The evidence of Christ's sinlessness and thirdly and finally the certainty of Christ's sinlessness.

The certainty of Christ's sinlessness.

Now this is vital to the gospel.

Jesus who is a sinner in any respect is not a savior.

He cannot save sinners if He Himself is a sinner.

It would be I suppose in many ways like a man drowning in a river and somebody jumps in who can't swim and drowns as well.

That's no rescuer.

That kind of person in spite of their enthusiasm and their zeal and their desire they can't save us because they can't swim themselves.

A Jesus who's a sinner can't save other sinners.

He needs a Savior Himself if that's the case.

And that's why this is so important that we understand it and we believe it.

The certainty of Christ's sinlessness.

A question sometimes asked is well, could he have sinned?

Okay he didn't sin but could he have sinned?

Is it possible to say that Jesus could not sin?

And we're dealing with a phrase that theologians call the impeccability of Christ.

If he didn't sin but could he sin?

Was that a possibility that he might have sinned?

You know, some would say, Well, look, if he really shared our human nature, if he was like us in every respect, surely that human nature must have been fallen and imperfect.

Now God might have acted to prevent him actually sinning, but surely the potential was there.

The potential to sin was there.

He might have, perhaps he could have.

And after all, if you look into the Garden of Eden, people will argue, two perfect human beings, Adam and Eve, and they fell.

They did fall.

Is it the same with Jesus?

Mighty have fallen, Mighty have sinned?

Honey, the potential?

Well, the Scriptures don't address specifically the issue of Christ's impeccability.

So we've got to see what evidence we can gather from Scripture and deduce from it an answer.

And remember we have said Jesus is fully God and fully man, two natures in union with one person.

He's unique.

There never has been and never will be anyone like Him, so He has a divine nature and He's got a human nature.

The human nature was always united to His divine nature, but back to what we said at the beginning.

Right from the moment of conception Jesus is God and man.

Let us suppose that human nature sinned.

What are the consequences going to be?

The consequences are unthinkable.

Can you imagine the divine nature of Christ united to the sinful human nature?

It's unthinkable.

Surely, in some way, the holiness of His divine nature would have been compromised, and then our views of God and His holiness, etc, would just collapse.

If Jesus was truly God and truly man right from first moment, and we must conclude that because He is God, and it's impossible for this person, the God man to sin.

It simply could not happen.

The union of his divine nature with his human nature, it would seem entailed that he could not sin.

It was impossible for Christ to sin in whatever temptation and whatever battle with the evil one, he could not sin.

That throws up a question.

Sometimes troubles Christians if he could not sin, were the temptations actually real?

Here's Satan taking him up to the top of the mountain and he's taking him up to the top of the pinnacle in the temple and says, Throw yourself off and there's all the kingdoms and you'll have them if you bow down to me.

And if Jesus couldn't sin, were those real temptations?

When the letter to the Hebrews tells us he was tempted in every way as we are, how do we understand those temptations?

You read the record, the gospels, and you know we have to see that there's a real contest taking place.

But is it really a contest if there's no possibility of Jesus falling?

Now again these are mysteries because we're dealing with the Savior who is God and man.

How little our tiny minds understand these things, but they're questions that trouble people.

Another question that comes into the mix is this, what what kind of attraction could these temptations have presented to the sinless Son of God?

Was it all just a pretense that he couldn't fall?

It wasn't really a temptation.

How could he be attracted to these things that the devil came and the devil offered to him?

And again, are things about this we may not understand, but if it isn't a real battle, then there isn't a real victory to be won here.

Could it be that the temptations the devil offered him were to achieve a good end, to have the nations submitting to him, but to do it in an ungodly way?

And to do it in a way other than the way that the Father had laid down for Jesus to do?

A way that meant that he would go to the cross, he would suffer, he would die, he would rise again because Satan in every sense didn't care what Jesus did as long as he didn't die on the cross.

And that's always what the devil is trying to get him to avoid.

Go another way as long as it isn't the way of the cross because that's where Satan would be absolutely and utterly defeated.

So the temptations are presented with a good end, the nations serving you.

That's what the devil says.

But Jesus knew the nations would serve Him when He went the way of the cross and died and rose again in victory.

He would go God's way.

He'd walk the hard path of suffering and death and not take Satan's shortcuts and where that the devil was trying to offer him.

And we might wonder, well, we can't be sure.

Did Jesus know in his human mind that he couldn't sin?

Well, he didn't know, then perhaps it makes it easier to understand the battle of temptation.

Gradually he would feel more and more the power of temptation.

Only someone who has fully resisted temptation knows its true power, and we give up so often because we feel the full power of temptation.

Jesus didn't.

He knows the power of the enemy.

He stood firm.

At no point did he give in.

He was tempted as we are, yet without sin.

That's as much as we know.

And that's as much as we need to know.

The Lord has not told us more than that.

If He did, we'd probably just be baffled anyway, but we know enough because the unanimous testimony of Scripture is this: The Lord Jesus Christ our Savior did not and could not sin.

He was tempted yet without sin and therefore he had no need of salvation.

He had no sin of his own that required it to be dealt with, and as a result he's able to save sinners like us.

The certainty of Christ's sinlessness.

So the sinless Savior, and it's important that we understand this, The origin of Christ's sinlessness, the evidence of Christ's sinlessness, the certainty of Christ's sinlessness.

And as we explore in the coming weeks the wonder of salvation, we will, God willing, see Christ is able to take our sin and our guilt and to bear our punishment, to take our place.

We deserve to die the death that Jesus died.

And that's what our sin earned and earns us.

But here's one free of all sin, fully equipped to save, to bring us out of our lostness and out of our darkness into a kingdom of light of hope to provide full salvation.

Does it matter whether Jesus was sinless or not?

It matters so much.

So much because a Savior who is not Himself without sin is no Savior.

And praise the Lord, we have a Savior free of all sin who triumphed in the battle of temptation and who took our sin and our guilt and our deadness in Adam and gives us eternal life and salvation, and such a great salvation it is.

And the more we think about the person of the Lord Jesus, and the more we think of the work of the Lord Jesus, surely we say, what a wonderful salvation.

What a wonderful salvation that is ours freely given.

If you haven't received that salvation, I say to you today, don't delay.

There's no other hope for any sinner, for you, for me, for anyone else, because we're all dead, dead, dead spiritually in Adam.

Only the sinless righteous Savior is able to save, and He's able to save you if you repent of your sin and you believe on Him.

May God give you the grace to do so.