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Could Jesus have sinned?

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English: Icon of Jesus Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) When considering the temptations of Jesus one can hardly resist asking the hypothetical question, Could Jesus have sinned? The fact that Jesus is fully God would seem to preclude this, for God cannot sin. But the fact that Jesus is fully human, and that He undeniably was tempted, might seem to demand the possibility that He could have sinned; for if He could not have sinned, how could He have been tempted. How could He have been fully human? Charles Hodge , the great Reformed theologian of the nineteenth century, seems to be among those who affirm that Jesus could possibly have sinned. He says, “The sinlessness of our Lord , however, does not amount to absolute impeccability.… If He was a true man He must have been capable of sinning … Temptation implies the possibility of sin. If from the constitution of His person it was impossible for Christ to sin, then His temptation was unreal and without effect, and He cannot sympa