College Study #28: "God's Impeccability"

‘Behold, the Lamb of God’

ide o amnos tou theou

College Study

28^th teaching

3.11.2013

 

 

The ‘Negative’ Doctrines:

“God’s Impeccability”

 

          Turn to I Peter 2:11-25.

          The Apostle Peter gave instruction on how we as Christians ought to live and submit ourselves to authority and to our masters, but there in v.22 is the topic of our focus tonight. He writes that Christ our Moral Exemplar suffered patiently, and that He “committed no sin”.

          Our study has direct bearing, for the first time since we started this section on theology proper, upon morality and ethics, specifically as they relate to God. What are God’s morals and what are God’s ethics?

          In our modern world, the morality of God is being called into question. Critics have latched onto Old Testament examples of war and “ethnic cleansing”, others have suggested that the Bible condones slavery, still others incriminate God for frowning upon homosexuality, and even still, others claim that God is angry and punishing when natural disasters occur. The idea of God’s goodness, His morality, is more radically challenged today than ever before.

          Consider the titles of these books, books written upon the battlefield of God’s morality: Is God a Moral Monster? by Paul Copan. God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist? By David Lamb. And these are actually books written by apologists of the Christian faith.

          Famous atheist Richard Dawkins, writes in his book, The God Delusion: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” That’s quite an accusation.

          But this is quite obviously the opposite of what the Bible claims. God, through His own self-revelation, claims of Himself that He is holy, righteous, pure, good and loving. He claims that He is without sin and that He does not and cannot sin. Evil does not dwell in God (Psalm 5:4). And every action of God, every outpouring of His wrath, every enactment of His justice, is tethered to His love and undying affection of the human creatures which reject and despise Him, but which creatures for whom He suffered and died. If any proof exists for the goodness of God toward man, it exists in the cross of Christ, in the Son who died for each sex, for every race, for every person, indeed for the whole of the world.

          If God is a pestilential megalomaniac and an immoral monster, then we should, as the atheists, want nothing of Him. But if God is good and the source of morality and the only pure Being in all existence, then we should crave His presence and affection.

          So tonight we wish to touch on one aspect of God’s goodness: the doctrine of God’s Impeccability.

          We will hit THREE points:

1.   The Definition of Impeccability

2.   The Biblical Basis for Impeccability

3.   The Distinction of Impeccability

 

1.   The Definition of Impeccability

          What does impeccable mean? We might say someone has impeccable timing, for example. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines impeccable as meaning “not capable of sinning or liable to sin; free from fault or blame; flawless”.

          The word impeccable comes to our English language from 16^th Latin. In Latin the original words were in- meaning “not” and pecare meaning “to sin”, forming the Latin word impeccabilis, “not to sin”.

          Impeccable then means “incapable of sinning”. When applied to God, impeccability is a strong statement of God’s moral character. It is a stronger statement than simply saying God does not sin, rather God cannot sin. Even if God wanted to lie, which He never has desired, He cannot lie. Numbers 23:19, “God is not a man, that He should lie…” Even if God wanted to be perverse or slanderous or cruel or addicted or abhorrent, He could not be.

          So God in fact cannot sin. But why? God certainly has free will. God can make choices. So why cannot God choose to sin?

          Let’s think about this… with logic.

          The answer shows us that Impeccability is a metaphysical attribute. Impeccability has to do with what God actually is.

          The reason why God cannot sin is because it is not in His nature to sin. To sin would be to go against His own nature.

          The English writer, William Law, said “It is much more possible for the sun to give out darkness than for God to do or be, or give out anything but blessing and goodness”.

          What is perfect cannot be imperfect. It’s either-or. If God is purely actual, pure unchanging existence as we discussed weeks ago, then He cannot change His essential nature by becoming imperfect. If God is perfectly holy and perfectly just, then what is perfect cannot become imperfect, what is God cannot become not-God. He that is holy cannot become unholy. God is purely unchanging. That means God is pure unchanging purity. God has no potential for change and no potential for sin.

          Therefore, impeccability, the incapability of God to sin, lies within His metaphysical Being. God cannot sin because of who He is. He cannot change who He is, therefore He cannot sin. God is totally free from sin.

          And this makes sense. If we consider God to be the source of morality, then surely the Source must live up to His own morals. Nothing can give anything which it does not have. A hateful person cannot give love unless he becomes loving. Clouds cannot give rain unless there is moisture. God cannot give moral standards, unless He is perfectly moral.

          Surprisingly, even a quote from Voltaire seems to agree. “All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.”

          Morals haven’t changed all that much, and societies largely agree upon the same morals. Oh sure, one society may frown upon specifics or smile upon specifics, but no one wants to be lied to; no one ever enjoyed adultery when they found out it was their spouse committing it; no sane person was ever so entertained by murder that they welcomed others to murder those they would not have murdered.

          C.S. Lewis, in his excellent book Mere Christianity, writes on this subject of universal morals. Indulge me a longish quote:

          “  Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say. They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you?"-"That's my seat, I was there first"-"Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm"- "Why should you shove in first?"-"Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine"-"Come on, you promised." People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups. Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: "To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football…

          “I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilisations and different ages have had quite different moralities.

      “But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to-whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.”

          The unchanging, universal moral standards throughout societies point to a Moral Source in God, and not just any God but a God who lives up to His own standards: the God who is Impeccable.

          *Now obviously, this impeccability extends to Jesus Christ. Though the Son of God took on flesh, He took on human nature in addition to His divine nature. So Jesus could suffer and be tempted but because He is Divine, He cannot sin.

          In fact, the Bible says that Jesus knew no sin. II Corinthians 5:21, “For [God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” speaking of Christ’s substitutionary death upon the cross.

          Hebrews 4:14-15, “Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

          Do we have a practical example of this in the gospel accounts? Do we see any scene in which the Christ resisted evil and did not sin? Certainly.

          Turn to Matthew 4.

          Three times Satan tempted Christ to sin. Three times Jesus shuts Him down. The devil enticed Him to use His power to satisfy Himself, to test His Father’s words and to deny God glory for the sake of worldly gain. Each time, Jesus did not sin because He could not sin. Like His Father, there is a total absence of sin in Christ.

          So whereas doctrines such as Immateriality and Impassibility were suspended because of the Incarnation, Christ taking on flesh, the doctrine of Impeccability still fully applied. Impeccability, then, extends to Christ even in the flesh.

          *Before we move on to the next point, let me illustrate two ways in which the Bible describes God’s impeccability.

          Earlier today, I typed the words impeccable and impeccability into Bible search engines. Guess how many times either of those words are used in the Bible? Zero. The Bible never uses the word impeccable or impeccability to describe God’s incapability to sin. The words are never used in any translation that I know of.

          Impeccability describes a classic doctrine clearly taught in Scripture, though the word is never used.

          However, here are two ways in which the Bible describes God’s inability to sin:

A.   Perfection

The Greek word for perfection is teleios. It means complete and finished, something perfect that needs nothing else. And certainly all throughout Scripture, the Lord is called perfect. Matthew 5:48, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

B.   Light and darkness

Another way in which the Bible describes the absence of sin in God, is through the imagery of light and darkness. Light often metaphorically pictures goodness and darkness evil. John’s gospel contains several references to the Light of God. John 8:12, “Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” I John 1:5, “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”  Interestingly, this seems to imply that Light is a metaphysical attribute of God. We’ll have to consider that for further study one of these Monday nights: the light-attribute of God.

         

2.    The Biblical Basis for Impeccability

          Now is the time to provide the verses which you may have discovered. What verses did you find on the subject of God’s Impeccability?

3.    The Distinction of Impeccability

          Remember the concept of kindred-doctrines? Some doctrines are closely related, with meanings that very similar. An example we studied recently: Immateriality and Incorporeality. Immateriality says God is not made of materials. Incorporeality says that God has no body. Both of them are saying in effect that God is a spiritual and intangible Being. They have very similar meanings with only slight differences, therefore we can call them kindred-doctrines.

          Now Impeccability has its own kindred-doctrines: Holiness and Righteousness. These words are a little more familiar to our ears. But we throw around words like holy and righteousness all the time, and they’re very religious-sounding words, so what do they actually mean? Here are some very simplified definitions:

          We know that Impeccability means “cannot sin”.

          Holiness means something is sacred, apart, separate, clean or pure. Holiness is a broad term. But very simply, another way you might think of Holiness, is that it means something “does not sin”. Impeccable is what God is, Holiness is how He acts.

          Righteousness has to do with “right-ness”, something that is justifiable. Righteousness is linked to the concept of justice. Righteousness has to do with meeting a right standard. Thus righteousness has to do also with God’s actions, specifically with actions that are related to justice.

          Now while these three are related in their ideas, they have slight differences.

          Impeccability is a metaphysical doctrine which states that God is unable to sin because of His nature. But holiness, meaning something does not sin, is different. Holiness is both a metaphysical and a moral attribute. Incapable of sinning and not sinning are two different things.

          Someone who is incapable of swimming is different from someone who simply never takes a swim. God is incapable of sinning, but He also does not sin. He is impeccable and He is also holy.

          As far as righteousness goes, righteousness is a moral attribute, while impeccability is a metaphysical one.

          At this point, I should introduce another classification for doctrines. We know about kindred-doctrines, doctrines which are very similar to each other. But now we need to learn about what are called communicable and non-communicable doctrines.

          What is a communicable doctrine? What I mean be communicable is an attribute of God which He shares with, or communicates to, His creatures. Holiness and righteousness are communicable attributes. God can give you holiness and righteousness. Human beings who lived during biblical times were sometimes referred to as holy men and holy women. Communicable doctrines are usually God’s moral attributes. God is loving. We can be loving. God is just. We can be just. God is merciful. We can be merciful. God is gracious. We can be gracious.

          On the flip side, non-communicable means an attribute cannot be shared with or communicated to creatures. Most of the non-communicable attributes are also metaphysical. For example, God is Purely Actual, pure unchanging existence. Certainly, our human lives are anything but pure or unchanging. God is also impassible, unable to suffer. We suffer all the time. God is also Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent, metaphysical attributes which no normal human has ever enjoyed. God does not say “Be infinite as I am infinite”. Infinity is a non-communicable attribute! He does say “Be holy as I am holy”.

          Now which do you think Impeccability is: communicable or non-communicable? It is non-communicable.

          Man does sin which means he can sin. God does not sin and He in fact cannot sin. Man has flaws. God is flawless. Man can attempt to be holy. God alone is impeccable, perfectly and totally free from any sin.

          We may be able to sometimes resist sinning, but we are surely capable of sinning. God alone is incapable of sin until we get to heaven and experience sinless bliss, and the non-communicable becomes communicable.

          So what do we do until then? If you have been an introspective human being for any length of time, you may have realized that you make mistakes. In fact, it seems like we’re prone to making mistakes. We may be totally unable to reach impeccability, but it seems nearly as impossible to reach holiness! So what do we do then?

          The surrealist painter, Salvador Dali, isn’t someone we often quote from, a man who said “I don’t do drugs. I am drugs” or “Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali”. But he also said “Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it”.

          Are we to have this lackadaisical, indifferent idea about perfection and holiness when God says in His Word, Leviticus 11:44, “For I am the LORD you God. You shall therefore consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy”?

          Unfortunately, I think most of us consider holiness to be a mountain that can never be scaled. And so instead of aiming for righteousness and aiming to please God with our lives, we’d rather aim at nothing. But as has been said: “aim at nothing and you’ll hit it every time”.

          We can agree that we shall never be perfect in this life. You cannot reach impeccability. Any group of Christian thought which maintains that we can be sinless in our humanity is sorely mistaken. Experience proves that. But holiness is not an illusion. Perfection may be a goal we’ll never reach until heaven. But holiness is something we ought to strive for. We, like the biblical saints, should press toward our goal, not losing sight of it, not aiming for nothing instead.

          Consider the words of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3:12-14. The Apostle pressed toward the goal.

          Imagine if the Apostles had chosen not to aim for righteousness because it was a goal that seemed too far away. Imagine if instead of doing what God called them to do, instead of doing greatness for the glory of Deity, they wasted their lives aiming for nothing in particular… maybe to talk to one or two people about Jesus, maybe. Maybe to pastor a church or so, or to go on a mission trip here and there, maybe, y’know if they felt like it. Imagine if they aimed for nothing.

          We would have no New Testament writings. There would have been no dramatic catalyst for the Early Church to begin. Christianity would be radically different if the twelve men from two millennia ago chose to forsake their goal in Christ for the easy route instead.  And their choices would have effected generations of believers to come.

          What does God want to do with you life? What goals do you imagine He has set for you? And if you chose the easy way, aiming for nothing rather than aiming for usefulness in holiness to God, how will you effect or not effect the lives of those to come after you?

          The time has come to be what God has called us to be. “Be holy, because I am holy” saith the LORD. You may not reach it, but you must not give up.

          In summary, the timely words of Romans 13:11-14, “And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.”