December 4, 2011: Even Jesus Had To Learn Obedience

Some verses in the book of Hebrews sound a little strange to those of us who have an orthodox view of Jesus' moral nature. Hebrews 5:8 says "he learned obedience from what he suffered." What? Learned obedience? Wasn't he always obedient? How can you learn something that you already know and practice perfectly? And Hebrews 2:10 says it was fitting that God "should make the author of their salvation [Jesus] perfect through suffering." Make him perfect? Wasn't Jesus already perfect? When was he ever imperfect?

To understand these passages I think it is helpful to distinguish between sinlessness and perfection.

The Bible definitely maintains that Jesus was always sinless:

2 Corinthians 5:21:
God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

1 John 3:5:
But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin.

1 Peter 2:22:
He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.

(It's worth noting in passing that Paul, John and Peter each expressed Jesus' sinlessness in ways appropriate to their writing and character. Paul the scholar said that Jesus "knew" no sin. John, who liked to speak in broad categories about ways of being, said "in him" was no sin. And Peter, man of action, said he "committed" no sin.)

Sinlessness means simply to be without sin, to have violated no righteous command, to have done no evil. Newborn babies are sinless because they haven't done anything wrong yet. If we call a baby a "sinner" we only mean it in an ontological sense: we mean that the baby has inherited a sinful nature that will soon manifest itself in actual works of disobedience. A baby is like an acorn which has no leaves but does have the DNA to sprout them in due time. It will take a few months for bald acorns and sinless babies to start churning out massive amounts of foliage and iniquity.

In contrast, Jesus remained sinless all his life. He never committed even his first sin. But that does not mean he was always perfect. Perfection - in the sense implied by the Greek word that we translate "perfect" - does not mean "without error" so much as it does "mature," "fully developed," "grown to fulfillment of the intended state." The word in Greek was used to describe a piece of fruit that we would call "ripe." A young fruit, even if it has no worms, blotches or deformities ("sins"!), would never be called "perfect" simply because it is not yet big enough and sweet enough to be picked.

While "sinless" means without sin, "perfect" means much more: it means to be in a state where one has acquired all virtue and resisted all vice. That takes time. No one can be called "perfect" or "mature" until he is old enough to have encountered many temptations and resisted them, and to have seen many opportunities to do good and taken advantage of them.

Please note in the verses above in Hebrews what God used in order to ripen Jesus into perfect obedience. He used suffering. Jesus learned obedience not through things that brought him joy but through things that brought him pain. If this was true of the sinless Son of God, how much more true is it of creatures whose "righteousness is as filthy rags"? We cannot be good except that we suffer. It is virtuous, for example, to respond to cruelty with kindness. But how can we ever know and practice this virtue fully until someone is mean to us, lies about us, treats us contemptuously, laughs at us, lays in ruin all our prospects for joy?

Grievous trials have been allowed to come into your life, in part, in order to make you perfect. If you would be like Christ, you must let them ripen you rather than poison you.