The Nature of Jesus? Temptations and the Bible

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… not sin nature. It’s funny how I never saw that before. Sin springs from one of two sources. One is an inherited sin nature possessing bents toward errant behavior. Jesus did not have that. The second source involves areas of moral weakness – some moral vulnerability – absent any bent or character flaw toward that errant behavior. Jesus did deal with that. Neither of these accrue personal guilt before God. Only the commission of the errant behavior creates guilt. We will come back to this second source, and Jesus’ entanglements with it, in a moment. Careful reading, and some prayer, often leads to the untying of knots.

Point 2: I have not yet “resisted to the point of shedding blood …”

… in my striving against sin (He 12:4). One reason I was tepid about voicing concern over these passages was because I knew that an insinuation that His battles against sin were less intense than mine (because of my sin nature bents) – would border on blasphemy … or already be seen by God as a headlong rush into it. But, this passage in Hebrews, along with recollections of the scenes in the crucifixion saga, clarified many things.

For starters, let’s revisit Gethsemane. The desire to avoid the cross was so strong that, “being in agony, He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground” (Lk 22:44). This sweat was produced … on a cold night (Peter was soon warming himself by a fire – John 18:18). It was not the result of a marathon run – but by intensity of prayer. He fell on His face, and in three appeals to the Father, asked if this

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