Jesus, Humanness, and Sin

This week I received an email asking me for help in responding to a minister's claim that Jesus sinned and was "messed-up" like the rest of us. The minister contended that Jesus could not have been fully human unless he too sinned. I run into this idea every so often and am surprised what a low, and mistaken, view of humans (not to mention Jesus!) it purports. But, how often are we susceptible to thinking that sin is normal? Is sin an essential part of what it means to be human? Was Jesus not quite fully human if he did not sin?

Sinfullness is neither an essential quality of humanness nor is it a normal human condition. Let's start with my first claim. Think about what it would mean for sin to be an essential part of what it means to be human. The first 'humans' who existed before the Fall, were not in fact humans! They would only become human once they rebelled against God. That seems more than a bit odd. Also, redeemed people will no longer be human in the eternal state when sin is finally eliminated from their lives (unless we want to say that we will go on sinning in the life to come!). Simply because all humans (save one important example) do sin, does not mean that is part of what it means to be human. Consider this. All humans have been born on Earth. But, does this mean being born on earth is essential to being a human? Certainly not. Imagine a person being born on a space craft, or space station built on the moon. Would that person be a non-human? No. Furthermore, I would argue that sin actually dehumanizes us. Sin inflicts tremendous damage to the full humanity in people. So, while sin is prevelant among humans, it does not define who or what humans are.

As for my second claim, sinfulness, while pervasively common, is not normal. Sin is abnormal. We must not confuse abnormality with commonality. The presence of sin in humanity is evidence that things have gone wrong, not right. Heart disease and cancer are quite common in people, but we don't take this commonality as normality. We recognize those physical conditions as maladies that are not normal. Though sin is not exactly a disease (though there are similarities), we should understand it in much the same way. It is a malady that is not normal. So, while common, sin is not the normal condition of the human.

Back to the issue raised in the email I received. This minister was wrong to attribute sinfullness and a 'messed-up' status to Jesus because he or she failed to understand that sin is neither an essential nor a normal condition of being human. Jesus was fully human (he had all the essential qualities of humanness) without having the dehumanizing, abnormal quality of sinfullness that all other humans have. In this way, Jesus was quintessentially human! As such, he could take on himself the sin of the world in order to redeem it.