Quiet Talks on Following the Christ | Page 9

upward, toward His
Father. They were not different because of the emergency of sin He
found in the world. They would have marked His life just as fully had
there been no sin. But the presence of sin caused them to change
radically the whole course of the life He actually lived.

Sinless by Choice.
Then there were two traits of character inward, in Himself. One was
His purity. There was the absence of everything that should not be in
Him. This is the negative side, though no part of His character called
for more intense positiveness. Purity means sinlessness. He was sinless.
But we must quickly remember what this means, or else there may
seem to be no following for us, only a wistful gazing where we cannot
go. It does not mean simply this, that through His peculiar birthright
there was freedom from all taint of sin.
It means more than this. Sinlessness was a matter of choice with Him,

and of choice insisted upon. And, be it said reverently, no man ever had
a stiffer fight to keep true to his purpose than He. He was tempted in all
points like as we are. He was tempted more than we. The tempter did
his best and worst; he mustered all his cunning and driving power
against this Lone Man. And the temptations were real. I am not
concerned over the merely academical questions of the schoolmen here.
The practical side is the intense side that takes all one's strength and
thought. Practically, that our Lord Jesus was really tempted, means that
He could have yielded had He so chosen. That He did not meant real
struggle on His part. Not, of course, that He ever wanted to yield to
what was wrong, but temptation was never so subtle, and doing the
right never made so difficult as for Him. He suffered in being
tempted.[13] His sinlessness meant a decision, then many a time a
moist brow, a clenched hand, and set jaw, a sore stress of spirit, and
deep-breathed continual prayer whose intensity down in His heart could
never be fully expressed at the lips. The temptation to fail to obey,
simply not to obey, when obeying meant going through a sore
experience was never brought so deftly, so subtly, so repeatedly and
insistently to any as to Him. Resisting not only meant the decision, but
the strength of resistance against terrific strength of repeated insistence.
How wondrously human this God-man was in His temptations, in His
set refusals, and even more, how human in keeping free from sin. For
sin is not human, letting sin in would have been a going down from the
human level. This is the practical meaning of His sinlessness--choice,
choice insisted upon, fighting, continual prayer, the Father's help, such
as any man may have--not more.
This helps us to see how intensely practical His "Follow Me" becomes.
It is not only that we will want to fight against the incoming of sin
because we feel we ought to. But as we get close to Him and breathe in
His spirit, there will come an inbred dislike, an intense inner loathing of
sin, however refined it may be in its approach. There will be a continual
coming for cleansing in the only fluid that can remove sin--His
precious blood, and in the only flame that can burn it out--the fire of
the Holy Spirit.[14] There will be a hardening of the set purpose to be
free of sin. We can be sinless in purpose. There can be a growing

sinlessness in actual life. And yet all experience goes to show that the
nearer we actually walk with God the more we shall be conscious of the
need of cleansing, the more we will talk about our Lord Jesus, and the
less and still less about our attainments.
The second inward trait in our Lord Jesus was the other side of
this--His positive goodness. I mean the presence in Him of all that
should be there. This is the exact reverse or complement of the purity.
It is the other half that must go with that to make a perfect character. I
like to use the word "holiness" in the sense of whole-ness. He had and
developed a whole life. It was fully rounded out. There was nothing
lacking that should be there, even as there was nothing present that
should not have been there.
There is among us a good bit of negative goodness of character. We
point with pride to what we don't do of that which is bad or not good.
But this is a very one-sided sort of thing. Purity and goodness
together--purity and holiness, wholeness--made the perfect, completed
character of our Lord. And it was so wholly through His