Did Jesus sin when he questioned God?

[akarmitage]

My 13 year old son stumped me. He asked if Jesus questioning God in the hours leading up to his crucifixion, and while on the cross dying, was a sin.

I’ve looked around on this web site a little, and while I’ve found posts saying that Jesus didn’t sin, I’ve not found anything specifically relating to Jesus’ apparent “doubt” in God.

Any thoughts or direction for me?

Because I started to tell him that it wasn’t a sin since Jesus just thought it and didn’t act on it, but that didn’t feel right either since I’ve told him other thoughts can be a sin in and of themselves (lust in your heart, etc).

 

[IrishAm]

I would tell your son that it is not a sin to question God, it is only a sin to not be obedient to Him.

 

[RUINATION_IPA]

God is not capable of sin. In the garden Jesus teaches us how to pray in the face of ultimate temptation and despair; not my will but Thine be done. When Christ was on the cross and spoke out ‘Why hast thou abandoned me?’ he was quoting the first part of one of the psalms and fulfilling it. Christ had a human nature that suffered and showed a certain repugnance at the suffering he was to undergo yet in these instances He shows us the proper responses we should have towards these temptations.

 

[dixibehr]

Since Jesus is sinless, obviously He did not sin then, now did He?

 

[redrosetea]

No He didn’t sin he expressed His anguish…Imagine how it must have felt to be in such terrible pain and thirst and then having to take upon Himself all of the ugly things men would do throughout history…He who never sinned had all of the terrible things that people do to each other, and to God, to endure…The weight of that must have been as cruel as the torture

 

[Monica4316]

He didn’t sin, because we sin by choice not by feeling. He was afraid and in pain, but He still chose to obey the Father so no sin!

 

[loricatus]

The feeling of being forsaken is not a sin. Christ was just showing His humanity. You can tell your son that in the Agony in the Garden, Christ made it clear that it was not His Will, but the Father’s Will be done.

 

[Centos]

No He didn’t sin he expressed His anguish…Imagine how it must have felt to be in such terrible pain and thirst and then having to take upon Himself all of the ugly things men would do throughout history…He who never sinned had all of the terrible things that people do to each other, and to God, to endure…The weight of that must have been as cruel as the torture

This quote from G.K. Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy” touches on this subject:

“Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point—and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.”

gutenberg.org/files/16769/16769-h/16769-h.htm

May God be with you

 

[NeedImprovement]

Hi akarmitage

If we take a look at the relevant passage according to St. Mark [14:35-36] Jesus isn’t expressing doubt in the Father at all … His prayer is an act of faith:

From the NAB

He advanced a little and fell to the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass by him;

he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will.”

Those words, “All things are possible to you” are the same as if Jesus had said, “You can do anything and everything.” So Jesus is expressing full confidence in the Father here.

As you began to allude to in your original post, in order for something to be a sin, it has to be a willful act. When some inner sentiments of Jesus are revealed in scripture, it is principally for our sake - not His ( Jesus had no need to speak out loud to the Father because He knew God could hear his “silent” prayers [John 11:42]).

Being both God and man, Jesus had both a divine will and a human will. What this passage in scripture is telling us , is that Jesus obeyed His divine will with His human will.

Unfortunately, true as it is, this particular explanation can prove rather difficult for a 13-year old (and many adults too) to grasp.

Where we usually miss the boat (myself included) is when we speculate on “why” Jesus said these words. Before I was anywhere near even being able to grapple with the concept of Jesus’ divine will and His human will, I had it explained to me this way.

Jesus, being God, knew all that his gentle Mother would have to suffer during His Passion and, being God, he knew exactly how it would feel to Her. Perhaps Jesus was thinking of Her at this point; perhaps He wanted us to have an inkling just how agonizing it was for Him, because saying “yes” to his Passion meant saying “yes” to all His Mother’s suffering too. This becomes all the more plausible when we learn a little, according to the Saints, of just what our Blessed Mother went through during her Son’s Passion.

To give us an idea, here are several brief excerpts from THE GLORIES OF MARY,Part II; by St. Alphonse Liguori [Palm Publishers, Helicon Press ; pgs 131,136,137]

…At length their eyes met. Jesus wiped away the clotted blood which , according to St. Bridget, prevented Him from seeing Mary. The Mother and the Son looked at each other. And their looks became as so many arrows to pierce those hearts which loved each other so tenderly.

…She (The Blessed Virgin Mary) saw her Jesus suffering on every side. She longed to help Him, but could not.

But what caused her the greatest pain was to see that by her presence and her sorrow she was increasing the suffering of her Son. “The grief which filled Mary’s heart,” says St. Bernard, “flowed like a torrent into the heart of Jesus and aggravated His martyrdom to such an extent that on the cross Jesus suffered more from compassion for His Mother than from His own torments.” Speaking in the name of Our Lady, St. Bernard says: “I stood with my eyes fixed on Him, and His on me, and He was more sorry for me than for Himself.” And then speaking of Mary beside her dying Son, he says: “She stood there dying, without being able to die.” …

If you were to ask your son if he would preserve you from something like that if he were able, I think he might discover the answer he’s looking for.

I wish you and your family a very joy-filled and blessed Easter tomorrow.

 

[NeedImprovement]

Maybe our dear late Bishop Fulton J. Sheen can shed some light on the other part of your (son’s) query -

“My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”

Again, recalling that when an inner sentiment of Jesus is revealed, it is for our sake - not His, and taking into consideration that from the moment Jesus says “yes” and enters into His Passion it is helpful to view all proceeding events of the Passion primarily from a redemptive perspective, this cry of Our Lord from the Cross is, according to Bishop Fulton Sheen, an act of atonement. In these several ensuing excerpts from two of his books, Bishop Sheen also touches upon the two natures of Jesus – His divine nature, and His human nature.

From *THE SEVEN LAST WORDS (Alba House, [pgs 31,32] *):

“…Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani?” “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”
It is a cry in the mysterious language of Hebrew to express the tremendous mystery of a God “abandoned” by God. The Son calls His Father, God. What a contrast with a prayer He once taught: “Our Father, Who art in Heaven!” In some strange, mysterious way His human nature seems separated from His Heavenly Father, yet not separated, for otherwise how could He cry, “My God, My God?”

But just as the sun’s light and heat can be withdrawn from us by the intervening clouds, though the sun remains in the sky, so there was a kind of withdrawal of His Father’s Face in the terrible moment in which He took upon Himself the sins of the world. This pain and desolation he suffered for each of us, that we might know what a terrible thing it is for human nature to be without God, to be deprived of a Divine Remedy and Consolation. It was the supreme act of atonement for three classes of people: those who abandon God, those who doubt the presence of God, and those who are indifferent to God. …”

From CALVARY AND THE MASS (Garden City Books, [pgs 56,57] ) :

“…But why the cry of darkness? Why the cry of abandonment: “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It was a cry of atonement for sin. Sin is the abandonment of God by man; it is the creature forsaking the Creator, as a flower might abandon the sunlight which gave it strength and beauty. Sin is a separation, a divorce – the original divorce from unity with God, whence all other divorces are derived.

Since He came on the earth to redeem men from sin, it was therefore fitting that He *feel *that abandonment, that separation, that divorce. He felt it first internally, in His soul, as the base of a mountain, if conscious, might feel abandoned by the sun when a cloud drifted about it, even though its great heights were radiant with light. There was no sin in his soul, but since He willed to feel the effect of sin, an awful sense of isolation and loneliness crept over Him – the loneliness of being without God.

Surrendering the divine consolation which might have been His, He sank into an awful human aloneness, to atone for the solitariness of a soul that has lost God by sin; for the loneliness of the atheist who says there is no God, for the isolation of the man who gives up his faith for things, and for the broken-heartedness of all sinners who are homesick without God. He even went as far as to redeem all those who will not trust, who in sorrow and misery curse and abandon God, crying out :”Why this death ? Why should I lose my property ? Why should I suffer ?” He atoned for all these things by asking a “Why” of God. …”

God Bless.