What does it look like?

I watched Star Trek back when it first came out. I remember how thinking that it was odd that they made Spock specifically half Vulcan and half human. But I understood the reasoning. You see, humans are, by nature, emotional beings. We have an emotional component that cannot be denied. Nor would we want to in the final analysis. What would life be without compassion, love, empathy, and so on? Our emotional content often enriches our lives. Still, since it is part of every human, the notion of a being that operates on pure logic is, well, hard for us to imagine. We can say the phrase and suggest that we get it, but we don't ... not really. Since emotions are an intrinsic part of us, we cannot actually imagine what it would be like to be completely without them. Thus, the makers of Star Trek had to make a Vulcan who was half human because, frankly, we just couldn't figure out what it would look like to be completely without emotion.

The Bible repeatedly describes Christ as "without sin". It is one of the most unique features in our Savior. He ate as we did and was tempted as we are. He had a mother as we do and walked around like we do. There were certainly people who did a lot of what He did, but no one -- not a single one -- has ever been sinless like He was. So we find ourselves in the same predicament that the writers of Star Trek did with their Spock character. We have a Being who has a characteristic that, frankly, does not compute.

What does "sinless" look like? I will be quite frank here and say that I am not close enough to "sinless" myself to get a clear picture of how that looks. Like the concept of a logic-only Vulcan, I cannot get an actual image in my head of what it looks like to be a sinless person. I cannot imagine a person who never gives in to temptation, never suffers from guilt, never transgresses what he (or she) knows God has commanded, and always does what is right. I am so far from sinless that I can't visualize what I would be like doing all that.

It is Christ's sinlessness that makes Him uniquely qualified to take our sin on Himself. To me, His sinlessness is one of those things that I have to shrug my shoulders and say, "I don't get it ... but I believe it." You know, like "the Trinity", "omniscience", "predestination coexisting with free will", and the like. What disturbs me about this one, though, is that we are told, "You are to be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" ... and I'm still so far away from that with literally no end in sight. I suspect that there are and have been saints who get a glimpse of it. They may not experience it, but they can begin to see from their experience what it might look like. Not me, man. I'm still down there in the "chief among sinners" group, profoundly saddened by my failure to be what I ought and, on the other hand, profoundly grateful for the sacrifice on my behalf of the One who was what He ought to be.