Psalm 51:5; Romans 7:18,24,25; Hebrews 9:28; 1 John 3:2
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin hath my mother conceived me.
I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing…O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin hath my mother conceived me.” The doctrine of Original Sin is here distinctly affirmed.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): David confesses that he was formed in sin, and that he was a transgressor ere he saw the light of this world…The Bible, both in this and other places, clearly asserts that we are born in sin, and that it exists within us as a disease fixed in our nature.
ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Here is the great Apostle Paul, mourning and groaning over a body of sin and death; in which he declares, “dwelt no good thing.” Notice the lamentable cry Paul put up, in the contemplation of his sinful nature. “Oh! wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): His meaning is, that there was no good thing naturally in him.
CHARLES SIMEON: Paul declares of himself, as well as all the rest of the human race, that they are “by nature children of wrath,” Ephesians 2:3…Thus we see both these eminent saints confessing that their nature, as derived from their first parents, was altogether corrupt.
H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): The virus of sin is in our being, from the moment we draw our first breath…Jesus Christ’s humanity was different from ours in this.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): Jesus was supernaturally conceived of a virgin, and therefore, the virus of sin never entered His veins…When the Eternal Word was “made flesh,” He did not contract the corruptions of our fallen nature. Unlike all of human kind, He was not “shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin.” On the contrary His mother was told, “That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”
C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): When the angel announced to Mary the glad tidings of the Saviour’s birth, she said unto him, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?”—Mary, doubtless, imagined that this birth was to be according to the principles of ordinary generation. But the angel corrects her mistake and enunciates one of the grandest truths of revelation. He declares to her that divine power was about to form a real Man—“the second man, the Lord from heaven,” 1 Corinthians 12:47—one whose nature was divinely pure, utterly incapable of receiving or communicating any taint. This Holy One was made “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” without sin in the flesh, Romans 8:3. He partook of real flesh and blood without a particle or shadow of the evil thereto attaching.
A. W. PINK: He was uncontaminated by the virus of sin.
JOHN OWEN (1616-1683): The immunity of the nature wherein He was one with us—He was made like unto us in all things, sin excepted.
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): For this great and gracious purpose was Jesus Christ manifested, that He who had no sin of His own, might take away our sin.
A. W. PINK: The manifold wisdom of God determined that His Son should become the Representative and Surety of sinners and so be substituted in their place. But who else would have thought of such a thing: that the Son should occupy the place of rebels and become the Object of Divine wrath! And in order for the Son to be the sinner’s Surety, He must render satisfaction to the Law in man’s own nature! What created intelligence had deemed such a thing possible: that a Divine Person should become incarnate and be both God and man in one Person! Had God not made known such a marvel, what finite intelligence could have devised a way whereby the Son should become flesh without partaking of the pollution of fallen human nature? Not only that the infinite should become finite—the Ancient of Days an infant, but that He should be born of a woman without being tainted by the virus of sin!—an immaculate human nature was produced in Mary’s womb by the operation of the Holy Spirit, so that a “holy thing,” spotless and impeccable, was born by her!—The Son of God became the Son of Man.
CHARLES SIMEON: He had no sin of His own to answer for, and hence it is that His atonement becomes effectual for us.
C. H. SPURGEON: “With His stripes we are healed,” Isaiah 53:5. It is a universal medicine—an application of the blue bruises of your Lord will take out the deadly virus from your soul.
CHARLES SIMEON: True it is, that “the body is still subjected to death,” Romans 8:10; as it is said, “It is appointed unto men once to die,” Hebrews 9:27.
H. A. IRONSIDE: We begin to die as soon as we are born. The seeds of death, as it were, are in the body of every child of Adam…These bodies of ours are mortal, that is, subject to death. We are told that, “Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death,” James 1:15. That is why we die, because we have all inherited the virus of Adam’s sin. But it was otherwise with the body of our Lord Jesus. Our Lord Jesus Christ was the Sinless One, and, therefore, while He came into the world with a body that could die, it was not necessary that it should die. He had in His own power the ability to die or to live on for endless years. But He died out of love for our guilty souls and out of love for the Father, because He came to do the Father’s will.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): The grave is the peculiar heritage of a sinner…When we go to the grave, we go to our own place; but our Lord Jesus, who had no sin of His own, had no grave of His own; dying under imputed sin, it was fit that He should be buried in a borrowed grave, Matthew 27:57-60.
C. H. SPURGEON: But now comes the contrast—“being born not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible,” 1 Peter 1:23…That child which has just experienced the first birth has been made partaker of corruptible seed—He receives the evil virus which was first infused into us by the Fall. Not so, however, is it when we are born again. No sin is then sown within us. This sin of the old flesh remains, but there is no sin in the newborn nature—it cannot sin because it is born of God Himself.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): All human beings see corruption, because born in sin, and liable to the curse. The human body of Jesus Christ, as being without sin, saw no corruption.
JOHN GILL: He “saw no corruption;” He rose again and lives for evermore, Acts 2:24-31.
THOMAS COKE: We shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection: and, as members of His body, because He lives, we shall live also.
JOHN CALVIN: “We shall be like Him,” 1 John 3:2—because He will make “our vile body conformable to His glorious body,” as Paul also teaches us in Philippians 3:21.
