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 f