Could Jesus Have Gotten a Cold?

One time, while listening to a Greg Bahnsen lecture in my car, I heard him ask his students the following question: “Could Jesus have gotten a cold?” While they were hesitant to answer, I was saying out loud, “Yep!” (I have a tendency to do that while listening along). Then Bahnsen said, “Come on. Could Jesus have caught a cold?… [still no answer] Of course He could have! He could die, He could get a cold!”

Now, while I agreed, I couldn’t help but wonder: is it really a good argument to say that if Jesus could die, He could get a cold? The reason I asked is because my understanding at the time was that Jesus didn’t die until He took on sin—which I believed to be at the cross. Surely, He couldn’t have died prior to taking on sin, since the wages of sin is death. And if He couldn’t die before He took on our sin, then how could He have gotten a cold, when sickness is also a result of sin?

Some of you may have already spotted the flaws in my thinking.

Asking the Questions

Then I thought, wait—could Jesus have died prior to taking on our sin? It should go without saying that this hypothetical isn’t meant to overlook God’s providence or the many prophecies, such as Psalm 22:16–18, Isaiah 53, Zechariah 12:10, etc. I’m well aware that Jesus couldn’t die before the appointed time (John 7:30). My question had to do with whether it would be morally possible—that is, would there be cosmic injustice, so to speak, if Jesus were to die prior to bearing our sin?

This then led me to another, similar question: could Adam have died prior to sinning? Of course, I didn’t mean, could God’s providence be thwarted. I’m well aware that Adam couldn’t have died contrary to God’s decree. My question, again, had to do with whether it would be morally possible.

I think it’s important to clarify that in exploring these questions, I’m not positing meaningless hypotheticals for the sake of speculation. Far from being irrelevant or irreverent theorizing, the aim is to better understand the nature of sin and its relation to the character of God, life, death, justice, and so on.

Scripture teaches both that it is God’s prerogative to give life and to take it (e.g., Deut. 32:39; Job 1:21; 1 Sam. 2:6) and that death is a result of sin (e.g., Gen. 2:17; Ezek. 18:20; Rom. 6:23). The question I had was: is the former only meaningful in the context of the latter? In other words, can God take life apart from sin being a factor? And if it is God’s prerogative to take life apart from any consideration of sin—then that raises a couple of further questions: (1) How do we square that with the fact that death wasn’t part of God’s original creation, which He called “very good” (Gen. 1:31)? And (2) in such a case, would we still be able to regard death as an “enemy,” as Scripture describes it (1 Cor. 15:26)?

When Did Jesus Take on Our Sin?

I had always believed that Jesus took on our sin from noon to 3 p.m. on the cross—when darkness fell and He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). That, combined with verses such as Colossians 2:14,  Galatians 3:13,  and 1 Peter 2:24 gave me the impression that He took on our sin at the cross and was, as a result, punished for it.

There is also the doctrine of double imputation, about which R.C. Sproul said:

At the heart of the gospel is a double imputation: my sin is imputed to Jesus. His righteousness is imputed to me. And in this twofold transaction, we see that God, who does not negotiate sin, who doesn’t compromise His own integrity with our salvation but rather punishes sin fully and really after it has been imputed to Jesus, retains His own righteousness. And so, He is both just and the justifier, as the Apostle tells us here. So my sin goes to Jesus; His righteousness comes to me in the sight of God.

My contention had been that this exchange happened at the cross. I suppose, in a synecdochic sense, one could say it did. That is, the cross—often serving as the central point of Christ’s work—is frequently spoken of as an important part that represents, at least to some degree, the whole (Rom. 5:9). But if His righteousness being imputed to us includes His active obedience throughout His earthly ministry—that is, His entire life, then why would our sin being imputed to Him be limited only to the moment of His death? There’s no clear reason it wouldn’t also include His life leading up to the cross.

Romans 8:3 says, “God sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin.” It seems that, in a real sense, Jesus took on sin at the moment of the incarnation. He suffered the effects of the curse (e.g., Isa. 53:3; Matt. 26:38) and was already, in a broad sense, bearing the penalty due to human sin throughout His earthly ministry. However, the cross was the culmination of His suffering and where the complete judicial satisfaction of God’s wrath ultimately occurred (cf. WCF/LBCF 8.4, which suggests that Christ’s mediatorial suffering was not limited to the cross).

It seems, then, that the question—would there have been any ultimate injustice if Jesus had died prior to the cross?—is answered by having a proper understanding of when Jesus actually began taking on our sin. We might just as well contemplate Jesus’s position in the world apart from His predestined mission to die on the cross, and ask whether He could have rather died—say, of a cold. It seems the answer to that would be yes, provided He willingly came into the world to suffer the effects of sin and pay its penalty on our behalf.

Back to Adam

With that in mind, we now turn to the related question: would it have been hypothetically possible for Adam to die before sinning? And again, I don’t mean contrary to God’s decree—I mean, would it have been just? The answer depends on how we interpret passages that affirm God’s prerogative to give life and to take it. Does this prerogative operate with or without sin as a necessary factor?

Of course, when sin is present, God is never unjust in taking a life (assuming He has not expressly promised to provisionally preserve that life); the wages of sin is death. In a postlapsarian world, divine justice is never violated when God takes a life, because we are all sinners deserving of death. So. God gives life, and He takes it, and He does all that He pleases (Ps. 115:3). But He is also just—which begs the question: would it be consistent with His justice to take a life, or allow one to die, where no sin had occurred?

There are essentially two ways to answer this:

One could say, yes—God, as the Giver of life, is under no obligation to sustain life. Whatever God does is good, so if He had appointed Adam to die irrespective of sin, then God is free to do that, and there would be no injustice. Death, in that case, would not be considered an enemy—as it is now in the system God actually created and upholds, where death has been appointed a punishment (with the caveat that for those who are in Christ, death is no longer a punishment).

Conversely, someone could take the position that it would indeed be inconsistent with God’s nature to allow morally righteous persons to die (the exception, of course, being Someone freely choosing to bear the burden of sin on behalf of others). A brother I spoke with on this topic went so far as to argue that, precisely because such a thing would contradict God’s character, it would actually be “metaphysically impossible” for Adam to die prior to sin. He expanded on that idea with the following thought-provoking insight:

Our metaphysic is bound up with the mission of angelic beings, who do not err when operating in subjection to the Spirit of God. These angels were apparently charged with the task of protecting human persons, especially before the Fall—Satan flagrantly rejecting that mission in the deception of Adam and Eve.

Thus, prior to his lapse into sin, I think we have every reason to believe that angelic powers would have intervened if ever Adam or Eve would have approached death—e.g., falling from a high point. Indeed, I think that this is implied when Satan tempts Christ to test the devotion of angels (and God) by thrusting himself off of the temple—‘If you are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written, “He will command His angels concerning You”; and “On their hands they will bear You up, so that You will not strike Your foot against a stone”’ (Matt. 4:6; cf. Lk. 4:10–11; Ps. 91:11–12).

In this temptation, Satan is compelling Jesus to embrace the prerogatives due to a sinless human being, and to stray from His mission to bear the pains that are justly due to sinners.

Final Reflections

As it pertains to the question of Adam’s hypothetical death before sin, I find myself leaning toward the second view. But the matter is nuanced, and thoughtful Christians may well differ.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this multifaceted set of questions—whether about Christ’s bearing of sin, or the nature of sin and its relation to God’s character, life, death, and justice.