Nowhere did the conduct of Jesus leave its beholders indifferent,—nowhere did it fail to produce a powerful impression.

His Person produced upon all with whom He came in contact, the effect of compelling a moral decision; and during the whole course of His life, His mere presence passed a silent but irresistible sentence upon those by whom He was surrounded. This was most powerfully manifested in the case of those who were most intimately connected with Him; and from this circle we will adduce here only two specially striking examples,—viz. the betrayer of Jesus, and that apostle upon whom, as upon one firm as a rock to confess Him, Jesus built His Church. Even Judas Iscariot is a witness to the purity and innocence of Christ, and that by an act of the most decided kind,—an act not indeed of faith and love, but of despair. Like the other apostles, he too had, during three years of intimate intercourse, every opportunity of most closely observing the conduct of the Lord Jesus; and if he had detected any flaw in it, he would most certainly have brought this forward, after his treachery was consummated, for the purpose of palliating his deed and quieting his conscience. But finding nothing, he was constrained to confess that he had betrayed the innocent blood; and the conviction of this crime was so heavy a burden on his soul, that he went away and killed himself. Thus even in and through the traitor, was the moral dignity and power of Jesus manifested; not, however, as a light unto life, but as a judgment unto death.

A contrast to this picture is exhibited in the case of St. Peter. The same apostle who first made a confession of faith in Jesus as the Son of the living God, makes an equally remarkable, though more indirectly expressed, confession of the moral glory of his Master. We allude, in the first place, to the expressions which broke from his lips after the miraculous draught of fishes: ‘Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’ Undoubtedly the immediate occasion of these words was that manifestation of the power of Christ which he had just beheld; but it is worthy of remark, that Peter does not in the view of it exclaim, ‘I am a weak, a perishing,’ but ‘I am a sinful man.’ Hence is very evident that Peter recognised in Him who had just shown forth such mighty power, pre-eminently One who would be polluted by intercourse with him the sinner, and hence one separate from sinners, the Holy One. The sinner and the Holy One of God can, so it seems to him, have nothing in common. We have in this saying the direct utterance of a soul struck with the moral dignity and uniqueness of Christ,—an utterance as strong and definite as can well be imagined, and at the same time an evidence of the light in which the apostle regarded our Lord’s miraculous power, viz. as based upon moral reasons, and inseparable from sinless perfection. It shows how intimately connected in his view were the morally and the physically miraculous. With this trait is connected a similar one in the life of St. Peter. We mean the circumstance that, after his denial of his Master, it needed only a look from the latter to produce the deepest conviction of sin, and the bitterest remorse in the heart of the apostle. A mere look could never have had such power, unless the sacred purity and dignity of Him whom he had first denied, had at the same time been irresistibly present to his mind. The holy purity of Jesus and his own sinfulness are, to the apostle’s mind, like two opposite poles, which exercise a power of mutual limitation in the effect they produce upon his inward emotions.

The same truth which is in these instances brought before us by facts, is still more definitely and expressly asserted by the apostles in many doctrinal passages; and this is done in a manner which makes it obvious that they are by no means speaking of a moral excellence which might be shared also by others, but of a perfection attributable to the Lord Jesus alone. Neither is this all-surpassing elevation indefinitely and indirectly hinted at, but insisted on in a manner at once most decided and direct. All the apostles and apostolic men, and foremost among them he whose actions we have just mentioned as making a like confession, and St. John, the beloved disciple, recognised in Christ not merely a righteous and innocent man, but the Righteous and Holy One in a super-eminent way, in an absolutely unique sense. He is in their eyes One who was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin; who is our perfect example, because He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; the Lamb without blemish and without spot; the true High Priest, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; who therefore needed not, as other high priests, to offer up sacrifice for His own sins; who, since in Him there was no sin, was for that very reason all the more able to take away ours. But for this persuasion, moreover, of the sinless holiness of Jesus, the apostles could by no means have recognised in Him, as they actually did, not merely the greatest of all the prophets, but the Messiah, endowed with the fulness of the Divine Spirit, the founder of the kingdom of God, of which He was Himself to be both King and Lawgiver, the Redeemer from sin, the likeness of the alone good and holy God. For it is evident that none but One, the persuasion of whose holy purity had penetrated their inmost hearts, could have been all this, and especially the perfect Redeemer from sin. The traits and expressions hitherto adduced, and especially the latter, are, however, all of a general kind, and destitute of individuality. Hence it might be possible to regard them as the results of doctrinal prepossessions, and to declare that those who believed in Jesus, being persuaded that He was the Messiah and Redeemer, could not fail to attribute to Him the qualities which this character required, and among these was undoubtedly that of sinless perfection. Such a view, indeed, leaves unexplained the fact how faith in Jesus as the Messiah and Redeemer could exist at all, unless He really did produce the impression of a personality entirely pure and sinless. Sinlessness, too, as we shall hereafter see, was by no means so current a notion, that it had but to be applied to some person or other. On the contrary, it was not till the actual appearance of Jesus that it distinctly presented itself to the consciousness; and this being the case, it is but reasonable to infer that its source was this very appearance. It is, moreover, specially worthy of consideration, that the account presented to us of the person of Jesus by His apostles by no means consists of mere general statements, but also places before us a copious and detailed history of His life and character. By this, these more general features and expressions receive concrete completion and living confirmation. And the more so, because the evangelists have handed down to us their portraiture of Christ in a manner which exhibits no trace of forethought or design, but gives abundant indication of that artless simplicity which draws only the actual features,—features, however, which naturally combine to form a perfectly harmonious and utterly unique whole.

The task, then, which we have now to perform, is to gather together into a whole the various features of the portrait of the Lord Jesus, as furnished by the Gospels. This is a subject which, as all must allow, can never be exhaustively treated,—a task whose accomplishment can at best be but approximated. It is a theme infinite in its nature, and ever offering new aspects, at various ages of the world, and in successive stages of human development. 

– Carl Ullman, The Sinlessness of Jesus