No Confession to Make

Notice the prayer life of our blessed Lord. Because He became man, He prayed to the Father. He took the place of a dependent. He trod the path of faith, and drew His strength from above. He was often found at night on a hillside, or in a garden, pouring out His heart in prayer. But His prayer never took the character of confession. Hence He always prayed alone. He never prayed in fellowship with anyone else. He prayed for others. He did not pray with them. We never find Him kneeling with Peter, James, and John, His intimate disciples, and joining together with them in intercession, nor with anyone else. We who serve Christ today have some of our most blessed experiences as we mingle our prayers and supplications with those of our brethren, and bow together before God in acknowledgment of our common sinfulness and our common need. He never did this with any one. He taught His disciples to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” but He could not, in the very nature of things, pray that prayer with them. He stood altogether apart. They were sinners; He was sinless, the Saviour of sinners. “He knew no sin.”
The Word of God teaches that He not only never made the acquaintance of sin, by actual failure, by transgression, by disobedience in thought, word, or deed, but He knew no sin in the sense that His humanity was never contaminated by an inward tendency to sin. He was absolutely, from the moment of His incarnation, the holy One. The angel said to the blessed virgin mother: “That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” In Adam, unfallen, we see humanity innocent; in all his children since, we see humanity fallen; but in Christ Jesus we see humanity holy. We are told that He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. Some people have taken this last expression to mean, “Yet without sinning.” That was true as we have seen, but it is not all of the truth. That verse really means this: He was tempted in all points like as we are, apart from sin. He was never tempted by inbred sin. He could say, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.” You cannot say that; I cannot. When the enemy comes at me from without, there is a traitor inside who would gladly surrender the citadel, if he could; but with my Lord it was quite otherwise.