Sinlessness Is Logically Possible

"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect," says Jesus in Matthew 5:48.  Even if the words are familiar to them, it seems that few actually take this command seriously.  I would not be surprised if many Christians would even deny that a human can live sinlessly before entering heaven.  But there is nothing logically impossible about a Christian coming to a point where he or she never sins at all.  This is entirely possible, even if it is extremely difficult.

If a Christian will be made perfect in the future (in heaven, between death and heaven, etc), why would anyone hold it to be impossible for him or her to become perfect while still living on earth?  Beyond an assumption-based bias foreign to both logic and Scripture, there is no reason why someone would think this impossible.  It is objectively logically possible for someone to become sinless on earth, because, whether someone is a Christian or not, there is not a single instance where a person sinned and that person could not have not sinned.  Even if a non-Christian hypothetically did stop sinning entirely, this would not exempt him or her from the need for salvation, as past sins would still require redemption, but the emphasis here is on the fact that no one has to sin.

I can even imagine a world where neither Adam nor Eve disobeyed God in Eden.  Indeed, nothing about such a world is logically impossible.  There truly could have been no such thing as human sin.  Seldom, if ever, will Christians bring up this point, perhaps out of discomfort with the affiliated truth that no one has to sin.  There is a counterfactual world where no human sinned on a mental or physical level, and the logical possibility of that world can provide a sense of hope when a Christian fights sin.  Sinlessness is not above the capacity of any Christian to reach and obtain.

In some cases, people may even prefer for sinlessness to be beyond the reach of any human presently living--because then there is always the excuse of perfection's alleged unattainability.  For if a person cannot be fully sanctified in this life, then it follows that demanding moral perfection of others is a noble, idealistic thing, but a completely pointless one as well.  And some people might hope that it is indeed a pointless thing, because this would provide them with some sort of metaphysical justification for explaining why they sin.

It remains true that in all things, not just some, reality remains reality even when people do not acknowledge or understand it.  And it is true--irrespective of anyone's fears, anxieties, or fallacies--that Christians really can stop sinning.  Not in part, but in full.  This truth need not only cause people grief over their sins.  It can also inspire people to choose not to sin and to seek God in doing so.