Robert Roberts (1839-1898) on the Importance of Jesus Not being Impeccable

Robert Roberts, the second "pioneer" of the Christadelphian movement, wrote the following  spot-on paragraph about why it is so important to believe that Jesus was not impeccable and could have sinned (though he did not):

It is an idle question that has been raised by theologians, whether Christ was “peccable” or “impeccable,” in view of the fact that he was driven into the wilderness expressly for the purpose of being tempted of the devil. If he was not capable of sinning, he was not capable of being tempted. A popular writer has well said; “Some, in a zeal at once intemperate and ignorant, have claimed for him (Christ), not only an actual singleness, but a nature to which sin was divinely and miraculously impossible. What then? If his great conflict were a mere deceptive phantasmagoria, how can the narrative of it profit us? If we have to fight the battle, clad in that armour of human free will which has been hacked and riven about the bosom of our forefathers by so many a cruel blow, what comfort is it to us if our great captain fought not only victoriously, but without real danger? Not only uninjured, but without even the possibility of wounds?” It is facts and not the metaphysical theories of facts, that wise men concern themselves with. Metaphysics land a man in the inconceivable. We have no actuality for dealing with the abstract. We cannot follow God, as it were, in the process by which He has concreated His eternal spirit into the forms and functions of created life. It is the practical relations of the latter that concern us. On this principle, it is sufficient to note that Christ was tempted, without enquiring whether or not it was possible he could yield to temptation. The speculation only becomes material and that in a bad sense, when it is made to interfere with that free volition of Christ, which was essential to the righteousness he came to fulfil, the very nature of which consists in the willing and writing subordination of the human will to the divine: (“not my will but thine be one”). (Robert Roberts, Nazareth Revisited or The Life and Work of Jesus Christ Exhibited Anew in Harmony with the Scriptures Moses and the Prophets to which Jesus Appealed as The Word of God [3d ed.; Birmingham: The Christadelphian, 1926], 86)