In connection with Jesus’ sinlessness, we should notice in
more detail the nature of His temptations in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11; Mark
1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13). The essence of these temptations was an attempt to
persuade Jesus to escape from the hard path of obedience and suffering that was
appointed for Him as the Messiah. Jesus was “led by the Spirit for forty days in
the wilderness, tempted by the devil” (Luke 4:1-2). In many respects this
temptation was parallel to the testing that Adam and Eve faced in the Garden of
Eden, but it was much more difficult. Adam and Eve had fellowship with God and
with each other and had an abundance of all kinds of food, for they were only
told not to eat from one tree. By contrast, Jesus had no human fellowship and
no food to eat, and after He had fasted for forty days He was near the point of
physical death. In both cases the kind of obedience required was not obedience
to an eternal moral principle rooted in the character of God, but was a test of
pure obedience to God’s specific directive. With Adam and Eve, God told them
not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the question was whether
they would obey simply because God told them. In the case of Jesus, “led by the
Spirit” for forty days in the wilderness, He apparently realized that it was
the Father’s will that He eat nothing during those days but simply remain there
until the Father, through the leading of the Holy Spirit, told Him that the temptations
were over and He could leave.
We can understand, then, the force of the temptation, “If
you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread” (Luke 4:3). Of
course Jesus was the Son of God, and of course He had the power to make any stone
into bread instantly. He was the one who would soon change water into wine and
multiply the loaves and the fishes. The temptation was intensified by the fact
that it seemed as though, if He did not eat soon, His very life would be taken
from Him. Yet He had come to obey God perfectly in our place, and to do so as a man. This meant that He had to obey
in His human strength alone. If He had called upon His divine powers to make
the temptation easier for Himself, then He would not have obeyed God fully as a man. The temptation was to use His
divine power to “cheat” a bit on the requirements and make obedience somewhat
easier. But Jesus, unlike Adam and Eve, refused to eat what appeared good and
necessary for Him, choosing rather to obey the command of His heavenly Father.
The temptation to bow down and worship Satan for a moment
and then receive authority over “all the kingdoms of the world” (Luke 4:5); was
a temptation to receive power not through the path of lifelong obedience to His
heavenly Father, but through wrongful submission to the Prince of Darkness.
Again, Jesus rejected the apparently easy path and chose the path of obedience
that led to the cross.
Similarly, the temptation to throw Himself down from the
pinnacle of the temple (Luke 4:9-11) was a temptation to “force” God to perform
a miracle and rescue Him in a particular way, thus attracting a large following
from the people without pursuing the hard path ahead, the path that included
three years of ministering to people’s needs, teaching with authority, and
exemplifying absolute holiness of life in the midst of harsh opposition. But
Jesus again resisted this “easy route” to the fulfillment of His goals as the
Messiah (again, a route that would not have actually have fulfilled those goals
in any case).
These temptations were really the culmination of a lifelong
process of moral strengthening and maturing that occurred throughout Jesus’
childhood and early adulthood, as He “increased in wisdom…and in favor with God”
(Luke 2:52) and as He “learned obedience
through what He suffered” (Heb. 5:8). In these temptations in the wilderness
and in the various temptations that faced Him through the thirty-three years of
His life, Christ obeyed God in our place and as our representative, thus
succeeding where Adam had failed, where the people of Israel in the wilderness had
failed, and where we had failed (Rom. 5:18-19).
As difficult as it may be for us to comprehend, Scripture
affirms that in these temptations Jesus gained an ability to understand and
help us in our temptations. “Because He
Himself has suffered and been tempted, He is able to help those who are
tempted” (Heb. 2:18). The author goes on to connect Jesus’ ability to
sympathize with our weaknesses to the fact that He was tempted as we are.
“For we have not a
high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in
every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then [lit. ‘therefore’]
with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and
find grace to help in time of need.” (Heb. 4:15-16)
This has practical application for us: in every situation in
which we are struggling with temptation, we should reflect on the life of Christ
and ask if there were not similar situations that He faced. Usually, after reflecting
for a moment or two, we will be able to think of some instances in the life of
Christ where He faced temptations that, though they were not the same in every
detail, were very similar to the situations that we face every day.
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