Introductory

“The subject of our Lord’s temptation is mysterious, and therefore difficult. Lying in part within the domain of human consciousnéss and experience, it stretches far beyond our sight, throwing its dark projections into the realm of spirit, that realm, ‘dusk with horrid shade,’ which Reason may not traverse, and which Revelation itself has not illumined, save by occasional lines of light, thrown into, rather than across it. We cannot, perhaps, hope to have a perfect understanding of it, for in a subject so wide and deep there is room for the play of many hypotheses; but inspiration would not have recorded the event so minutely had it not a direct bearing upon the whole of the Divine Life, and were it not full of pregnant lessons for all times. To Him who suffered within it, it was a wilderness indeed; but to us ‘the wilderness and the solitary place’ have become ‘glad, and the desert... blossoms as the rose.’ Let us, then, seek the wilderness reverently yet hopefully, and in doing so let us carry in our minds these two guiding thoughts — they will prove a silken thread for the labyrinth — first, that Jesus was tempted as Man; and second, that Jesus was tempted as the Son of Man.” —

Henry Burton. “The Gospel of Luke.”

“THEN was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He afterward hungered. And the tempter came and said unto Him, If Thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. But He answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Then the devil taketh Him into the holy city; and he set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto Him, If Thou art the Son of God, cast Thyself down: for it is written: q He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee:

an?

On their hands they shall bear Thee up,

Lest haply Thou dash Thy foot against a stone.

Jesus said unto him, Again it is written, Thou shalt not make trial of the Lord thy God. Again, the devil taketh Him unto an exceeding high mountain, and showeth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and he said unto Him, All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth Him; and behold, angels came and ministered unto Him. — Matt. 4. 1-11.

And straightway the Spirit driveth Him forth into the wilderness. And He was in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan; and He was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto Him. — Mark 1. 12, 13.

And jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led in the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the devil. And He did eat nothing in those days: and when they were completed, He hungered. And the devil said unto Him, If Thou art the Son of God, command this stone that it become bread. And Jesus answered unto him, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone. And he led Him up, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto Him, To Thee will I give all this authority, and the glory of them: for it hath been delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If Thou therefore wilt worship before me, it shall all be Thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. And he led Him to Jerusalem, and set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said unto Him, If Thou art the Son of God, cast Thyself down from hence: for it is written:

He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee, to guard Thee:

and,
On their hands they shall bear Thee up,
Lest haply Thou dash Thy foot against a stone.

And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not make trial of the Lord thy God.

And when the devil had completed every temptation, he departed from Him for a season. — Luke 4. 1-13

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Introductory

ape third crisis in the mission of Christ followed the second

almost immediately. On the threshold of the second period

in His work — the three years of public ministry — He met in conflict the arch-enemy of the race. Not that this was by any means the first encounter. All the thirty years had been years of conflict. There is no room for doubt that questions intended to cast reflections upon the motives of God had been asked in Nazareth, similar to those asked in the Garden of Eden. The last Adam was familiar by the experience of the years with the method of attack which had issued in the ruin of the first Adam. The suggestion had certainly been made to Him that the will of God was capricious and unkind. No day had passed in which He had not been subject to temptation. To think of the tempting of Jesus as beginning and being exhausted in that special season in the wilderness which is the subject of present consideration, is to misunderstand utterly the years at Nazareth, and the full meaning of the wilderness experience. During those thirty years He had been unceasingly victorious. At His baptism, the opened heavens, the descending Dove, the Divine voice are each and all significant of the perfections of the thirty years, that is, of the absolute victory Jesus had won over all the attacks of the enemy. The Master had met and triumphed over all the temptations incidental to private life.

He is now entering upon the three years of public ministry, and He meets the foe of the race in the supreme conflict of all His testing — supreme, that is, in the fact that now evil appears before Him in all its tremendous strength and naked horror in the personality of the devil. In all likelihood never had there been such an attack before, and certain it is that it never occurred again. After this experience His attitude toward Satan and all his emissaries is that of the Victor towards the vanquished. Never again is He seen in the place of temptation in the same specific way. Suggestions which as to their inner meaning are identical, are made to Him by Satan through Peter, and yet once more in the Garden of Gethsemane, but the victory won in the wilderness is most evidently the source of strength in subsequent experiences.

The attack of the foe is directed against Him in view of His coming work. Its subtlety is manifest in that it is directed against three aspects of triumphant service. To serve God there must be manhood strong in the realisation of Divine ideals. Against this the first attack was made. There must also be such implicit trust in God as expresses itself in contentment with the Divine arrangement, and refusal to tempt God by false heroics. The second temptation was craftily aimed at the breaking down of this confidence. And yet again, the servant of God must accept the methods of God at whatever cost to himself. The final temptation was a suggestion that a Divine end should be reached by other than the Divine method.

In this preliminary study the subject is that of the setting of the temptation, reserving for future chapters the temptations themselves. In thus viewing the temptation in its relation to the whole mission of Christ, there are four matters to be considered — The time of the temptation. The place of the temptation. The agent of the temptation. The significance of the temptation. For the purpose of this study, reference will have to be made to the three accounts by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John has no chronicle of the temptation, his Gospel being essentially that of the Deity of Jesus, and God cannot be tempted.

.I. In dealing with the time of the temptation there are three significant words. Matthew opens the story with the word “then.”! Mark uses in this connection a characteristic word of the Gospel, “straightway.”2 Luke opens with the word “and,”3 These words “Then,” “Straightway,” “And” show the connection of the temptation with what had preceded it, and thus mark with great distinctness its time. “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit.” When: Immediately after the baptism, with its Divine attestation of satisfaction. “And straightway the Spirit driveth Him forth.”4 Here the emphasis is yet greater upon the fact that the temptation

1Matt. 4. 1. ®Mark 1. 12. 5Luke 4. 1. 4Mark 1. 12, followed immediately upon the baptism. “And Jesus... was led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days”! The “and” here marks continuity. Thus the first act of the new phase of service was that of the testing of the Servant, and His perfect victory over the foe. God had sealed as approved, the first phase of the work. The anointing Spirit had indicated His preparedness for the future. His forerunner had recognised in Him the King, of Whose coming he had spoken to the gathered crowds, on the banks of the river. The whole circumstances of the baptism must have been full of satisfaction to the heart of Christ, and now in the conscious strength of victory already achieved, He passes into the gloom and loneliness of the wilderness, that He may be tested, and through the testing prove His strength.

II. Then as to the place of temptation, again notice the threefold description. Matthew says, “Into the wilderness;”2 Mark, “forth into the wilderness;”? Luke says, “In the wilderness’4 The common thought is that the temptation was experienced in the wilderness. The meaning of this in relation to the mission of Christ deserves special attention. Jesus now stands as the second Man, the last Adam. Here let this Scriptural statement be specially noted and remembered. Too often He is spoken of as the second Adam. Scripture does not use the expression. It speaks of the “last Adam.”5 The first Adam was the head of a race. The last Adam is the Head of a race, and He is the last, because there will be no new departure, no other federal headship, and no other race. The last Adam, then, passing into temptation, went to the wilderness, into single and lonely combat with the enemy. No foe other than the captain of the hosts of evil is opposed to Him there, and no friend other than the God in Whose hand His breath is, and Whose are all His ways, is with Him. The wilderness is the place of immediate dealing with evil. All secondary things are swept aside.

It is interesting to contrast the circumstances under which the second Man, the last Adam, meets temptation, with those under which the first man and first Adam met them. Jesus stood among circumstances far more disadvantageous than did Adam. In each case there was a perfect man — in Eden a man God-made; in the

ibis 4.1. Matt. 4,1. %Markz.12, ‘Luke 4.2. 1 Cor. 15. 45.

wilderness a Man God-begotten. The first, however, was in Eden, amid circumstances of beauty and plenty, a place where there was no lack, and all man’s God-made nature was satisfied. The second was in the wilderness, in surroundings of barrenness, and poverty, and hunger for the bread that perishes.

And yet note one graphic touch of Mark, “He was with the wild beasts,”! There are those who seem to think that the statement reveals the horror of the situation, that the prowling wild beasts in the neighbourhood made the situation still more fearful. But the word “with” suggests riot that they were in His neighbourhood, or He in theirs merely, but there was companionship between — them. The fact is, that even these wild beasts recognised God’s millennial Man, and lost their ferocity, as has been already seen in a previous study. Thus in the very place of conflict was a glorious shadowing forth of the day when the lamb shall lie down with the lion, and when all the wonderful prophecies that foretell man’s communion with, and dominion over, the lower forms of creation shall be realised. He made even the wilderness to blossom with millennial glory.

Ill. Next as to the agent of the temptation. Matthew says, “To be tempted of the devil” ;2 Mark, “Tempted of Satan” ;3 Luke, “Tempted of the devil.”4 The emphasis here is upon the fact that in the wilderness experience Jesus came face to face with the prince of the power of the air, with the god of this world, with Lucifer, son of the morning, fallen from his high estate of the first rank of heaven, and now leader of the hosts of darkness.

There have been many attempts to account for the peormecn in other ways. It has been suggested that some man or company of men visited Him in the wilderness, and voiced the suggestions of evil; some even holding that the tempter was a member of His own family, who followed Him into the wilderness, and, with motives not unmixed with concern for Him, yet became the voice of evil. As all this is pure imagination, and has not the slightest warrant in Scripture, it must be dismissed at once as false.

The more serious error is that the temptation arose from the natural operations of the mind of Christ. This is as unwarranted

1Mark 1, 13. 2Matt, 4, I, 3Mark I, 13. 4Luke 4, 2.

as is the other. As evil was presented to the first man from without, so also was it to the second. But no time need be taken with these futile attempts to discount the actual accuracy of the Scripture narrative. One of the chief values of this account of the temptation lies in the fact that Jesus here dragged Satan into the light, and revealed to all His followers the fact of his personality, and the method of his operations.

To deny the personality of Satan is to deny Scripture. It is moreover to reflect upon humanity in a way that is unwarranted by the whole scheme of revelation. If there be no personal devil, then all the evil things that blot the page of human history are the outcome of human nature. This is not possible of belief. Evil is not a natural product of God’s humanity. It is not a process of evolution. To hold that, in the last analysis, is to make God the Author of sin. It is evident therefore that to deny the personality of Satan is not to escape the problem of evil. If the Bible account of the fall of man is not correct, there yet remains the unsolved problem. While freely granting the mystery, man refuses to believe that the genesis of evil lies within the fact of human nature, accepting the teaching of Scripture that the problem lies further back, evil having originated prior to the creation of man. Revelation takes man no further back than the fall of the angels, which is declared and not explained. From that fall came the first movement of evil in human life, and the ruin of a race. The Head of the new race goes back to the point of the origin of evil in man, and confronts the personality, who is the head and front of the offending.

IV. With regard to the significance of the temptation again refer to the three narratives. Matthew writes, “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit:”1 Mark expresses it, “The Spirit driveth Him,”? while Luke declares He “was led by the Spirit.” The one fact announced in these varied ways is of supreme importance to keep in mind, if the true significance of this temptation is to be understood. A Divine plan was being wrought out. It did not — to use a common expression — “happen” that Jesus met Satan and was tried. Neither is it true to say that the devil arranged the temptation. Temptation here is in the Divine plan and purpose. Jesus

1Matt. 4.1. 3Mark 1. 12. 3Luke 4. 1.

went into the wilderness under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to find the devil. My own conviction is that if the devil could have escaped that day, he would have done so. It is a very popular fallacy that the enemy drove Christ into a corner and tempted Him. But the whole Divine story reveals that the facts were quite otherwise. God’s perfect Man, led by the Spirit, or as Mark in his own characteristic and forceful way expresses it, driven by the Spirit, passes down into the wilderness, and compels the adversary to stand out clear from all secondary causes, and to enter into direct combat. This is not the devil’s method. ‘He ever puts something between himself and the man he would tempt. He hides his own personality wherever possible. To our first parents he did not suggest that they should serve him, but that they should please themselves. Jesus dragged him from behind everything, and put him in front, that for once, not through the subtlety of a second cause, but directly, he might do his worst against a pure soul.

Nothing can be more clear than the simple and full statement. Matthew does not assert that being led of the Spirit into the wilderness He was tempted of the devil; but that He was “led up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.” Mark adds some further light, by declaring, He was “‘in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan;”1 while Luke declares the same thing with even greater detail, “He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the devil.””2

To gather up these different side lights, the case may thus be stated. Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. He was tempted of the devil during forty days, during the whole of which period He was still led by the Spirit. The Spirit took Him to the place of temptation, and was with Him through the process of temptation. Not in His Deity did He resist, but in His perfect Manhood. Manhood is however never able to successfully resist temptations of the devil save when fulfilling a first Divine intention, that, namely, of depending upon God, and thus being guided by the Spirit of God. Thus the Man Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, and was led by the Spirit through all the process of temptation.

Herein lay the deep significance of this temptation. The

1Mark 1. 13. *Luke 4, 1, 2.

INTRODUCTORY IIs

second Man, acting under the guidance of the Spirit, passed into the wilderness, and by His coming challenged evil, and, acting simply under the guidance of that Spirit, overcame.

In conclusion, the significance of the temptation may be seen by placing the whole of the facts in contrast with the account of the temptation of Adam. The devil challenged the first man. The second Man challenged the devil. The devil ruined the first Adam. The last Adam spoiled the’devil. The first Adam involved the race in his defeat. The last Adam included the race in His victory. The first Adam stood as the head of the race, and falling, dragged the race down with him. The last Adam stood as the Head of the new race, and being victorious, lifted that race with Him.

This is not a picture of the last Adam doing merely what the first Adam did, going into the place of passive life, and then when temptation came, resisting it. The second Man had not only to resist temptation when it assailed Him for His own sake, but He had to lay hold of the tempter, and defeat him and punish him for

the wrong he did in the ruin of the first man.