The First Temptation
wee order of the temptations is different in Matthew and Luke.
In both the suggestion that stones be turned into bread is first.
Matthew then records the experience on the pinnacle of the temple, and lastly the invitation to worship Satan for the possession of the kingdoms of the world. Luke reverses the order of the last two. It is almost certain that the order in Matthew was the actual order, for Christ’s word at the close of ‘the last of the temptations as there chronicled marks the end of the process. “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.”!
There is no detailed account of the forty days spent in the wilderness prior to the temptations which are now to be considered in detail. ‘Mark and Luke record the fact that through that period He was the subject of temptation. Luke moreover declares that it was a period of fasting, “He did eat nothing in those days.”2 It is most likely that the temptation of the forty days was presented by the foe unrevealed to human sight. Having been foiled through the thirty years and the forty days, at last he took shape, and as Matthew puts it, “The tempter came and said unto Him.”
In examining the first temptation, as also in the remaining two, consider first the attack; and, secondly, the repulse. And yet further, under each of these divisions the same method will be followed. In considering the attack of the enemy notice, first, the objective point; second, the avenue of approach; and third, the argument used. In considering the repulse notice, first, the weapon employed; second, the argument rebutted; and third, the citadel held.
I. In the first attack of Satan upon Christ, the objective point is His loyalty to the will of God. This does not appear on the surface, and in that fact there is marked the method of the enemy. He
1Matt. 4. 10, II. ®Luke 4. 2. 3Matt. 4. 3.
never foreannounces the point against which his attack is to be directed, but an examination of the whole situation will reveal the truth of the position. As has been already emphasised, Jesus was led by the Spirit, driven by the Spirit, to and in the wilderness, and in that fact there was great significance. In the life of every being wholly devoted to the will of God, there is nothing accidental. Every detail of arrangement is in the Divine plan, and cannot be interfered with without changing the result and interfering with the purpose. The circumstance of hunger was not only within the Divine knowledge, it was part of the Divine plan. The circumstance of hunger was incidental, but not accidental. It was not an unexpected contingency. It was part of the Divine programme. Led by the Spirit into the wilderness He was taken to physical hunger, and that hunger was a necessary process in the economy of God, a circumstance within His will.
This is emphasised by the very fact of His being taken to the wilderness. If there had been no necessity for hunger, the temptation might have taken place in quite other surroundings; or, to put the matter from the other side, the very fact of His being led to and through forty days in a place barren of sustenance for physical life, indicates the need for hunger, and at last suggests its meaning, the suggested meaning being, that man in his weakness, leaning wholly upon God, is stronger than man in strength alone, stronger moreover than the forces that are against him. When God leads a man, every last detail is always taken into account. This fact should come in comfort as well as in searching power to every one. There are no accidents to those who abide wholly within the will of God. There may be events which men outside will look upon as accidents, but when life is lived in the centre of the circle of the Divine will, nothing can approach it save those things which are foreordained, and which are therefore integral parts of the Divine plan, and the Divine programme.
The hunger of Jesus therefore was within the purpose of God for Him. Now if He might be persuaded to cancel this circumstance, small and unimportant though it appear, He would nevertheless throw out of perfect working order, that whole Divine plan. If He could only be persuaded to minister to His physical need by the use of a Divinely-bestowed power, outside the Divinely-
118 tHE CRISES Gk THE CHRIST
indicated line, and so satisfy His hunger, while yet in the place where God had put Him, and intended that He should suffer it, then that act of personal choice against the choice of God would controvert the whole plan, and the citadel towards which the enemy moves, His loyalty to the will of God, would be taken.
Thus it is seen that thé point towards which this first temptation was directed was the quiet, peaceful strength of Jesus as He rested in the will of God in triumph over all circumstances. That is the objective point.
Now consider the avenue of approach. The enemy appealed to the sense of hunger. Hunger was natural, and therefore sinless. Perhaps that statement needs some word of explanation. In evangelical teaching and thinking to speak of a thing as natural, is often to associate with it the idea of depravity. For instance, to speak of the natural man is to think of that which is in opposition to the spiritual man. This is due to the fact that Paul uses the term “natural” invariably in reference to man in his fallen nature. It must however never be forgotten that behind the fallen is the unfallen. God’s archetypal Man is the truly natural man. This is not to quarrel with the Apostle’s use of the word, but to indicate the meaning when it is said that hunger was natural. If man had never sinned he would still have grown hungry. Hunger is not a result of sin. It is a consciousness Divinely implanted, which suggests the need for food. It is part of the wonderful economy of God for the sustenance of the physical need of man. In the use of the body there is a waste of tissue, and for its reconstruction there must be a reception of food. Whenever that food is necessary there is a sense of need, that sense being hunger. Hunger, then, is within God’s gracious economy in the creation of man.
Notice carefully that it was after the lapse of the forty days that Jesus was hungry. It would seem as though during their passing, He was unconscious of His physical need. His thoughts had been of things within the spiritual realm, and the demands of the physical had been unrecognised. At the close of forty days the sense of need swept over Him. He was hungry. That sense of hunger was perfectly sinless. To satisfy it is the natural action of a perfect Man. The hunger is a God-created sense. To feed it, to satisfy it, is to fall in with the Divine purpose.
Now mark the subtlety of the enemy. God had created the need, but there was no provision there for its satisfaction. The temptation proceeded along this avenue, and virtually may be stated in this form. Thou art hungry, according to Divine arrangement, but in the Divine arrangement of this moment there is no provision for the satisfaction of Thy hunger. It is now competent for Thee to act upon Thine own initiative, “command that these stones become bread.”
Long centuries before, the devil had asked a question in the Divine presence. A servant of God, a perfect and upright man was living in such conditions that all the necessities of his life seemed to be met, and the enemy coming before God, said, “Doth Job serve God for nought?”! Around that question and insinuation of evil, the magnificent book of Job circles. The suggestion made was, that Job’s loyalty to God was ensured by the satisfaction of all physical need. Job was full and wealthy through the beneficence of heaven. Let him be emptied and impoverished, and the strain put upon his loyalty would break down. To put it in the more vulgar language of the street, Job feared God for what he could get. Thus the devil’s estimate of human life is, that the only reason for man’s loyalty to God is that God meets every demand of his need as it arises; and, moreover, that man’s happiness consists in the satisfaction of his material nature, in a word, that he lives by bread alone.
That same thought underlay the temptation of the Master. It is as though he had said to Him, Thou art hungry. That sense of hunger is a part of the Divine arrangement. Therefore it must be right to satisfy it. If God has made no provision for the satisfaction of a need which He has created, then act independently, command that the stones be made bread.
The subtlety of the temptation lies within the fact that the devil suggested to Christ that He should satisfy a perfectly legitimate craving. The evil of the temptation lies within the fact that he suggested that a legitimate craving should be satisfied in an illegitimate way. Thus Christ, impoverished and hungry, faced the old-time lie, by meeting temptation, not when filled with the plentitude of
lob 1. 9.
Divine gifts, but when needing that which God provides for all His creatures. So much for the avenue of approach.
Now notice the argument the enemy used, “If Thou be the Son of God,” marking carefully the meaning of the “If,” and the reason of its use at this particular crisis. The temptation closely followed upon the baptism. But forty days ago the silence of the long thirty years had been broken, and the Divine voice had said, “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.” Thus the seal of God was set not merely in approbation upon the perfection of the life, but in identification of the’ personality of Jesus. “This is My beloved Son.” Now hear the enemy’s “if.” “If Thou art the Son of God.”2 If that experience of forty days ago was really anything more than a phantasy, a vision; if what the voice declared be true, why remain hungry? What is the use, said the enemy in effect, of a position without its privileges: What value is there in being the Son of God unless Thou shalt make use of all that the name implies 2 Mark well that the devil’s idea of the privileges of sonship is that of selfish gratification.
This temptation moved wholly in the physical realm. The Man Jesus was hungry, and the enemy took advantage of this fact, and, moving along the avenue of His hunger, and using the argument of His Sonship, he suggested that He should exercise His Sonship for the satisfaction of His hunger, without reference to the fact that His hunger at the moment was a part of the will of His Father.
To sum up. The objective point was the loyalty of Jesus to the will of God. The avenue of approach was the perfectly natural and sinless hunger of His manhood. The argument used was that if He were the Son of God, He might use that privilege to minister to His necessity, without consulting the will of His Father.
There was nothing in that temptation which had the slightest suspicion of vulgarity. The devil did not suggest that He should minister to any craving of life that was not in itself right. Indeed such suggestion would have been utterly useless, for there was no such craving in Him. It was so, even then, as He said afterwards, that the devil “cometh: and he had nothing in Me.”3 The enemy asked Him to do a right thing in a wrong way, to satisfy a lawful appetite in an illegal fashion, to make use of the privileges of Son-
1Matt. 3. 17. 2Matt. 4. 3. 3John 14. 30.
ship for violating its responsibilities. The temptation was an attempt to pervert the will. This was done by a subtle suggestion of the unkindness of God, in order to quench love towards God. This suggestion was of the nature of an attempt to cloud the intelligence, by mixing the privileges and responsibilities of Sonship.
Il. Turning to the repulse of the enemy, notice, first, the weapon which the Master-used. His first words reveal it. “It is written.” These words He addressed to Satan in answer to the suggestion. He was not, however, by any means entering into an argument with the devil. There is nothing of the nature of argument through the whole process. It is rather that Jesus defined, in the hearing of the enemy, His own position. By the very first words He declared His submission to law. As against the enemy’s suggestion that He should use the privileges of Sonship, He declared the binding nature of its responsibilities. “It is written,” is a declaration of the fact that He stood within the circle of the will of God, and what that will permitted, He willed to do; and what that will made-no provision for, He willed to do without.
That which was written was part of the law of God as given to Moses, and recognising the Divinity of this law, He at once revealed that He lived by words proceeding out of the mouth of God. Thus the opening words reveal the weapon of His defence, and define the position of His safety.
His citation of the Mosaic law serves to rebut the argument made use of by the enemy. That argument had been suggested by the words, “If Thou be the Son of God.” Let it be particularly noted that in the first word of the quotation Christ made answer to the false suggestion of that argument. That first word was the word “man,” “man shall not live by bread alone.” The devil said, “If Thou be the Son of God.” Jesus said, “man.” Thus to put the emphasis on the first word is to discover the philosophy of Christ’s answer to this particular temptation, a declaration of position rather than an argument, and yet in the declaration a great argument is involved. It is as though Jesus had said to the enemy, I am here as Man, and as Man I meet thy temptation. That temptation had been to over-emphasise the privileges of a Son, and to minimise the responsibilities of humanity. Christ’s answer restored the true balance, and with magnificent courage inferentially declared that His presence in the wilderness was a challenge to the devil on the part of a representative Man. In all probability in the temptation of the devil there had also been a recognition of the larger thought of the Divine pronouncement, namely, a recog: nition of the Deity of Christ as indicated in the title “Son of God, and therefore the craft of the attack was even yet more marked, in that he may have suggested that the weakness of humanity should be strengthened by the exercise of Deity. If that was indeed so, then all the more forceful and’remarkable was Christ’s answer. He declined to use the prerogatives or powers of Deity in any other way than was possible to every other man. He did not face temptation nor overcome it in the realm of His Deity, but in the magnificence of His pure, strong Manhood, Manhood tested for thirty years in ordinary private life, and for forty days in the loneliness of the wilderness. “Man” is the first word and the forceful word. Jesus has been in the wilderness as man’s representative, and that He declared when, repulsing the attack of the enemy, He did so by defining thus clearly His position.
And»yet consider still more closely. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”! Weak from the hunger following upon forty days of fasting, the devil suggested that He should strengthen Himself with bread. His reply, “It is written,” is a revelation of the true sources of strength. The strength of manhood does not lie in the assertion of rights, but in submission to the will of God. Mark well how that answer of the perfect One drags into light the false philosophy of evil, which the fallen race has universally accepted. The most applauded position that man takes is that in which he declares, I prove my manhood by the assertion of my rights; but this perfect Man declares that the strength of manhood lies in the absolute abandonment of His will to the will of God, that being the only right He possesses.
In the last analysis the argument of the devil had been a presupposition that all man needed for his sustenance was food for his
physical life. That unwarrantable assumption Christ answered by
declaring that no man’s whole life can be fed by bread that perishes. 1Matt. 4. 4.
He needs more, that his spirit shall be fed, and its strength sustained by feeding upon the word proceeding from the mouth of God, and its safety ensured by abiding within the will of God.
This answer was given out of the midst of hunger, and consequently the force of the argument is increased by the attitude, that attitude plainly declaring not only that man cannot live by bread alone, but that the life sustained by bread is not of first importance. If there must be a choice between the sustenance of the spiritual and the feeding of the physical, the latter must make room for the former..
Thus the citadel is held against the first attack — and how magnificently! Reverently declaring the thought of Jesus by paraphrasing His actual words, it is as though He had said: I am hungry, but as that lies within the will of God for Me, I choose the hunger in that will, rather than to find any satisfaction outside it. What a glorious vindication of the essential greatness of the spiritual man! Even though hunger should be so long continued that the physical, that which is sustained by bread alone, should cease to exist, even then man, fed to all fullness by the Word of God, would live. In every man in this probationary life there coexist the physical and the spiritual, and in all the ordinary dealings of God, both of these will be fed where the whole man is abandoned to His will. Where, however, for some purpose homed in His perfect love, the physical must suffer hunger, by the suffering of that hunger, because it is the will of God, the spiritual is strengthened and sustained. In that philosophy of life the perfect Man Jesus won His victory in the wilderness, continued through three years, and at last emphasised and vindicated it by passing with kingly majesty to the death of the Cross. If, on the other hand, man seeks to satisfy his physical need by disregarding the Word of God, which is the food of the spiritual, then the spiritual destroyed, the physical, also, at last shall perish, and the whole man be lost. Jesus, living ever and only according to the Divine plan, at last laid down His life and took it again, and lives for ever as the deathless One, at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Thus in the first temptation is a startling revelation of the purpose and the method of Satan, and of the true sources of man’s strength. As to the purpose and method of Satan, his first purpose is to lure man into some position outside the will of God. His method is that of appealing to something perfectly lawful in itself, but suggesting that it should be satisfied by an unlawful method. As to the sources of man’s strength, the Lord’s answer and attitude reveal that man is not merely a fed animal. He is essentially spirit, and spirit depends for its sustenance upon its true correspondence to God. This correspondence can only be secured by the knowledge of God, and submission to the will of God, as revealed in the Word of God. He abode in the will of God, with which He was familiar in the Word of God, and choosing the hunger that resulted from dwelling in that will, rather than the passing satisfaction obtainable at the cost of disobedience, He repulsed the foe. As representative Man, He hurled back the attack which was directed towards the spoiling of the beauty and perfection of the life which had so often been tried in the thirty years and forty days preceding, and yet had always conquered.
Thus the first attack of the foe is seen as being directed against God’s Man, and the first victory of Jesus is seen as been gained by Man, as He quietly remained within the sphere of Divine government. The Man of Nazareth, the second Man, the last Adam, stands erect at the close of the first attack, because He has resolutely refused to be enticed by any argument from His simple and unquestioning allegiance to His God. Man with God is equal to all strain, and superior to all temptation.