Oscar Wilde once quipped, “I can resist anything but temptation.”
We have all felt the weight of temptation and know the sorry of falling into it. Everyone but Jesus Christ. Immediately after His baptism, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil (Matthew 4:1-11). Though the Spirit led, it was Satan that attacked.
Jesus, physically weakened from 40 days of fasting was no doubt tired, hungry, and uncomfortable there in the wilderness. This war was the Son of God, coming to do what no other person ever could do. Adam was in the perfect garden of Eden, in the best circumstances and failed. The Lord Jesus was in the harsh wilderness all alone and was victorious.
The nation of Israel was delivered out of Egypt then tested for 40 years in the wilderness and failed over and over again. Jesus, called out of Egypt (Matthew 2:15), entered the wilderness for 40 days and left victorious. Jesus went freely and courageously to the wilderness. Christ was not tricked or coerced, but marched into the battle against Satan, where no one had ever won, where no one would want to go.
Jesus, who added to his divinity, humanity, was tempted externally by Satan. The temptation was real. Jesus, in His humanity, felt the temptation more than you would ever feel temptation even though He could not have sinned. How? Does sin grieve the sinner or the saint? Is blasphemy more noxious to the ungodly or the godly? C.S. Lewis said, “A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means …”
Can we not see the heroic will of the Lord? Knowing that Jesus resisted temptation, every second of His life, never yielding, never failing, doesn’t that give you confidence in your Saviour? With every attack of Satan and every limitation of humanity exploited by the Devil; with every trick and deceptive tactic and every lie he could muster, the Lord Jesus Christ would not be moved or shaken.
This is why you can come to Christ and know that He is able to help you. You can trust in Christ, your faithful High Priest. Jesus is our unmovable rock, our sure salvation, our unshakable refuge. Jesus was obedient to the law His entire life and never displeased the Father. On the cross, Jesus took the sin of His people upon himself and paid the debt. But that’s not all. God imputes Jesus’ righteousness to our account when we come to Him in faith.
