Why Was Jesus Tempted?

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.  Matt. 4:1

          Until this morning in Sunday School, I haven’t really given a lot of deep contemplation to the question of why Jesus was tempted at the outset of His earthly ministry.  In our group, John Stolzfus, our leader told us with as much authoritative insistence as he could muster, that he didn’t want to delve into the question of whether Christ could have succumbed to the temptations the Devil presented to Him at that time.  Then, our brother Enos Mullet brought out that it was the Holy Spirit that led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted.  We discussed the fact that God doesn’t tempt any man, nor can He be tempted by evil.  (Js. 1:14)  This left us with the question about Christ’s temptation, namely why did it occur and how, since He is God and the word says that God cannot be tempted.

          Well, the first thought that came to me was the place in Hebrews that says He “was in all points tempted like as [we are, yet] without sin.”  Heb. 4:15.  Another passage, earlier in that same book says, “For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.  Heb. 2:18   Now, if you will follow me the question might arise, “Since Jesus is and was God, He shouldn’t have to be actually tempted in order to understand our temptations and weaknesses.”  That is certainly true, but somehow in the wisdom and eternal purposes of God in redemption, it was determined that the Son should come into the world as a man, born of a woman under the law.  (Gal. 4:4)  Thus being truly and fully human, with all of the weakness and frailties of a man, yet at the same time possessing the divine nature, He was successful in overcoming sin, both in His being tempted, as well as in the atoning aspect of His death and resurrection.  Could He have accomplished redemption in some other way without getting His hands dirty, so to speak, and actually taking on the nature of a human?  I suppose so, but not so in the wisdom of God.

          Now this is truly an important point that we bring up here about our Lord’s humanity being coupled equally with His deity.  The true identity of God, and the authenticity of His followers (that’s us) depend upon it.  If we were a part of any number of heretical cults we might see Jesus Christ as something other than who and what He truly was and is.  Mormons hold that He is the spirit brother of Lucifer, born through the union of God and Mary.  The Jehovah’s Witnesses (so-called) say he is Michael the arch-angel, something less than God yet more than man.  But the true believer knows Christ as the God-Man, the Son of God as well as His descriptive title of Son of Man.  He bore the unique quality of possessing a fully human nature as well as the full attributes of God, though voluntarily limited while in the flesh before His resurrection. 

    Getting back to our question, “Why did Jesus need to be tempted?”  We see clearly in the book of Hebrews, that being our perpetual High priest, He is interceding for His people at the right hand of the Father, and succouring (aiding them in their present distress). (Heb. 2:17,18)  He is able to do this not just because of His divine intuition into the experience of their suffering, but because of His personal experience with the same trials and temptations we are undergoing.  This fact is sufficient to comfort us in our present testing, because we know that the very same pressures we face to give in to temptation were real to Him while in His fleshly body.  He felt what we feel, even though He never yielded to those pressures.

          The argument then arises, that since He was God while in the flesh He surely had the power as God to overcome the temptation to sin.  Further, since we are just human and not God, Jesus had a distinct advantage over us in overcoming temptation.  It is true that His identity is uniquely divine, but we as Spirit-born believers in God, though we are not God or gods, likewise possess the divine nature in a very real sense.  Look at the following statement from Second Peter:

According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that [pertain] unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.  2Pet. 1:3,4

Whether we fully realize it, or choose to realize it or not, we can and must overcome sin by the very same means and the very same power that the Lord Jesus did while on this earth.  I wouldn’t want to be misunderstood here as saying we become God, but we have a real participation with Him in His very nature through the new birth, and our understanding of His word.  So we can’t go on using the fact that Jesus was God and we are just human as our excuse to continue in sin.  Reminds me of that country song that is sometimes sung in prison as a hymn, “I’m only human...”  We see that Jesus was made like us simply so that we could become like Him.  (See Heb. Chapter Two.)   This is not some strange form of perfectionism, but really, it is the reason why He took the body of a human and allowed Himself to be subject to all of its human frailties for that brief time of His ministry on this earth. 

Today, as I hiked up into the mountains here above Colorado Springs, I pondered this truth and found in it great comfort and renewed hope in the midst of my present distresses.  The old hymn says, “Jesus knows all about our troubles...”  Why and how?, because He was tempted in His body just as we are tempted in our bodies on this earth.  Praise God that He resisted and overcame those temptations!  Praise God that you and I have the same power working in us to enable us to overcome sin while in our fleshly bodies!  That sure beats “addictions recovery” and all the other gimmicks and humanly contrived schemes of men vaunted in the prisons and everywhere today.  Hopefully, this truth will grow on us and in us to give us victory in every area of our lives.  He was our example that we can follow. 

For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.  Heb. 2:18