We do not have a High
Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted
as we are, yet without sin. —Hebrews 4:15
Until we are born
again, the only kind of temptation we understand is the kind mentioned in James
1:14, “Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and
enticed.” But through regeneration we are lifted into another realm where there
are other temptations to face, namely, the kind of temptations our Lord faced.
The temptations of Jesus had no appeal to us as unbelievers because they were
not at home in our human nature. Our Lord’s temptations and ours are in
different realms until we are born again and become His brothers. The
temptations of Jesus are not those of a mere man, but the temptations of God as
Man. Through regeneration, the Son of God is formed in us (see Galatians
4:19), and in our physical life He has the same setting that He had on earth.
Satan does not tempt us just to make us do wrong things— he tempts us to make
us lose what God has put into us through regeneration, namely, the possibility
of being of value to God. He does not come to us on the premise of tempting us
to sin, but on the premise of shifting our point of view, and only the Spirit
of God can detect this as a temptation of the devil.
Temptation means a
test of the possessions held within the inner, spiritual part of our being by a
power outside us and foreign to us. This makes the temptation of our Lord
explainable. After Jesus’ baptism, having accepted His mission of being the One
“who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) He “was led up by the Spirit
into the wilderness” (Matthew 4:1) and into the testing devices of the devil.
Yet He did not become weary or exhausted. He went through the temptation
“without sin,” and He retained all the possessions of His spiritual nature
completely intact.
No comments:
Post a Comment