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.
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