Luke 4:4

‘And Jesus answered him, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone.” ’

Jesus reply from Scripture is that man shall not live by bread alone (Deuteronomy 8:3). The point was twofold. Firstly that material things must not become such a consuming passion that they come in the way of doing God’s will. And secondly, in view of the context of the quotation, that what God has to say is more important than bread. His meat is to do the will of God (John 4:34). Man should not be seeking his own benefit but for what results from God’s will and word. Had God wanted Him to be fed he would have sent His angel, but for Jesus to descend to what the Devil suggested would be to lower Himself from the standard of the word of God and make Him not fit to be its minister. It would be to use powers, given to Him for His Messianic task, for selfish purposes. How great a warning this should be to all who receive gifts for God’s work that none of it should be spent in order to gratify our own desires.

We should note that had Jesus used His powers to produce bread He would have been going against His own teaching. In the Sermon on the Mount He tells His followers that their concentration should be on seeking the Kingly Rule of God and His righteousness with the result that ‘all these things (food and clothing) will be yours as well’ because ‘your Heavenly Father knows that you have need of these things (Matthew 6:32-33). It would have been no example at all if He had already betrayed this principle by, on the first occasion of real hunger, creating for Himself what His Father had not given Him.

Why does Jesus call upon the Scriptures? Certainly it may be as an example to us, but equally certainly it was because having emptied Himself of the availability of His deity He was dependent on the Scriptures, in communion with His Father, to know the path that He should take. He walked as we walk, in the light of the Scriptures. But from His earliest years He had learned them well, so that when He needed guidance His Father could bring them to His aid.

‘It is written.’ This was a recognised way of quoting Scripture. It made clear that therefore what was said must be true, and must be obeyed. Once it was seen as ‘written’ in the Scriptures all argument ended for they were the Scriptures of truth, the word of God (Mark 7:13).

Some good manuscripts do add ‘but by every word of God’ (A D Theta f 1 f 13), but Aleph B W omit it, and while we can see why a scribe would add it, it is difficult to see how it could drop out a number of times. However, even if it is not there its implication is there from Deuteronomy 8:3.

We may perhaps as a postscript compare Jesus’ position here with that of Israel at Massah and Meribah in Exodus 17:1-8 with Deuteronomy 6:16 (which Jesus later quotes in Luke 4:12). There too in the wilderness there had been a crying need for sustenance, but how different had been their response to that of Jesus. In this as in many other ways Jesus repeated the history of Israel and succeeded where they had failed.