Matthew 4:1-11

§ 17. TEMPTATION OF JESUS, Matthew 4:1-11 .

For great missions the preparation is great trials. It was befitting that the newly inaugurated Prince of Light should come into a trial-contest with the prince of darkness. Our views of this transaction we present with sincere diffidence, giving often what appears to us as on the whole the best solutions, rather than dogmatic certainties.

We can view this transaction neither as a mere train of thought, as a vision, as a parable, nor a myth; but as a great verity, occupying a most significant place in the system of sacred realities. The first Adam truly was tempted, and fell; the second Adam was as truly tempted, and won the victory.

Hence he became the great head of triumphant humanity. Tempted in all points as we, he shows how to overcome. We remark:

1 . The history implies in the abstract human nature of Jesus the power to sin. This is necessary in order to a responsible, free agency. If he had no power to choose sin, it is difficult to see how he could be tempted to a choice, not only impossible, but consciously impossible. If he could not comply with temptation, there could be no danger, and truly no temptation at all. If he was unable to comply with the temptation, there was no virtue in the non-compliance. He was that much no free agent; his non-compliance was necessary and mechanical, and so non-meritorious. The supposition that Christ could not sin raises him above all fitness to be an example for us as one “tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin.” Propose such a pattern to a fallible sinner, and he can answer conclusively, “Make it impossible for me to sin and I will be as holy as he.” None but a free agent can be an example for a free agent, Nor is any but a free agent capable of responsible probation. This free agency implies not, indeed, a preferential state of soul for evil, as exists in depraved man, but a susceptibility, as in the perfect first Adam, to impressions which, voluntarily followed out to excess or misdirection, would become sin. This view implies no uncertainty of his accomplishing our redemption. For, in full view of all possibilities, the infinite wisdom and foreknowledge of God had selected, for Messiah, that being, of all others, who, he foresaw, would, with perfect free will, prefer God to Satan, and, in spite of all temptation, prove true to his redemptional office. Hence, while there was an intrinsic possibility in the thing, there was a full and perfect certainty upon which the divine mind could rest, that that possible catastrophe of his fall would not take place.

2 . In the whole transaction we are to view the Saviour in pure humanity. As he is led by the Spirit to the scene, so the blessed human one stood sole and singular in the universe a pure lone man, as the first Adam himself, leaning, indeed, as every Christian may, on the divine arm, yet as truly able to fall by his own will from all union with God, as our first progenitor, and truly able, by freely standing, to maintain an identification with God, impossible to the man of Eden.

3 . As God said to Satan of Job, so now, we conceive, he said of his Son: “Behold, he is in thine hand, but save his life.” Satan had it in his power to tempt him only with apparent good. Not now was his hour and power to try him with untold agonies. But by withstanding the temptations to the apparently good, the man Jesus proved his fitness to stand the terrible ordeal of ill.

4 . This surrender to Satan was greater, we think, than is ordinarily conceived. So far forth as the necessities of the trial required, yet with no power of violence or contamination, our Lord’s person was in his hand. How else did Satan take him to the temple’s summit, or to the mountain top? Or how did he make all the kingdoms of the world visible to his eye? The miracles indicated in the first query maybe supposed to be performed, 1. By creating the conceptions in the Saviour’s mind; or, 2. By snatching his soul from his body; or, 3. By transporting his person so with the quickness of a thought, that he is not to be conceived as on his way at any intermediate point. We adopt the last as being perfectly supposable, and as best meeting the honest demands of the literal history. The miracle suggested in the second question above, of making visible to his eye all the kingdoms of the world, but simply requires that we frame our ideas to the unparallelled statement. It is as conceivable that Satan should endow a human eye with miraculous vision, as that he should fire the human blood of Job with miraculous heat, and compel it to fling out boils upon the skin. That he should do this upon a high mountain, where the natural eye could see as far as possible, accords with the universal rule that the miraculous should never be used where the natural will suffice; or rather that the natural should furnish a nucleus for the miraculous, just as our Saviour, touching with his finger, or with a clay and spittle ointment, the eyes of the blind, formed a nucleus for the miracle of restoration of sight.