Luke 4:13

13. All the temptation The fast of Moses of forty days was doubtless a miniature image of Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness of forty years. So, too, this new founder of a spiritual Israel passes through the terrible ordeal which is representative of the probation his Church must pass in her earthly sojourning. Happy shall she be, like her Head, in the crowning victory.

For a season Defeated and discouraged, Satan lets him alone for a while. But intense malignity allows neither the devil nor his angels or agents any permanent repose. He will harass Jesus, in his own person or through them, at every possible interval; and especially at the time of the events recorded Luke 22:3, and those following.

To what we have said on the free moral agency of Christ, including his volitional power to obey temptation, we here add as follows. There are three views on the subject:

1 . Christ had no volitional power to obey temptation. This is the old Calvinistic view, maintained especially by the adherents of the Synod of Dort, and especially by Dr. Edwards in his work on the Will.

2 . The man Jesus had such volitional power. This is the old Arminian view, maintained by Episcopius, Limborch, and Curcellaeus, against the dogmas of Dort.

3 . The eternal Logos had the volitional power to sin, having concentrated and reduced himself down to finite and human conditions. This is a German view not yet fully brought before the American Church. It is concisely but clearly presented and maintained by Dr. Nast in his commentary on Matthew 4:1-11.