Many of the moral signs of the last perilous times are with us today, among which we may note false teachers, who are at once “deceivers and being deceived” (2 Tim. 3:13). While undermining the faith of the saints, they seem able to persuade themselves that they are building it up. Thus the higher critics, who only leave intact the covers of our Bible, assure us that the book is now much more precious than before. We must suppose they think so; but if so, they are “being deceived.” Again, those who, under guise of upholding the humanity of Christ, present us a Saviour whom with sorrow we fail to recognize as the Living Christ of the Gospels, seem quite self-satisfied with their views. It is they who are upholding the truth, they insist; it is their strong faith that enables them to believe as they do. To us their theory seems “another Jesus” in the making. Well, if they must “deceive themselves,” it is no reason why we should be deceived.
Let us now ask, in what sense was our Lord tempted? Temptation (peirasmos) is used in two senses and great confusion arises from not distinguishing these: (a) of enticement, “Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed” (James 1:14). Our Lord was clearly never tempted in this sense. He had no “lust” to draw Him away; “In Him is no sin.” It is of the nature of unclean animals and birds to love garbage, but for us it has no attraction. So the Lord passed through this scene of moral corruption, but there was nothing in Him to respond to it. What has a natural attraction for us left Him unscathed. But there is another sense of temptation, that of (b) testing. “Though now for a season if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations” (1 Peter 1:6). Enticement cannot come from God; “God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man,” but God does test all His people. It was in this sense He tempted Abraham (Gen. 22:1). We should pray to be delivered from enticements, and flee from them, but we are to “count it all joy when we fall into divers testings.”
In the latter sense, our Lord was tempted in all points, after the likeness or similitude (Heb. 4:15, kath’ homoioteta).1 The words “we are” are not in the original. That is, as far as it was possible for a sinless Divine Person to be tested “apart from sin,” He was tested, and every test only served to bring out His perfections and proved Him to be “the Holy One of God,” the Perfect Servant, the Faithful Witness. Moreover, His was a holy sympathy, never with sin unconfessed or devious ways persisted in, but with sorrow, suffering, and infirmity. He was tested in every possible way proper to Himself. In this sense He was “tempted” of the Devil. The first temptation is enough to show up the error here combated. Satan would not appeal to us to make stones into bread. It would be no temptation to us, for an obvious reason, but he knew the Lord had the Almighty power at His disposal, if He could be induced to use it apart from the Father.
But why such efforts to enforce this one-sided view of the humanity of Christ? In order, the reply is, to insure to Him the ability to sympathize with us in our temptations. But it is admitted that our Lord did not need to be ill in order to sympathize with the sick. This admission seems to give the whole case away, for why should not the same principle hold good in other respects? Why should our Lord have to become ignorant in order to sympathize with the ignorant? Indeed, an ignorant person could not do so. But “sympathy” was not the primary end of the Lord’s mission. He had something more important in view, “to seek and to save that which was lost,” and more important still, to glorify the Father and finish the work He had given Him to do.
1 This phrase, with the article, occurs again in chapter 7:15, “after the similitude of Melchizedek.”