UNDERSTANDING SATAN'S TEMPTATION OF JESUS, THE MESSIAH
Was he trying to get Jesus to sin?
If Jesus sinned, He could not be God. If he could not sin, it would not be a real temptation.
Hmmm...Could it have been about something totally different?
Read on...
Satan’s Temptation of Jesus: Matthew 4; Mark1; Luke 4
In the Old Testament of the Bible, God promised to send a Messiah, an “anointed One” who would destroy the works of Satan and open the way for fallen, sinful people to be forgiven and receive eternal life with the Creator, the one true and living God. From Genesis forward, God progressively reveals Himself and details of His plan to send this Savior, and we follow the up and down, chaotic history of the monotheistic people group through whom God chose to send Him. The Hebrew scriptures end with the book of Malachi, followed by 400 years of silence (no prophets) while the faithful among them waited and watched longingly for the Messiah. First came John the Baptizer, the predicted forerunner to prepare the way. Then in Bethlehem at just the right moment in history (Galatians 4:4), Mary delivered her miraculous firstborn son, the Christ-child, Jesus of Nazareth.
As he grew, Jesus heard the witness of His parents. He must also have compared his life with the Messianic prophecies He was taught at home and in the synagogue, so that by age 12 He understood and accepted by faith His Messianic identity (Luke 2:49). As an eldest and godly son, Jesus worked and helped care for His family, while God continued to show Him through the scriptures, with increasing clarity, what was to be the role of the Messiah. This was crucial because the ultimate, redemptive, saving work of the Messiah, would require selfless love, courage and sacrifice, and Jesus had to be prepared for it. Finally, God led Him to step publicly into that role and begin to live it out – all the way to the cross and the substitutionary atonement aspect of the Messiah’s work.
To accomplish all this, Jesus had to trust God’s guidance and enabling to fulfill all of prophecies given to help others identify Him as the Messiah. Also, He had to trust God the Father to lead and empower Him to qualify Him to be the Mediator, Redeemer, and Savior, reconciling man to God (Romans 5:10; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Colossians 1:20). These are among those special qualifying requirements:
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Must be a male of the human race, fully and completely a man (Genesis 3:15)
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Must live a sinless life, trusting and obeying the Father and Spirit always (John 5:19; Philippians 2:4-11)
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Must voluntarily submit to unjust, undeserved treatment, rejection, and death - the ultimate penalty of sin
Now with this background, let’s consider Satan’s temptations of Jesus after his baptism by John to begin his public ministry. Jesus used the Old Testament scriptures to believe and prove that He, the Messiah, was indeed the eternal Son of God incarnate. However, He did not come to earth to prove His deity, but "to seek and save the lost" (Luke 19:10), so knowing (by faith) He was God in flesh, He voluntarily "emptied Himself" (Philippians 2:4-11), leaving off the free exercise of His own divine rights and abilities, limiting Himself to doing “nothing” of Himself, but only what the Father and the Holy Spirit led and enabled Him to do (John 5:19). In this way, Jesus satisfied the requirements to become our representative and Savior by substitutionary atonement.
That was what was at stake there in the desert. Satan was not trying to get the Son of God to sin, nor to cease being God. Both are impossible absurdities. The devil was trying to get the Perfect Man of Faith to do something of His own power and prerogative as God, which He had every right about ability to do, but Jesus would have been eliminated from being our substitute, our Savior. Instead, Jesus stayed in the saddle of submission and total dependence on God “for the joy set before Him” (Hebrews 12:2). Requirement 3 (above) would only be acceptable and effective if He indeed satisfied numbers 1 and 2. Jesus was a man (Paul called the last Adam) without sin, the sacrificial Lamb without blemish or spot (Exodus 12:5 cf. 1 Peter 1:19). And what was that joy set before Him? It was you and me!