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 (the Hebrew scriptures), God promised to send the Messiah, the “anointed One”  who would destroy the works of Satan and open the way for fallen, sinful people to be forgiven and to enjoy a confident and secure eternal relationship with the Creator, the one true and living God, forever.

 

Throughout the history of the people of God, from Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, 400 years of bondage in Egypt, and Moses to free and lead them back to the Promised Land of Canaan.  There the people tripped and stumbled their way under “judges”, kings, and prophets to civil war and division, a continual downward spiral through chaos, judgment, and 70 years of exile in Babylonia.  God then used the Persian emperor Cyrus to return the monotheistic people group to Canaan, where for 400 years the faithful among them watched and waited longingly for the Messiah.  Then, at just the right moment in history (Galatians 4:4), John (the prophet and predicted forerunner of the Messiah) appeared to announce the arrival of “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”  That was Jesus of Nazareth who claimed to be the Messiah.

 

By age 12, Jesus had heard the witness of His parents, had compared his experiences with the scriptures He was taught at home and in synagogue, and had grown to understand and accept by faith His Messianic identity (Luke 2:49).  Then, while He worked and cared for His mother and siblings (as a responsible eldest son of a Jewish family), He continued to grow to see more clearly the role of the Messiah and God’s timing for Him to step publicly into that role and begin to live it out – all the way to the cross.

 

To accomplish this, Jesus had to trust the Father to guide and enable Him to fulfill all of prophecies God had given to identify Him.  Plus, He had to trust God to meet the specific requirements that would 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:

 

1. Must be a male of the human race, fully and completely a man (Genesis 3:15)

2. Must live a sinless life, trusting and obeying the Father and Spirit always (John 5:19; Philippians 2:4-11)

3. Must voluntarily submit to unjust treatment, rejection, and death, the ultimate penalty of sin

4. Must be resurrected to new life, defeating Satan, sin, death, hell, and the grave

5. Must ascend to God to intercede and prepare a place for the redeemed through the ages

6. Must come again to close history, judge humanity, and receive God’s people

 

Now with this background, let’s consider Satan’s temptations of Jesus after his baptism by John to begin his public ministry.  Consider the first three requirements above.  Jesus used the Old Testament scriptures to believe and prove that He, the Messiah, was indeed the eternal Son of God incarnate.  However, but He did not come to earth to prove His deity, but "to seek and save the lost".  To accomplish that, He had voluntarily "emptied Himself" (Philippians 2:4-11), leaving off the free exercise of His own divine rights and limiting Himself to doing “nothing” of Himself, but only what the Father, by the leading and enabling of the Spirit, led Him to do (John 5:19).  Why did He do this?

 

By so doing, He could satisfy requirements 1 and 2 and become our representative and our Savior.  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.  He was trying to get the Perfect Man of Faith to do something of His own power and prerogative as God, thus being eliminated from being our substitute, our Savior.  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!