Part 4

Tempting Our Sinless Lord

Turning now from the luxurious garden to the barren wilderness, the same Tempter comes to our Lord Jesus, the last Adam, when he was hungry after his fasting of forty days and forty nights; and the Tempter came with the same three appeals. Our Lord Jesus had the natural desire to enjoy food for his body. He was hungry, and the desire was right. But the Tempter asked him to satisfy that hunger in a wrong way. Satan again begins his attack by a question. He does not hold before Christ the temptation to _become_ as God. He raises the question as to whether he is the Son of God, and suggests that this be proved by making use of the omnipotence of the Creator to satisfy his own human needs. It was far more subtle than the appeal to Eve’s desire to enjoy the fruit; but at the bottom it was an attack on the Word of God. Our Lord’s answer not only checkmates the Tempter, but states a profound truth by which his brethren may enter into victory under similar temptations. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Our Lord had a natural desire to get things. What he desired to get was “all the kingdoms of the world.” They belonged to him. He came to earth to secure them. Satan strikes at this perfectly right desire to get things by showing our Lord all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, “and he said unto him, All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” The desire to get these kingdoms was right; but the temptation was to get them in some way not of God’s ordering. Making a step outside the will of God always means exchanging the worship of God for the worship of Satan; and so our Lord answers: “Get thee hence, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”

Our Lord also had that third desire, the desire to accomplish things. The work he came to accomplish was to bring redemption――to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile. He came to his own with the desire that they should recognize him as the One sent from God, their Messiah. Satan strikes at this right desire, and presents to Jesus a quick way to accomplish this purpose. But again it is a way with a question mark regarding God’s Word.

It has been suggested that the thought here is that Jesus could prove to the multitude gathered below in the temple court that he was indeed the Son of God when this Messianic prophecy was fulfilled before their eyes in such a startling way. The reply of our Lord is significant. “Again it is written, Thou shalt not make trial of the Lord thy God.” This quotation from Deuteronomy 6:16 refers back to the incident at Rephidim when the children of Israel made trial of Jehovah by saying: “Is Jehovah among us, or not?” (Exod. 17:7.) So Satan asked Jesus to prove that God’s Word was indeed true, and settle the fact that he was the Son of God and that Jehovah was indeed with him.

As our first parents fell at all three points of attack, so our Lord won the victory at every point. Borrowing again an illuminating suggestion from Dr. Kyle’s study of the subject, we have here the real explanation of that word concerning our Lord that he was tempted in all points like as we are. He was tempted on every side of his nature. He did not necessarily meet every individual form of temptation that has come to other men, but he did meet the Adversary at these three points, which comprise all the possible area of temptation.

The victory over temptation has been won. His victory is a guarantee of our triumph over every form of temptation that can ever meet us. It is ours to choose whether we shall share in that victory already won by our Elder Brother, or be united with the first Adam in his defeat.

THE CONQUEST OF TEMPTATION

The Word of God never offers freedom from temptation. But it does offer to Christians victory over all temptation. One of Satan’s lies that has been accepted as almost an axiom in the thinking and the experience of Christians is that no one can expect victory over every one of his temptations. But God says: “There hath _no_ temptation taken you but such as man can bear: But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13). It is significant that this verse is immediately preceded by a word of warning: “Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”

There is ever before the Christian the possibility of falling. There is no state of grace from which he may not, before some temptation, step into awful sin. But God’s Word, which cannot be broken, stands pledged to us that in _every_ temptation there is “the way of escape.” And our Lord Jesus is “the Way.” Victory over temptation was won by Christ. Satan is an already defeated foe. Defeat in temptation came to Adam. It is for every man, and every Christian, to decide whether he will share the first Adam’s defeat or the last Adam’s victory.

The two great temptation scenes pictured in the Bible, that of our first parents and that of our Lord, show that temptation finds its way into the human heart through three avenues. When man falls before these temptations the resulting sins are what the Apostle describes as “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vainglory of life.” Let us see how this Bible picture of the sins that are in the world corresponds with conditions in the twentieth century.

Africa’s Three Sins

A missionary recently back from the heart of Africa was describing some of the intimate things that she had learned regarding the natives. As she spoke of the daily life of the natives, and told of the chief problems of missionary work, there were three outstanding sins that were emphasized. There is the gross immorality, which came up for mention in connection with the description of the tribal dances and what they lead to. There is the grasping after possessions, a tendency to covetousness that is so deeply imbedded in their natures that the missionaries need to exercise the greatest care in dealing with new converts. This native quality came vividly to the missionary’s mind when she was speaking of the native Christian evangelists and the problem of compensating them in such a way that the old cupidity will not be aroused. A third characteristic of the native in all the villages is his consuming desire to secure a high place in the “Four Hundred” of his tribe. There are distinct social honors, and for many of the young men the passion of life is to win these honors.

This missionary had no intention of analyzing the outstanding sins of the natives, but these three things naturally came before her as she described their daily life. And these three comprise “all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vainglory of life.”

Put into briefer form these three sins are lust, covetousness, pride. All sin comes under one or other of these three classes.

America’s Three Sins

These three are the outstanding sins of America. Dan Crawford came out of Africa into civilization just about the time the “newer” forms of dancing were having their first popularity. He made the startling statement that he had seen all of these unspeakably vile dances in pagan Africa. In America, he said, they were only in a new setting. Essentially they were the same, and _they were for the same purpose_. What we call the gross sin of the African flourishes in every civilized land.

Those who read a business man’s article, published several years ago in _The Sunday School Times_, on “The Sin That We Are Afraid to Mention,” will not soon forget his arraignment of the awful sin of covetousness, “which is idolatry.” And it was _in the Christian church_ that this layman found the black sin that Christians keep quiet about. What then shall be said of covetousness in the business world?

There is finally that climax of all sins of America, and of man, the sin of pride, most subtle and most pervading of all, the sin that will culminate in man’s final defiance of God. Saddest of all, it is this sin which appears at its ugliest when it takes the form of spiritual pride in the life of one who is zealous to serve God and to be wholly yielded to him.

In a message that S. D. Gordon gave on temptation he remarked that there are three chief avenues by which Satan reaches men. He stated the three in these brief words: “Sex,” “Money,” “I.” It is exactly the classification that God makes in his Word. If, by his grace, we get victory at these three points, then indeed are we free from the dominion of sin.

So much for the _sin_ that results when man falls before one or another of these temptations. But what of the temptations themselves? How do they affect a Christian who is trusting Christ for victory? What is the practical bearing on the common temptations that meet us in everyday life? Then there is the final, most important question, what is the way to prevent these desires from conceiving and bringing forth sin?

Why Not Freedom from Temptation?

A _Sunday School Times_ reader has written of his experience. “It is not a temptation for me to take a glass of beer; there is nothing in me that requires or desires it; but sometimes it might be and has been a strong temptation to get impatient, which I have yielded to at times. Why should one be any more a temptation than the other, provided I am in victory over all sin?”

Careful distinction must be made between temptation itself and the form that the temptation may take. The appeal to a man’s natural desires may change its form, but always, in every part of his nature, he will be tempted while he is in this mortal body. The desire for beer which leads to intemperance and sin is an appeal to a natural appetite. Sin is moral, and does not reside in the physical appetites, which are merely the channels for the temptation and sin. A man who has been in bondage to drink may through the power of Christ completely lose that desire and have no further temptation to that particular form of appetite. But the temptation to intemperance remains. For the natural appetites remain. While the appetite may give up this taste or that, and thus be dead to certain _forms_ of temptation, the Christian is always liable to the temptation to go contrary to the will of God, in satisfying these natural appetites of the body: hunger, the sacred sex desire, and all the natural impulses of the body that may seek expression in lawful ways.

The _Times_ reader compares his freedom from the temptation to drink with the appeal that is made to him to get impatient. But strictly speaking, one is never tempted to be impatient. No one desires to be impatient, and Satan could not use any incentive to such a temptation. Yet we sometimes speak of these temptations to irritability, jealousy, loss of temper, as though there were some secret springs in our nature labeled “Impatience,” “Irritability,” and like qualities, and that the temptation consisted in Satan touching these springs and causing the sin. A business man does not lose his temper for the sake of the pleasure it gives him. It may be an intense desire to have justice that has led to his outbreak against some one who has dealt unfairly. The temptation has come along the line of some natural desire. So with the housekeeper who is irritated with her maid over some bit of stupidity, or the young girl who is “blue” and moody because her plans for the day’s enjoyment have been upset.

Temptation Remains――Its Form Changes

Thus it is that while a Christian who yields utterly to God and accepts Christ as his victory may instantly be free from even the temptation to drink, or to smoke, or to indulge in worldly amusements, or to do a hundred and one things that he has been accustomed to do, the temptations to the root-sins of lust and covetousness and pride _will remain with him_. They will take more subtle forms. Satan cannot tempt him now in the grosser, worldly way. He will now take advantage of this one’s very zeal for God, and will make appeal to his earnest devotion to God’s service to lead into sins of impatience and irritation and jealousy and pride.

In the face of these temptations, what is the guarantee against failure which the victorious Christian has, and which the man of the world knows nothing of? When a Christian wholly yields his life to the mastery of the Lord Jesus he has still the desire to enjoy things, the desire to get things, and the desire to accomplish things. Christ does not kill the natural desires. _It is the old self-life that Christ wants to put to death._ That is why a Christian must share in present experience the crucifixion-death of his Lord before he can share his victory over temptation. This is what surrender of self means for the Christian who desires victory. He must, moment by moment, reckon himself to be dead unto sin. He is not dead to temptation, for his natural human desires are still there.

Desires Remain――Their Object Changes

In the Christian who has learned the full secret of victory these natural desires are lifted to a new plane. His desires now do not center in the old self-life. They center in Christ. To him to live is Christ. His whole desire is Christ. He still desires to enjoy things, but only in a way that shall glorify God. He desires to get things, but to get them for God, not for self. His desire to accomplish things is to do things for God.

This does not mean that the victorious Christian will not be open to fierce temptations, just as our Lord was,――real temptations that require a real conquest. But as he abides in Christ, accepting by faith the victory that Christ already has won, instead of striving to struggle against these assaults of the enemy, the temptations remain merely _temptations_, and do not pass into the _sins_ of lust or covetousness or pride.

These three channels of temptation appear to correspond in a remarkable way with the three-fold nature of man――body, soul and spirit. And for the man in victory all these are Christ’s. Here is the human body with all the natural appetites intact. But the Christian who is reckoning the old self-life to be dead knows that this body now, with all its natural desires, is “for the Lord; and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor. 6:13), for “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit that is in you, that ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a price: glorify God therefore in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).

The Secret of the Single Eye

There are in the victorious Christian not only the desires of the body but the desires of the soul. For may we not say that the sin of “the lust of the eye” is a sin of the “soulish” part of a man’s nature? It concerns his desire to acquire the things that he sees. To the natural man these things are riches to be obtained for himself. “He that hath an evil eye hasteth after riches” (Proverbs 28:22). The wise man here connects covetousness and “the evil eye.” Let us hear the words of the Master of wise men: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth consume and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also. The lamp of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness! No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:19-24).

Here is the clear choice. The desire to get the riches we see may become the lust of the eye, covetousness, the servant of mammon. But the Christian abiding in Christ has a “single eye,” that is, he has but one passion, to lay up treasure in heaven. He has not a doubtful mind as to whether he may grasp after this or that. He has but a single question, as his eye is single, and that is how may he glorify God in his getting? He makes use indeed of the mammon of unrighteousness, but not for self’s sake,――for the sake of Another.

The Most Subtle Sin

May we not call the most subtle sin of all, the sin of pride, a sin of the spirit? The victorious Christian still has the desire to accomplish things. Indeed this desire is intensified a thousandfold. To the natural man this desire centers wholly in self, whether he knows it or not. But one in whom the old self-life is dead cries with Paul, “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6:14). With the psalmist he sings: “My soul shall make her boast in Jehovah: The meek shall hear thereof, and be glad. O, magnify Jehovah with me, and let us exalt His name together” (Psalm 34:2, 3). “In God have we made our boast all the day long, and we will give thanks unto thy name forever” (Psalm 44:8). This sort of boasting leads not to self pride but to meekness. “Thus saith Jehovah, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth, and knoweth me, that I am Jehovah, who exercise lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness, in the earth” (Jeremiah 9:23).

All desires of life, then, for the Christian who abides in victory, center in Christ. “And whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17).

And conquest of temptation is not a negative matter. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and only the heart filled with that love which is Christ can know freedom from lust, covetousness, and pride. Back of these three outward sins, there is the inward nature which has departed from God. Perhaps no one in our day has pointed out more clearly the three great sins of omission than has Miss Louisa Vaughan, of China. She calls these the “Christian sins”: Failure to love the Lord our God with all our heart and strength and mind; failure to love one another as Christ loved us; failure to believe on Christ so that the works that he did and greater works than these should be wrought through us. These Christian sins, Miss Vaughan insists, must be confessed and cleansed in the blood of Jesus before the fulness of the Spirit can be enjoyed. To have these commandments fulfilled in us is the Victorious Life. And only when this root-condition of unlove and unbelief (which are really one, for “love believeth all things”) is dealt with shall we know freedom from lust and covetousness and pride.

HOW JESUS LIVED THE VICTORIOUS LIFE

In what sense was Jesus a man as we are? We read that he was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. But have you ever asked, Of what comfort or strength is it to me that he was tempted in all points as I am, _if he was without sin_? It is just because _I am not without sin_ that I fall before these temptations.

Is it true after all that the Lord Jesus was a man as I am?

Was not the real secret of his victory over sin the fact that he was God?

Is not the secret of my defeat the fact that I am just a man and not God?

The answer to these questions reveals one of the richest secrets in the Word concerning the real meaning of the Victorious Life. For we shall find this startling truth, that if we are to live the Victorious Life at all we must live it by the same rule as Jesus of Nazareth lived it.

Christ had to come to earth to show us what man is like. A needed emphasis has been put upon the truth that our Lord came to earth to reveal the Father,――to show men what God is like. But it was just as necessary that our Lord should reveal what God intended _man_ to be.

If we wish to know what God is like there is but one thing to do: look at Jesus. So there is no way of discovering what a true man is like except by looking at Jesus. He is the only “man,” in the true sense of the word, who has lived since sin entered the human race. Through the fall man lost the image of God, and from that day until our Lord came there was no example of man as God intended him to be.

A mistaken notion, encouraged by the poets, prevails quite commonly, that to sin is human; to forgive, divine. Whatever the measure of truth in the little sentiment, the error in it is more dangerous. To sin is not human; it is devilish. Sin is no part of man as God planned him to be. And so our Lord represents in himself what God intended a man to be, and he lived according to that plan.

The One True “Man”

The name for himself most often upon the lips of our Master was “the Son of man.” A notable Greek scholar has recently pointed out that this expression means far more than a son of a human parent. It rather suggests that gathered up into this Son of man are all the qualities of what “man” is. So, may we not say that as the fulness of God dwelt in him bodily so did the fulness of man dwell in him?

Some one has suggested that God did wonderful things through the Lord Jesus not because Jesus was God, but because he was perfect man. What does this really mean in terms of our everyday life?

Nowhere in Scripture is there such a remarkable setting forth, first of the deity of our Lord, then of his humanity, side by side, as in the first and second chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews. “God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in a Son.”

“Very God of Very God”

Thus the wonderful epistle opens; and then that Son is presented first as one who expresses the very image of the substance of God. He is compared with angels, and shown to be infinitely above them. God the Father speaks of his angels as messengers; he addresses the Son: “thy throne, _O God_.” In the second chapter again are angels compared, this time with man. The same Son is shown to be made for a little while lower than the angels, taking the form of man.

In this first chapter of Hebrews the Holy Spirit, when he seeks to attest the truth that Jesus is God, calls the Old Testament to witness, and two groups of three quotations each are made, each time the words being put in the mouth of God the Father. In the second chapter when the Spirit seeks to press home the parallel truth that Jesus is a man, one with us, he uses a group of three quotations from the Old Testament. In these quotations we shall discover something of the preciousness for us of the truth that the Lord Jesus was a man, one with his brethren. “For both he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying ...” (Heb. 2:11).

Then there follow in the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the second chapter of Hebrews the three quotations from the Old Testament.

This is the first:

“I will declare thy name unto my brethren, In the midst of the congregation will I sing thy praise.”

One With Our Lord in Resurrection