Christ our Hope and Example
The humiliation and agonizing sufferings of Christ in the wilder-
ness of temptation were for the race. In Adam all was lost by trans-
gression. Through Christ was man’s only hope of restoration to the
favor of God. Man had separated himself at such distance from God
by transgression of His law that he could not humiliate himself before
God in any degree proportionate to the magnitude of his sin. The Son
of God could fully understand the aggravating sins of the transgres-
sor, and in His sinless character He alone could make an acceptable
atonement for man in suffering the agonizing sense of His Father’s
displeasure. The sorrow and anguish of the Son of God for the sins of
the world were proportionate to His divine excellence and purity, as
well as to the magnitude of the offense.
Christ was our example in all things. As we see His humiliation
in the long trial and fast to overcome the temptation of appetite in
our behalf, we are to learn how to overcome when we are tempted.
If the power of appetite is so strong upon the human family and its
indulgence so fearful that the Son of God subjected Himself to such a
test, how important that we feel the necessity of having appetite under
the control of reason. Our Saviour fasted nearly six weeks that He
might gain for man the victory upon the point of appetite. How can
professed Christians with enlightened consciences, and with Christ
before them as their pattern, yield to the indulgence of those appetites
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which have an enervating influence upon the mind and body? It is a
painful fact that habits of self-gratification at the expense of health
and moral power are at the present time holding a large share of the
Christian world in the bonds of slavery.
Many who profess godliness do not inquire into the reason of
Christ’s long period of fasting and suffering in the wilderness. His
anguish was not so much from the pangs of hunger as from His sense
of the fearful result of the indulgence of appetite and passion upon the
race. He knew that appetite would be man’s idol and would lead him
to forget God and would stand directly in the way of his salvation.
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