“Tempted in All Points Like as We Are”
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mercy, misstated and misapplied. He heard Himself called the prince
of demons, because He testified to His divine Sonship. His birth was
supernatural, but by His own nation, those who had blinded their eyes
to spiritual things, it was regarded as a blot and a stain. There was
not a drop of our bitter woe which He did not taste, not a part of our
curse which He did not endure, that He might bring many sons and
daughters to God.
The fact that Jesus was on this earth as a man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief, that in order to save fallen man from eternal
ruin, He left His heavenly home, should lay in the dust all our pride,
put to shame all our vanity, and reveal to us the sin of self-sufficiency.
Behold Him making the wants, the trials, the griefs and sufferings
of sinful men His own. Can we not take home the lesson that God
endured these sufferings and bruises of soul in consequence of sin?
Christ came to the earth, taking humanity and standing as man’s
representative, to show in the controversy with Satan that man, as
God created him, connected with the Father and the Son, could obey
every divine requirement. Speaking through His servant He declares,
“His commandments are not grievous” (
1 John 5:3
). It was sin that
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separated man from his God, and it is sin that maintains this separation.
The Prophecy in Eden
The enmity referred to in the prophecy in Eden was not to be
confined merely to Satan and the Prince of life. It was to be universal.
Satan and his angels were to feel the enmity of all mankind. “I will
put enmity,” said God, “between thee and the woman, and between
thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise
his heel” (
Genesis 3:15
).
The enmity put between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the
woman was supernatural. With Christ the enmity was in one sense
natural; in another sense it was supernatural, as humanity and divinity
were combined. And never was the enmity developed to such a marked
degree as when Christ became an inhabitant of this earth. Never before
had there been a being upon the earth who hated sin with so perfect
a hatred as did Christ. He had seen its deceiving, infatuating power
upon the holy angels, and all His powers were enlisted against it.