First Temptation of Christ
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Significance of the Test
When Christ bore the test of temptation upon the point of appetite,
He did not stand in beautiful Eden, as did Adam, with the light and
love of God seen in everything His eye rested upon. But He was in a
barren, desolate wilderness, surrounded with wild beasts. Everything
around Him was repulsive, and [that] from which human nature would
be inclined to shrink. With these surroundings He fasted forty days
and forty nights, “and in those days he did eat nothing” (
Luke 4:2
).
He was emaciated through long fasting, and felt the keenest sense of
hunger. His visage was indeed marred more than the sons of men.
Christ thus entered upon His life of conflict to overcome the mighty
foe, in bearing the very test Adam failed to endure, that, through
successful conflict, He might break the power of Satan, and redeem
the race from the disgrace of the Fall.
All was lost when Adam yielded to the power of appetite. The
Redeemer, in whom was united both the human and the divine, stood
in Adam’s place, and endured a terrible fast of nearly six weeks.
The length of this fast is the strongest evidence of the extent of the
sinfulness and power of debased appetite upon the human family.
The humanity of Christ reached to the very depths of human
wretchedness, and identified itself with the weaknesses and neces-
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sities of fallen man, while His divine nature grasped the Eternal. His
work in bearing the guilt of man’s transgression was not to give him
license to continue to violate the law of God, which made man a debtor
to the law, which debt Christ was Himself paying by His own suffering.
The trials and sufferings of Christ were to impress man with a sense of
his great sin in breaking the law of God, and to bring him to repentance
and obedience to that law, and through obedience to acceptance with
God. His righteousness He would impute to man, and thus raise him in
moral value with God, so that his efforts to keep the divine law would
be acceptable. Christ’s work was to reconcile man to God through His
human nature, and God to man through His divine nature.
As soon as the long fast of Christ commenced in the wilderness,
Satan was at hand with his temptations. He came to Christ, enshrouded
in light, claiming to be one of the angels from the throne of God, sent
upon an errand of mercy to sympathize with Him, and to relieve Him
of His suffering condition. He tried to make Christ believe that God