Second Temptation of Christ
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Satan’s object in tempting Christ was to lead Him to daring pre-
sumption, and to show human weakness that would not make Him a
perfect pattern for His people. Satan thought that should Christ fail to
bear the test of his temptations, there could be no redemption for the
race, and his power over them would be complete.
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 through
transgression. Through Christ was man’s only hope of restoration to
the favor of God. Man had separated himself at such a distance from
God by transgression of His law, that he could not humiliate himself
before God proportionate to his grievous sin. The Son of God could
fully understand the aggravating sins of the transgressor, 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
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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 in the wilderness to overcome the temptations
of appetite in our behalf, we are to take this lesson home to ourselves
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 sub-
jected 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 an enlightened
conscience, and Christ before them as their pattern, yield to the indul-
gence of those appetites which have an enervating influence upon the
mind and heart? It is a painful fact that habits of self-gratification at
the expense of health, and the weakening of moral power, are holding
in the bonds of slavery at the present time a large share of the Christian
world.
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 enduring the pangs of hunger as from