How to Meet a Controverted Point of Doctrine
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temptations. If He did not have man’s nature, He could not be our
example. If He was not a partaker of our nature, He could not have
been tempted as man has been. If it were not possible for Him to yield
to temptation, He could not be our helper. It was a solemn reality that
Christ came to fight the battles as man, in man’s behalf. His temptation
and victory tell us that humanity must copy the Pattern; man must
become a partaker of the divine nature.
Divinity and Humanity United in Christ
In Christ, divinity and humanity were combined. Divinity was
not degraded to humanity; divinity held its place, but humanity by
being united to divinity withstood the fiercest test of temptation in the
wilderness. The prince of this world came to Christ after His long fast,
when He was an hungered, and suggested to Him to command the
stones to become bread. But the plan of God, devised for the salvation
of man, provided that Christ should know hunger, and poverty, and
every phase of man’s experience. He withstood the temptation, through
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the power that man may command. He laid hold on the throne of God,
and there is not a man or woman who may not have access to the same
help through faith in God. Man may become a partaker of the divine
nature; not a soul lives who may not summon the aid of Heaven in
temptation and trial. Christ came to reveal the source of His power,
that man might never rely on his unaided human capabilities.
Those who would overcome must put to the tax every power of
their being. They must agonize on their knees before God for divine
power. Christ came to be our example, and to make known to us that
we may be partakers of the divine nature. How?—By having escaped
the corruptions that are in the world through lust. Satan did not gain
the victory over Christ. He did not put his foot upon the soul of the
Redeemer. He did not touch the head though he bruised the heel.
Christ, by His own example, made it evident that man may stand in
integrity. Men may have a power to resist evil—a power that neither
earth, nor death, nor hell can master; a power that will place them
where they may overcome as Christ overcame. Divinity and humanity
may be combined in them.
It was the work of Christ to present the truth in the framework of
the gospel, and to reveal the precepts and principles that He had given