14
Confrontation
the tempter, that, through His obedience, His purity of character and
steadfast integrity, His righteousness might be imputed to man, that,
through His name, man might overcome the foe on his own account.
What love! What amazing condescension! The King of glory
proposed to humble Himself to fallen humanity! He would place His
feet in Adam’s steps. He would take man’s fallen nature, and engage
to cope with the strong foe who triumphed over Adam. He would
overcome Satan, and in thus doing He would open the way for the
redemption from the disgrace of Adam’s failure and fall, of all those
who would believe on Him.
Angels on probation had been deceived by Satan, and had been led
on by him in the great rebellion in heaven against Christ. They failed
to endure the test brought to bear upon them, and they fell. Adam was
then created in the image of God and placed upon probation. He had a
perfectly developed organism. All his faculties were harmonious. In
all his emotions, words, and actions, there was a perfect conformity
to the will of his Maker. After God had made every provision for
the happiness of man, and had supplied his every want, He tested his
loyalty. If the holy pair should be obedient, the race would, after a
time, be made equal to the angels. As Adam and Eve failed to bear
this test, Christ proposed to become a voluntary offering for man.
Satan knew that if Christ was indeed the Son of God, the world’s
Redeemer, it was for no good to himself that the Lord had left the
royal courts of heaven to come to a fallen world. He feared that his
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own power was thenceforth to be limited, and that his deceptive wiles
would be discerned and exposed, and his influence over man would be
weakened. He feared that his dominion and control of the kingdoms
of the world were to be contested. He remembered the words which
Jehovah addressed to him when he was summoned into His presence
with Adam and Eve, whom he had ruined by his lying deceptions, “I
will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed
and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
This declaration contained the first gospel promise to man.
But these words, at the time they were spoken, were not fully
understood by Satan. He knew that they contained a curse for him,
because he had seduced the holy pair. And when Christ was manifested
on the earth, Satan feared that He was indeed the One promised who
should limit his power and finally destroy him.