38
Confrontation
submission as a subordinate, ripened into rebellion against God and
shut him out of heaven.
It was not part of the mission of Christ to exercise His divine power
for His own benefit, to relieve Himself of suffering. This He had
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volunteered to take upon Himself. He had condescended to take man’s
nature, and He was to suffer the inconveniences, ills, and afflictions
of the human family. He was not to perform miracles on His own
account; He came to save others. The object of His mission was to
bring blessings, hope, and life to the afflicted and oppressed. He was
to bear the burdens and griefs of suffering humanity.
Although Christ was suffering the keenest pangs of hunger, He
withstood the temptation. He repulsed Satan with the same scripture
He had given Moses to repeat to rebellious Israel when their diet was
restricted and they were clamoring for flesh meats in the wilderness,
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth of God.” In this declaration, and also by His example,
Christ would show man that hunger for temporal food was not the
greatest calamity that could befall him. Satan flattered our first parents
that eating the fruit which God had forbidden them would bring to them
great good, and would insure them against death, the very opposite
of the truth which God had declared to them. “But of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” If Adam had been obedient
he would have known neither want, sorrow, nor death.
If the people who lived before the Flood had been obedient to the
word of God they would not have perished by the waters of the Flood.
If the Israelites had been obedient to the words of God, He would have
bestowed upon them special blessings. But they fell in consequence
of the indulgence of appetite and passion. They would not be obedient
to the words of God. Indulgence of perverted appetite led them into
numerous and grievous sins. If they had made the requirements of
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God their first consideration, and their physical wants secondary, in
submission to God’s choice of proper food for them, not one of them
would have fallen in the wilderness. They would have been established
in the goodly land of Canaan, a holy, happy people with not a feeble
one in all their tribes.
The Saviour of the world became sin for the race. In becoming
man’s substitute Christ did not manifest His power as the Son of