Apologetics Courses

The Temptation of Christ

We also need to study and learn the importance of the temptation of Christ during His life. It is a symbols of man conquered over the sins of His own flesh. According to Matthew Henry, temptation of Christ is a test or a conquest to secure not only comfort toward one’s ministry or preparing his faithful servant in what the world is coming ahead. It is observed as:

The time when heaven were opened, spirit descended and to be tempted like Christ early ministry. The battle this temptation is to secure a place in God kingdom because of the below reasons.

• Great privilege and a special token of divine favor to God that nothing is going to stop us from Satan attack.
• Great honors come from humbling ourselves through temptation.
• God usually prepare his people for temptation.
• The assurance of our Son ship is trust the preparation for temptation

Before Christ, begin his ministry. He got himself baptized. Next, he did not go to Jerusalem but returned into the wilderness. It is time for communion with God, His withdrawal into the wilderness because:

• To gain advantage of him, it is a time to meditate on communion with God and for God to prepare Him an opportunity to do his best and exalted in his own strength.
• To give advantage for the tempter as less company is easy to access in the wilderness. The enemy sun and wind which come unto his testing is also there.

The main reason of the temptation was for Satan to bring him to sin against God and rendered him forever incapable of being a sacrifice for the sins of others. It is:

• To despair of His Father’s goodness.
• To pressure upon His Father’s power.
• To alienate His Father’s honor, by giving it to Satan.

In order to do all these, let see how the Satan managed the temptation:

1. Christ began to be hungry. The Satan asked him to turn stones into bread for his own necessary support. Here we found Jesus answered him that it is wrong to live by bread but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. It is better to starve to death than to live and thrive by sin. It is a test of bodily desires/weakness.
2. Satan asked him to jump down from the highest point of the temple since He is the son of God. Jesus again answered it is wrong to test God. It is written to honor the scripture and it is written as the sword of the spirit. He tempted him to presume His Father’s power and protection.
3. The devil took him to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world. Tempt Christ to bow and worship him and he will have all. Instead, Jesus answered that he serves no body but God. It is a test of man desire for power or authority and it is wrong.

We can learn from these temptations of Jesus from Matthew Henry commentary. They show, for example, that—

1. The Devil is not a mere quality of evil, as some people claim, but that he is a real, invisible person.
2. The temptation of Jesus also shows that all the world governments are the Devil’s property. For how could the Devil’s offering, them to Christ have been a real temptation, if they were not really his?
   

Jesus did not deny that they were Satan’s, which he would have done if Satan did not own them. Satan is really the unseen ruler of all the nations of the world! The Bible plainly says, “The whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.” (1 John 5:19) God’s Word, in fact, calls Satan “the god of this system of things.”—2 Corinthians 4:4. This information helps us to understand why Jesus said: “My kingdom is no part of this world.” (John 18:36) It also helps us to understand why nations hate and try to destroy one another when it is the desire of all normal persons to live at peace. “Satan . . . is misleading the entire inhabited earth.” (Revelation 12:9)