THE TESTING OF THE KING (Matthew 4)

THE TESTING OF THE KING (Matthew 4)

H. A. IRONSIDE

If we would be clear in our thinking as to this, we must remember that while our Lord was, and is, both Human and Divine, He is not two persons, but one. Personally He is God the Eternal Son who took Humanity into union with His Deity in order to redeem sinful men. He has therefore two natures, the Divine and the Human, but He remains just one Person. Therefore as Man here on earth He could not act apart from His Deity. 

To say that as Man He might have failed in His mission is to admit the amazing and blasphemous suggestion that His holy divine nature could become separated from a defiled human nature and so the incarnation prove a farce and a mockery. But if we realize that He who was both God and Man in one Person was tempted, not to see if He would (or could) sin, but to prove that He was the sinless One, all is clear. The temptation was real, but it was all from without, as Adam’s was in the beginning. But Adam was only an innocent man; whereas Jesus, the last Adam, was the Lord from Heaven, who had become Man without ceasing to be God, in order that He might be our Kinsman-Redeemer (Lev. 25:48). The temptation and His attitude toward it proved that He was not a sinful Man, either in nature or in act, and He could therefore take our penalty upon Himself and bear the curse of the broken law for others, because He was not under that curse Himself. Scripture tells us definitely that He “knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21); He “did no sin” (1 Pet. 2:22); “in Him is no sin” (1 John 3:5). He could say, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me” (John 14:30). There was no lurking traitor within to answer to the voice of the enemy without. He was tempted as we are, sin apart (Heb. 4:15, literal rendering), that is, there was no sin within to tempt Him. From the moment of His birth He was holy, not merely innocent (Luke 1:35).

 Jesus fasted for the full period of testing—forty days. It was not until all this was over that He is said to have become hungry. Then, in the hour of nature’s weakness, came the tempter, endeavoring to overcome Him. The tests were threefold: the appeal to the body, the soul, and the spirit; involving the desires of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, or the ostentation, or vainglory, of living.

Thus the first appeal was to appetite, the desire of the flesh, physical; the next to the esthetic nature, the desire of the eyes, the soul; and the last to the spiritual nature, the pride of life, or the vainglory of living. The Lord Jesus was impervious to every suggestion of evil. These are the same temptations in character which the serpent brought to bear upon Eve in Eden. She saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food (the lust of the flesh), pleasant to the eyes (the lust of the eyes), and to be desired to make one wise (the pride of life). She succumbed on every point, and when Adam collaborated with her in disobedience to God the old creation fell. 

 It is not by debate the victory is won, but by the Word itself.

But nowhere was the perfection of Jesus demonstrated more clearly than when Satan made every effort to find some defect in His character, some form of self-seeking in His heart. The King was tested and proved to be all that God the Father had declared at His baptism—the One in whom He had found all His delight