02. The Reality of the Temptation
The Reality of the Temptation
"Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and having been heard for his godly fear, though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered." Hebrews 5:7-8.
ADMITTING the possibility and even the necessity of temptation as a moral discipline for the Man Christ Jesus, the still graver question at once arises of its reality. Did our Lord undergo as real a struggle with the tempter during His temptation in the wilderness as that which we have to wage during our earthly life; or, on the other hand, was the temptation merely a dramatic exhibition2 to the mind of Christ of the seductions and allurements to evil which beset us, so as to give Him a vivid sense of the conflicts through which we have to pass on our pilgrimage, but not so as to involve Him in any personal conflict with, or peril from, the powers of darkness and of evil? On the answer that is given to this momentous question depends the entire moral significance of the temptation, both in its relation to our Lord and in its relation to man, and it demands, therefore, the most careful and reverent consideration.
[2This is apparently the view taken of the temptation of our Lord by the late Professor Henry Rogers in his remarkable work on ’ ’ The Superhuman Origin of the Bible. "Mr Rogers says (p. 178)"Nor is it difficult to show that, however impeccable, He might at least receive from the presentation of temptation under the pressure of those sufferings and privations which so generally give it power over us that vivid sense of our temptations, and of the conflicts they necessitate, which only experience can impart."]
One thing seems, at the outset, to be tolerably certain. If we take the accounts of the temptation as they are given to us in the three Gospels which relate it, there can be no doubt that the Evangelists were thoroughly convinced of its reality. The whole tone of their narrative, quite as much as the statements which they make about the temptation, is unmistakable evidence of their conviction that the temptation was as real to Christ as our temptations are to us. So, too, the other references which are found in the New Testament to the temptation all point in the same direction. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, for instance, declares that Christ" was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin,"(Hebrews 4:15) an assertion which would be untrue in its most important particular, if Christ had not personally felt the terrible strain of the struggle with evil which confers on our temptations their deepest reality and bitterness. In another place in the same Epistle we are also told that Christ"suffered, being tempted,"(Hebrews 2:18) and it seems difficult, if not impossible, to imagine that the only meaning the writer intended by such an expression was, that Christ suffered when He realized what our temptations were, and not that He suffered in the fierceness of His own conflict with evil." The Captain of our salvation "must surely have Himself been foremost in" the good fight of faith."With statements like these before us it is not wonderful that the Church of Christ has always refused to accept any explanation of the temptation which reduced it to an unreality, and myriads of weak and tempted souls in their hour of peril have drawn strength and courage to resist" all the fiery darts of the evil one,"from the remembrance of One who" in that He Himself suffered, being tempted, is able to succour them that are tempted."
There is, moreover, another point of view from which the temptation of our Lord may be regarded, and which serves to confirm our belief in its reality.
Assuming, for the time, the personal existence of that being whom Scripture calls"the devil,"" the prince of the power of the air,""the old serpent,""Satan,"and it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand how anyone who acknowledges the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ and of His apostles can have any doubt on this point is it conceivable for a single moment that such a being would have engaged in conflict with Christ unless he had known the conflict was to be a real and awful one on both sides? Can we imagine the tempter playing at fighting with Christ as if they were the opposing sides of a friendly army on a great review day? The supposition is impossible; and we shall have occasion hereafter to point out how immeasurably the significance of the temptation of our Lord is increased when we consider it in its relation, too often overlooked or forgotten, to the devil himself, whose supreme aim it was to defeat, at the very outset of our Lord’s mission, Him who had expressly come"to destroy the works of the devil."The reality of the tempter demands the reality of the temptation. But the moment we admit the reality of the temptation to Christ another and a still graver question arises. The reality of our temptations lies in the terrible fact that they are temptations to SIN, and necessarily therefore involve the possibility of our falling before them into sin; so that if we admit Christ’s temptations were real, does not this involve the awful possibility of His yielding to them; or in other words, if we may use for a moment the theological term which expresses this possibility, must not a tempted Christ be a peccable Christ?
There can be little doubt that our first impulse is to answer this question instantly in the negative. Our reverence for the glory and dignity of the person of the Lord Jesus, the worship and adoration we pay to Him as the personal manifestation of the unseen and eternal God, the perfect holiness and beauty of His human character, all combine to make the bare suggestion of the possibility of Christ yielding to temptation, and therefore of Christ sinning, so unspeakably repulsive and painful, that we dismiss it at once as bordering on blasphemy. And yet deeply as every Christian heart must sympathize with the sensitive jealousy for the honour of its Lord shown in such a reply, it is not difficult to show that not only is the majestic moral grandeur of Christ’s victory over temptation, with all the great lessons it involves, taken away if we deny the possibility of His yielding to the tempter, so that instead of honouring, we really dishonour Him by the denial, but that both those who affirm it was possible for Christ to sin, and those who say it was impossible, will be found when we carefully examine their meaning really to mean the same thing.
Let us take this latter point first of all. What, then, is meant when it is said it was impossible for Christ to have sinned?
Certainly not that it was a physical impossibility, as when we say it is impossible for a man surrounded with every comfort and luxury to feel the temptation a starving man feels to steal a loaf of bread, for in addition to the physical impossibility of temptation being utterly meaningless in the case of our Lord, and contradicted by the circumstances under which the very first temptation took place, it would have at once destroyed the temptation itself. A temptation the yielding to which is a physical impossibility, is a contradiction in terms.
It follows, therefore, that those who say it was impossible for Christ, as man, to sin, must mean by this that it was a moral impossibility. But granting this, what is a moral impossibility of sinning? What do we mean, for example, when we say of someone whom we may know, and whose whole life has borne witness to his transparent integrity and honour, that it is impossible for him to tell a lie? Do we not mean that we are so certain of our friend’s loyalty to truth, of the attitude of his moral nature to everything false or deceitful, that we are sure that no pressure of temptation would ever induce him to depart from the path of rectitude and truth? In like manner, but with an assurance as infinitely greater as the moral character of Christ is infinitely holier than that of the most saintly of His servants, when we say it was impossible for Christ to yield to temptation, we mean we are so sure of His perfect holiness, of His utter abhorrence of all evil, of the absolute harmony of His will with His Father’s, as to make it" impossible "for Him to yield, even in thought for one single moment, to the faintest suggestion of evil.
He could have yielded if He had chosen, but we know He never would have chosen. On the other hand, when it is said on the opposite side that it was possible for Christ to have sinned, the word" possible "carries with it an ambiguity of meaning that has an evil sound. It seems to suggest what might, or might not, occur, as for example when we say it is possible for even the best Christian to make mistakes, meaning that we can never be sure a Christian will not sometimes err. But this secondary and evil implication of the word" possible "has no conceivable application to the Lord Jesus Christ. When we say it was"possible for Him to sin"we never mean that we are not sure whether He will, or will not sin. We do not imply, as in the case of a fellow creature, any uncertainty as to the result. We are certain of the result, whatever temptation comes to Christ, because we are certain of the inflexible adherence of His will to the will of God and of His immovable loyalty to the eternal law of righteousness and truth. For Him an eternal temptation would only have meant an eternal victory. He could have yielded, if He had chosen, but He never would have chosen to yield. It was possible for Him to sin, and yet impossible; possible if He had chosen, impossible for Him to have chosen.
Now if -this be a true account of the two sides which have been taken in this controversy as to the peccability of Christ, considered as man, it will be seen that both sides are really one. Those who most strenuously deny the possibility of Christ yielding to temptation are found, on enquiry, to mean that it was the sublime moral impossibility of a will in perfect accord with the will of God even to choose evil; whilst those who maintain that He could have yielded, had He chosen, are found to be equally resolute in declaring He never would have chosen, because of His immovable fidelity to His Father’s will. The question we have been considering is one which has long been discussed by theologians under the form of the antithetical alternative whether Christ was"not able to sin,"or was"able not to sin."If the course of reasoning we have been pursuing be correct, the opposing members of this alternative turn out to be only different ways of stating the same thing. He was" not able to sin "simply because He was" able not to sin." But if the reality of the temptation of Christ be conceded to involve at least the abstract possibility of His having yielded, had He chosen, to the tempter, then some further difficulties arise which deserve thoughtful and serious attention.
It may be asked, in the first place, how the temptability of Christ can be reconciled with His essential Divinity; or in other words, if Christ were none other than the God -Man, how is it possible ever to conceive of Him as approached and assaulted by temptation? Now there is but one reply to this difficulty, that we have here two truths, either of which seems utterly irreconcilable with the other, and both of which nevertheless are true. We cannot conceive of the true Deity of Christ without shutting out all possibility of temptation: we cannot conceive of His true humanity without admitting that possibility: but these apparently incompatible truths are only part of the greater mystery of the Incarnation itself. We cannot conceive how the omnipresence of God localised and limited itself in the person of the man Christ Jesus: nor how the omniscience of God could dwell in One whose human soul" grew in wisdom;"nor how the eternal blessed ness of God was possible in One who was" a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;"nor how God could become man and die on the cross. We are, in fact, face to face here with the final mystery of the Infinite becoming the Finite, and all we can do is to confess the utter inability of the human reason to comprehend so transcendent and awful a descent. But just as we believe in the humanity of our Lord, although it may be impossible to reconcile it with His Divinity; and just as we believe in His Divinity without being able to reconcile it with His humanity, so we hold at once the untemptability of the God, but the temptability of the man Christ Jesus. All the difficulties involved in His liability to temptation finally run up into, and are lost in the vaster mystery of the union of the Divine and the Human in the single and unique personality of the God Man, Christ Jesus. But again, it may be asked whether the consciousness of temptation is not in itself an admission of moral imperfection, and if so, whether it is not inconsistent with the perfect holiness of the human character of the Lord Jesus Christ to imagine temptation being a reality to Him. To this we may reply that everything depends on the origin and source of the temptation. It may arise it does often arise in our own case, from our own hearts; a man may be" drawn away,"as St James says,"by his own lust, and enticed,"(James 1:14) and in such a case, no doubt, the fact of temptation arising, and of its assault being felt, is itself an evidence of moral imperfection within. If we were absolutely sinless and pure, if no fatal bias or tendency to evil lurked in the secret places of our will, no temptation could arise from within; there would be no foes" of our own household "to contend against, and any attack on our fidelity and loyalty to God would have to be made from without. The fact that many of our most deadly temptations are generated in the unholy desires and passions of our own evil hearts, and even when not actually arising there, but coming from seeds of evil sown by"an enemy"external to us, spring up when once the seed is sown, like poisonous weeds in a congenial soil, is doubtless one of the saddest proofs of the sinfulness of our human nature, and of the immeasurable distance it has fallen from" the image of God "in which it was originally created. But temptation may arise, and often does arise, not from within but from without. Evil men may tempt us, or Satan himself may directly tempt us, and in either case the consciousness of temptation is not sin. It is, as we saw in the last chapter, one of the essential conditions of a state of probation that it should be a state of temptation, and temptation therefore no more necessarily involves the idea of sin than probation does. If man had never fallen but had remained stedfast in his obedience to God, so long as probation lasted he would still have required temptation to test and to consolidate the moral value of that obedience, even though all the inducements to sin came to him only from without.
It will be seen, therefore, that the access of temptation to the soul is not necessarily any proof of moral imperfection unless the temptation originally arises from within the soul itself. But all Christ’s temptations came to Him not from within, but from without. Each of the Gospels which record the temptation is careful to tell us that when Jesus was tempted He was tempted by the devil."Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil; "" He was in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan;"He was"led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the devil,"are the significant words which are found at the commencement of the account of the temptation in the Gospels of St Matthew (Matthew 4:1), St Mark (Mark 1:13), and St Luke (Luke 4:1) respectively. None of Christ’s temptations arose from within, there were no traitors in the garrison secretly aiding the foe without; and for Him, therefore, to be assaulted by seduction to evil as little implied any moral imperfection in His own character, or any inward disloyalty to God, as the siege of a beleaguered fort by an invading army implies that the garrison defending it are disloyal to their king. That Christ was tempted proves the reality of His humanity, but it proves nothing more. But if this be so, if our Lord’s temptations all came upon Him from without, if there was no inward bias to evil in Him, as there is in us, to which the external solicitation to sin might appeal, then it may be said and this is the last difficulty we shall consider in this chapter that Christ’s temptations were, after all, unlike ours, and that the graver half of their reality and terror is at once taken away. But is it so? Is the existence of a prior inclination to evil, or in other words, is a corrupt heart necessary to the gravity and reality of temptation? If so, how was the first Adam tempted? There was no bias to sin in him to which the tempter might appeal, and yet he fell; fell where Christ conquered. The difference, great and serious as it is, between Christ’s temptations and our temptations, only makes His temptation the more like the temptation of Adam. The first and the second Adam were each typically attacked by the tempter, but where Adam yielded Christ overcame; and His victory the victory of the new Head and Representative of Humanity rolled back the shame and dishonour of our first parents’ fall. Nay, more! An inward bias to evil is not even essential in our own case to the reality of temptation. Temptation may appeal to what is noblest and best, as well as to what is lowest and basest in us, and some of our sharpest and deadliest temptations arise, not from the inducement to commit open and flagrant transgression, but from the subtle suggestions which come to us so often in our highest and best moments to do wrong for the sake of right, to satisfy lawful appetites by unlawful means, to serve the truth by a lie. The reality of Christ’s temptations remains unbroken, although there was no sin in Him to which temptation might appeal.
Assuming, then, their reality, it will be well for us to consider some of the practical results which flow from this admission.
First of all, it is manifest, as has already been observed, that the entire moral significance of the temptation to Christ is vitally affected by this admission. If the temptation of Christ were only an act, however stately and solemn, in a great drama, the issues of which had been determined beforehand, and were wholly independent of its chief actors; if from the outset there was no real possibility of Christ yielding, had He chosen, to the tempter, then the majestic glory of Christ’s victory over Satan is gone forever. It is only as we feel His temptation was not" acting "at all, but an awful and tremendous struggle between the Captain of our salvation and the prince of darkness, a struggle which Christ waged at the cost of terrible suffering and exhaustion, that we feel the full moral sublimity of His character, Who, though spent and weary with the forty days’ fast which had preceded this final assault of the devil, and not withstanding His physical weakness and need, foiled one after another all the assaults of the tempter’s power. Instead of the admission of the reality of the temptation detracting from the moral glory and greatness of Christ, it adds immeasurable grandeur to His human character, and fills us with a new sense of His unapproachable goodness and unswerving fidelity to His Father, Whose kingdom He thus founded among men in tears and conflict and pain. But the admission of the reality of the temptation of our Lord affects us as well as Him. It must have been comparatively easy for the first disciples, who saw our Lord’s human life, who lived with Him from day to day, and learnt from this companionship His humanity as well as His divinity, who heard, possibly from Christ’s own lips, the story of His struggle with the tempter in the wilderness, to realize the intensity and depth of Christ’s sympathy with them in their temptations. What was easy for the twelve may be difficult for us. We have never seen Christ hungering and thirsting, or weary and tempted; we no longer think of Him as" the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,"for He is now seated at" the right hand of God,"and crowned with the glory and praise of Heaven; and the present majesty and exaltation of the glorified Christ actually make it hard for us to realize that though He is" highly exalted,"yet on the throne of His glory He bears for us a Brother’s heart, is still" touched with the feeling of our infirmities,"and still remembers the days of His flesh, when He was" in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."
We must go back to the story of this temptation, and feel its reality, if we would re vive within us the sense of the warmth and vividness of Christ’s sympathy with His disciples in all their struggles with evil. Here is our Lord entering into the lowest conditions of our lot, suffering as we suffer from the assaults of evil, fighting as we have to fight against temptation to sin, proving for Himself how" narrow is the gate and straitened the way that leadeth unto life;"and surely if sympathy is born out of a common experience of suffering, we may be assured, not only that Christ will stand by us and help us in every struggle we have to wage against sin, but that He enters into the bitterness of the struggle, and under stands, better than even we ourselves do" How hard it is to be a Christian." The reality of Christ’s temptation is the one abiding pledge we possess at once of His deep and tender sympathy with us in every effort to resist evil, in every struggle to do right, and of His power and willingness to help" in time of need." But it is more than this. It affects our feelings to Christ as well as our realization of His sympathy with us. No doubt it is possible to dwell too much on mere subjective emotion, and to lose the brightness and liberty of the Divine life in a too careful and constant scrutiny of our own affection to the Lord Jesus Christ But if this be possible, it must not be forgotten that it is also possible to dwell too little on our feelings to Him, and to forget that He cares very much for the love and sympathy of His disciples for Himself. It is to be feared that the deep and reverent affection which the early disciples cherished for their Lord, the tender and constant sympathy with which they followed every movement of His earthly life, entering into its needs and sorrows and pains almost as if they were their own, are becoming rarer in the Church to-day, and that of other Churches than the Church at Ephesus He has to complain that"they have left their first love."It may be that as we study His temptation, as we watch with Him through the long forty days of fasting and trial, as we gaze with reverence and love on the great conflict which closed the fast, and on the issues of which the salvation of the world was hanging, we may be led once more to cast around our Lord the arms of our poor sympathy and love, hardly knowing whether more to weep for the suffering He thus endured for us, or to rejoice in the matchless goodness which triumphed over the deadliest assaults of the tempter, and became the pledge of our final triumph as well.