05. The First Temptation

The First Temptation

"And the tempter came and said unto him, If thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:3-4)

"And the devil said unto him, If thou art the Son of God, command this stone that it become bread. And Jesus answered unto him, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone." (Luke 4:3-4)

IT is only in a very limited sense that we can speak of this temptation as being the first temptation of our Lord. It is true that it is the first of which we have any detailed record in the Gospels, but both St Mark and St Luke expressly state that the temptation of Christ had been going on incessantly throughout the forty days which preceded the final assault of the tempter. " He was in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan,” (Mark 1:13) are the words of St Mark, whilst St Luke says, "Jesus... was led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the devil." (Luke 4:2) The forty days of fasting were also forty days of temptation, culminating, as we shall now see, in three supreme and typical temptations, embodying in the ideal form in which they were presented to Christ all the temptations to which man is subject; the temptation, first of all, of the bodily or lower nature; then the temptation of the soul, or higher nature; and lastly, the temptation of the spiritual or highest part of man’s nature. Or to put the same truth in another form, as there are three possible relations in which God stands to man, the relation of creation, or of providence, or of redemption, so these three final temptations of our Lord successively touch each one of these spheres of man’s life; the first belonging to the lowest sphere, that of creation; the second to another and a higher sphere, that of providence; whilst the third and last reaches to the loftiest of all the divine relations of human life, the sphere of the redemptive kingdom of God.

We have to consider now the meaning of the first temptation as it was presented to Christ. For forty days and forty nights Jesus had eaten nothing. He had passed through a fast that recalled the great typical fasts of the Old Testament economy, passed through it that at least He might bear witness that in the new kingdom of God He was founding on earth, the lower nature of man was not less under the control of the higher than it was in the ancient kingdom of Judaism, but at the end of the forty days, when the cycle of the fast was complete, nature reasserted her claims. "When they were completed He hungered." (Luke 4:2)

Now, hunger is of all physical torments the most intolerable, with the single exception of the pangs of thirst, and even this latter misery we can hardly doubt was added to the Saviour’s suffering at the end of His fast; for although we are not told that He was enduring the pains of thirst as well as those of hunger, yet we may be sure that water was as little likely to have been found in the wilderness as bread. And it is this exhaustion and faint ness of body which the devil uses as the instrument and occasion of the first temptation. We have already seen that there is no necessity to imagine any visible appearance of Satan to Christ, for the objective reality of temptation in no way depends on the personal manifestation of the tempter, and we may therefore, without irreverence, imagine the temptation as rising up within the soul of Christ, as our temptations arise within ourselves, as if it had sprung from the natural and lawful desires and necessities of His own bodily nature. ’ I am weak, and faint, and hungry from my long fast and watching and conflict; why should I not at once satisfy the hunger of my body hunger it is no sin for Me to feel, for it is only a consequence of that humanity I have taken upon Myself by working a miracle and changing these stones which lie at My feet into bread? ’ But the suggestion by the tempter to the mind of our Lord that He would do well to exert His miraculous power in order to satisfy the pangs of hunger does not, as it seems to us, reveal the deepest and most infernal subtlety of this first temptation. Both St Matthew and St Luke tell us that the temptation began with an appeal to Christ’s divinity. "If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread," and these words are profoundly significant. Immediately before Christ had gone up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, He had been baptized by John in the Jordan, and heaven had been opened, and the voice of God Himself had been heard declaring, " Thou art My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." We have already endeavoured to understand the meaning of the baptism in its relation to our Lord’s own consciousness, and although the growth of the consciousness of the Divine nature in our Lord must be to us a dark, and possibly an insoluble mystery, yet as we have seen it seems not improbable that this heavenly voice gave to Jesus the first full assurance of His Divine mission, and that then there arose in Him in all its wonder and glory the consciousness, which from the first had been latent and slumbering in His soul, of His Divine relationship to God and of the work He had to fulfil in the world as the " beloved Son " in whom the Father was " well pleased." This deep and blessed sense of Christ’s filial relation to God Satan now uses as the lever of this first temptation. ’ Thou art the Son of God; Thou hast heard the voice from heaven witnessing to Thy sonship; Thou hast all power given to Thee on earth; Thou hast a Divine mission to fulfil; why not test Thy power, and begin Thy mission now and here? Thou art hungry from fasting in Thy Father’s work, command that these stones be made bread. If not, Thou mayest perish from hunger ere Thy work has well begun, and Thy refusal may frustrate the end for which Thou hast come into the world,’ But even this account does not exhaust the full force of the temptation. It is impossible to overlook the dark suggestion implied in the first word of the tempter, " IF Thou be the Son of God," of doubt as to Christ’s Divine Sonship, doubt which only a miraculous exertion of His power could answer and remove. ’ If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread; otherwise how shalt Thou know Thou art not self-deceived as to Thy Sonship and Thy mission? There is an " if," a terrible " if," before even Thine assurance of Thy Divine nature: destroy the doubt forever by one wonder-working word. Divine Sonship must mean Divine power; prove the Sonship by exerting the power. Thou hast done nothing with Thy Divine power for thirty long years; use it now. Use it for a holy and lawful end, and with the command that these stones be made bread, a command they shall hear and obey, at once satisfy Thy hunger, and for ever verify Thy Divine mission among men.’

Such, in its deepest meaning, seems to have been the true character of this first temptation of Christ. And let us remember that it came to our Lord when He was least able to bear it. It is hard enough at all times to resist temptation, but to fight such a temptation as this, when the weakened bodily strength, and the pangs of hunger, gave the keenest edge to the assault of the tempter, is a task heavy enough to tax the strength of even the most resolute loyalty to God. We pitifully blame a starving man if his conscience is not over scrupulous as to the means he uses for obtaining food, and we do not realise the tremendous force with which this temptation assaulted our Lord, nor the sublime grandeur of His victory over it, if we forget that He who suffered it had been exhausted and weakened by prolonged fasting, and that it was only when the claims of the physical nature began once more to assert themselves, that the whisper of the tempter came, "Command that these stones be made bread." But it may be asked, What would there have been sinful in Christ yielding to the suggestion of Satan, and turning the stones, by the exercise of His miraculous power, into bread? He wrought a miracle more than once to feed others, why should He not have wrought a miracle to feed Himself? The reply to this question leads us into the very heart of the temptation, and reveals its special significance to the tempted followers of Christ in every age.

Christ was being tempted, it must be borne in mind, as man. He stands before Satan not as the Son of God as such he was inaccessible to temptation but as the Son of Man. He has to meet the seductions of the tempter not in His Divine power, but in the greatness of His human trust and obedience to God. He is to be " in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." But if our Lord had used His Divine power to satisfy His own hunger, and had wrought a miracle to supply His own pressing need, He would not have been " tempted in all points like as we are." He would have separated himself from His brethren at the very point when they would have been unable to follow Him, and in the moment of the severest pressure of the fight would have defeated the enemy with weapons which they could never use. When the poor and needy are tortured with hunger, and the terrible temptation arises to do wrong in order to get bread, they cannot vanquish the tempter by a miracle. They must conquer, if they conquer at all, by trust; and it would be no example and no inspiration to them to be told that once their Lord and Master had been tempted as they were, but had overcome by turning the stones into bread. Christ will not overcome Satan thus. Even in the thick of the battle He will not separate Himself for a moment from the poorest and weakest of His brethren: He will vanquish His temptation, as we have to vanquish ours, not by a miracle, but by trust in the living word of God. And hence the deep significance of the reply which Christ makes from Scripture in answer to the temptation of the devil, and with which He overcomes his assault. "It is written," our Lord says, " MAN shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; " and if we remember the original application of these words, and the circumstances under which they were spoken to Israel by Moses, we shall see their profound meaning as used by our Lord. Moses is reminding the children of Israel of the perils which had befallen them in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:1-20; Deuteronomy 19:1-21) possibly this very wilderness in which Christ was now being tempted of the way in which God had led them for forty years, " to humble them, and to prove them, to know what was in their heart, whether they would keep His commandments, or no; " and then he goes on to say, "And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know, that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live." Israel had been tempted in the wilder ness just as Christ was now tempted; they had been "suffered to hunger," and appeared to be starving, and yet they had not perished. And why? Because God could provide and did pro vide "a table in the wilderness," because the last extremity of human need is only the beginning of the Divine opportunity, for when all the bread and the water had failed, the infinite resources of God were unexhausted and untouched. That was the lesson of the manna, and Christ quotes the sublime words of Moses in reference to the manna as His own reply to the temptation of the devil. He, too, is man. He, too, is in the wilderness. He, too, is tempted by hunger: tempted to distrust, and in His distrust to for sake the living God and rely on His own re sources. But He refuses to yield to the temptation. God has led Him to the wilderness: God has suffered this sore need and temptation to befall Him, and God will provide a way of escape. Jesus will not work a miracle to save Himself from hunger: no! not even to assure Himself of His own Divine sonship and glory. He is here as the Son of Man, not as the Son of God; and as man, our Brother in the deepest and truest meaning of the word, He will conquer by trust in His Father’s care. He lives, as well as we, not on "bread alone, but on every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God." And so Christ vanquishes the tempter, and we know not whether more to admire in His victory the moral grandeur of His refusal to use His supernatural power to save Himself from hunger, it may be from perishing a refusal borne out by all His subsequent life, for never once did our Lord work any miracle for His own benefit or succour or the gracious condescension with which He identified Himself with His brethren, by His refusal to allow Himself any support or relief in the hour of His sorest need and peril, other than that which the humblest of His disciples possess in the immeasurable re sources of an unwavering trust in God.

Only once again, although in a different form, this first temptation seems to have been repeated in the life of our Lord, and repeated with a deadlier and darker fury, assaulting Him when even more exhausted with pain and weakness than He was in the desert. When Jesus hung on the cross, the crowd who passed by, mocked Him, and quoting His own words bade Him come down from the cross and save Himself. "Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save Thyself; " (Matthew 27:40) and the very words of the tempter in this first temptation were heard again in the jeers beneath the cross: " If Thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross. " Again, and in the hour of His deepest agony and need, He is challenged to work a miracle to save Himself from death: and again, in patient and sublime trust in God, He overcomes the temptation. The bitter taunt of the tempter, hurled at Him in the sneer, " He saved others, Himself He cannot save," while it repeats this first temptation of the wilderness, like it falls powerless before the immoveable fidelity of our Lord’s trust in God. And now let us endeavour to gather from this temptation some of the lessons it may teach us. The temptation to turn the stones into bread so as to satisfy the hunger of the body is manifestly a type of the whole circle of temptations which arise from the needs and demands of our lower and fleshly nature. If Christ had been only apparently flesh and blood, if as many of the early heretics believed, His body was not a real body like our own, but a phantom body, which fell away from Him at His resurrection, then this temptation could never have arisen in His earthly life. It was the reality of Christ’s human body which made this first temptation possible, and which gives to it all the significance it bears on similar temptations in our lives.

We, too, have bodies, and a very large part of the temptations to evil which assault us arise from the physical organization we now possess. Sometimes, indeed, temptation comes to the servants of Christ in almost literal resemblance to the form it took with their Lord, and they are hungry as He was hungry; and they are in a wilderness as He was, where there is no bread, and are tempted, as He was tempted, to break their trust in God, and in impatient unbelief to be their own Providence, and to anticipate the slow movements of the Infinite Care and Love on which man alone truly lives. Sometimes the temptation arises from still lower parts of the physical nature, and the lusts of the flesh clamour for gratification, and there is a deadly strife between the animal and the spiritual, the flesh " lusting against the spirit," and " the spirit lusting against the flesh," and victory, if it be won at all, is won at such a cost that it is only less terrible than a defeat. Sometimes it is physical suffering which is the instrument the tempter uses for assailing the soul through the body. Long months, or years, of bodily agony have to be endured, making it hard to submit to the will of God, still harder to acquiesce in that will; and as the pain grows keener, and all human means of mitigation are one after another tried, and one after another fail, the terrible temptation to take life into one’s own hand, and to cut it short, and by one stroke to end forever the weary days of pain, arises before the soul; or if that be thrust from us with horror, the not less deadly whisper of the tempter is heard, " Curse God and die." In ways like these Christ’s temptation re peats itself in our lives, but the chiefest peril to us of all such temptations, as it was to Christ in His first temptation, is when they take the form and it is one of the subtlest forms temptation can take of an inducement to satisfy lawful needs and desires by unlawful means. There was no sin in the hunger Christ suffered, and there was no sin in the desire He felt to satisfy the pangs of hunger. It was as natural and sinless a desire as the appetite with which a hungry man sits thankfully down to his food. The sin was in the temptation to satisfy an innocent bodily craving by unlawful means. For Christ to have worked a miracle to have delivered Him self from hunger would have been to have abandoned His trust in God, and would have destroyed at a blow all the blessed example His temptation and His victory in the wilderness have been to His tempted brethren in every age. The sin was not in the desire for food, not in the longing to gratify the desire, but in the means suggested to be used for its gratification. It is so with us. Our subtlest temptations are not those which openly and bluntly seduce us to do that which is evil. Satan is far too cunning to arouse the conscience against him self at the commencement of his infernal work, for he knows full well that to exhibit temptation in all its naked and undisguised wickedness before the heart, to attempt to induce the soul to yield to sin, would be to rally to its defence whatever remained of goodness, and to make the ruin of the soul not less, but more difficult. He tempts in a subtler and deadlier way. He lays before the soul an end confessedly innocent in itself, but which can only be reached by sinful means. Then peril arises. The innocence of the end too often conceals from the conscience the guilt of the means by which it has to be attained, and the soul has fallen before temptation almost before it knew danger was near.

Thus, for example, there is no sin in the poor desiring bread; no sin in their longing to satisfy their own wants and those of their children; no sin in their desire to lessen the load of the miserable poverty under which many of them live from day to day. It is in the steps which they may take to satisfy these wants, and to lift themselves above want, that sin may lie. They may be tempted to compass a natural and rightful end by unlawful means, to imagine that since some have bread enough and to spare, whilst they have not enough, it cannot be wrong for those who have too little to take of the superfluity of those who have too much, so that even robbery may be justified if committed under the plea of hunger and of poverty. So again there is no sin in a man of business desiring to make money, no sin in his ambition to attain a position which shall secure both himself and his family from pecuniary care, but there may be sin of the gravest kind in the means he takes to reach the end he seeks. He may become unscrupulous in trade; he may disguise dishonesty under the plausible name of sharpness in business; he may sacrifice the peace and integrity of his conscience to getting rich, until at length an end which in itself was at least an innocent, if not a very lofty ambition, has become the means of leading him deeper and deeper into sin. Or, to take one farther illustration, and yet one to which, for obvious reasons, it is only possible remotely to allude, those dark and terrible temptations whose fires burn most fiercely in the days when youth is passing into manhood, and which, unless quenched, leave behind them the charred and blackened ruin of body and soul alike, derive their deadliest and most insidious peril from being, in another form, only a repetition of this first temptation of our Lord, the temptation to satisfy innocent and natural desires by unlawful and guilty means. And now what is the one safeguard against this peril? How may we defeat this attempt of Satan to destroy the soul through the body? If we ponder the significance of our Lord’s victory we shall gain the answer we seek. How, then, did Christ overcome?

Not, be it observed, by denying the legitimacy of the desires of the bodily organization. One word in our Lord’s first answer to the tempter may easily escape our notice, and yet it is a word full of meaning: " Man," said Christ, " shall not live by bread ALONE, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." In that reply the Saviour expressly declares that man has a lower as well as a higher life, and He implies that this lower life demands its appropriate nourishment and satisfaction. Christ does not say, as an ascetic would have said, " Man shall not live by bread," but He says, " Man shall not live by bread alone;’" that is, He admits and recognises the lower needs and desires of the body, and implicitly sanctions their lawful gratification.

How then does Christ vanquish the tempter? He vanquishes him by quoting, as we have seen, a passage from the history of the children of Israel, in which Moses declared to them that their life was a nobler and diviner thing than the life of the beasts, for it was the life of " man," and man lived not on " bread alone," but on God; his truest life was not the gratification of a bodily need, but the satisfaction of the hunger of the spirit in God Himself. In other words, Christ overcame the flesh by the spirit. He conquered, not by denying either the existence of the hunger to which the temptation appealed, or His own desire for bread to satisfy it, but by asserting the supremacy for man of the higher life of faith in God. It were better for man that his body should perish from want, than that his soul should die by distrusting God. And as Christ overcame, we must overcome too. Unhappily for the Christian life it has not not always followed the Divine wisdom of the example of Christ. It has attempted to overcome in its own way rather than in Christ’s. Asceticism in every age has tried to conquer the temptations which proceed from the desires of the physical nature of man by seeking to destroy that nature altogether, instead of subordinating it to the higher laws of the spiritual life, and the result has too often been disastrous both to body and spirit. The fleshly side of man’s nature is too strong for any forced and unnatural repression, and the bitterest satire on the ascetic life is the fact that it perished from sensual corruption, dragging in its fall the nobler and diviner life down to destruction as well. Only as Christ overcame shall we over come the temptations of the flesh. We must recall ourselves to our truest and highest life; we must refuse to gratify even the most innocent desire if it necessitate our touching any means which are unholy and unlawful; we must conquer the flesh not by vainly striving to destroy the flesh, but by living above it; we must remember that the mortification of the body does not necessarily involve the mortification of the flesh; we must be willing to perish from hunger rather than abandon our trust in God. On this first temptation and this first victory of our Lord, we may read the words written which have been the secret of the spiritual life in every age, " The Just shall live by Faith."