There are some who do not believe that Jesus existed for a time on this earth as a human being. Yes, He was, and still is, God, but He was born of a woman and lived a life on this earth in the same way we do. It is a perspective we cannot truly understand having never seen the glory of God in heaven ourselves as Christ did before. Jesus tells us this in John 6:38: “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will but the Will of Him who sent Me.”
Paul further clarifies this in his letters to the Philippians and the Corinthians: “…who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6-7). “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).
Jesus had everything. He made the world and everything in it (John 1:1-5), He had the glory and the majesty of heaven and was part of it and was the light of it. He is also the light of men. What more is there than that, other than carnal desires? Things of this world which are fleeting yet satisfying in the flesh. Jesus, before coming to this earth as a man, was a spiritual being, so those carnal desires were nothing to Him. His desire now is that “all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:1-4).
But we are fleshly creatures. We were made of this world. All that God created was good and was righteous (Genesis 1:31). Unfortunately, the fall of man and evil entering into the world made this righteous and perfect world unsuitable for man to live forever, so God cut off access to the tree of life, and man was sentenced to death and to face the world of struggle because of the sin he committed (Genesis 3:22-24).
God is observing all this from His heavenly place. He understands it because it is all His creation, and He has an understanding above all. But from man’s perspective, does God really understand? Man does not have a good connection with his spiritual self; he is a creature of the earth. The desires of his body are his deep desires and when those desires are presented to him, his body urges him to engage with those desires and to satisfy that body. How can God understand the power of that natural pull which God created for him?
There was only one way, and that was to go through temptation as a man. The most descriptive moments of that temptation, although Jesus would have been tempted daily as we are, is after His baptism in Matthew 4 and Luke 4. In that moment, temptation’s power is incredibly displayed as Jesus is offered, of this world, everything that He had given up in heaven. Satan tempts Him to express His glory and deity, turning stones to bread. Satan tempts Him to express His authority of being God by hurling Himself from the tower to be saved by angels. Satan tempts Him to experience the satisfaction of having all things again by offering Him the whole of the world, what He had already created and Satan had corrupted; the desire of His heart, wishing that all men would be saved, coming back to Him. Satan could not offer heaven, for he did not have that to offer, but he could offer all the joys and the only expressed desire of God.
What is the power of temptation? The fact that Jesus was tempted. God cannot be tempted (James 1:13), but Jesus emptied Himself and became as one of us, showing us how to resist temptation by looking to God and His Word. Through His example we can resist even when it is our only desire.
Lance Byers