Matthew 4:3 Commentary and Bible Study

This first temptation is about intense hunger and need. The devil now comes with seemingly reasonable temptation. We might read the word ‘If’ as though the temptation was to doubt that he was the Son of God, but no, it has more the force of ‘As’ or ‘Since’. Abandon the mission of redemption, is the suggestion. It is not a temptation to doubt his divinity, but to look after himself. ‘If you have sovereignty’ – let us take it in that way. We rather doubt that the devil could tempt Christ to think that he was not the Son of God, but as always he tries to set us off balance, and if there is a question here, it is to add impetus to the temptation.Christ had at this stage already done several miracles. ‘Make bread’, urges the devil, but it would have been to swerve from the plan of salvation. The Lord Jesus now knows what it is to be starving and hungered and weakened, but his assignment is not to use his powers unreasonably to sustain himself. It must not be said, ‘But it was different for Christ: when he was in pain, he could resort to his divine nature. He did not have to live as we have to live, under the curse and knowing human pain.’ Satan says, ‘You do not need to know starvation.’ There is subtlety here. What is immoral about turning stone into bread? Would we blame him or say it is unethical? ‘You can use your divine power on yourself, so you do not have to live with human weakness. You do not need to suffer hurt, pain.’ What is the essence of the temptation? ‘You are the Son; why submit to this? Why submit to the will of God? Why this indignity? Don’t wait for the Father.’ Satan knows Isaiah 53, but he does not know everything, for all his brilliance. The idea is to bring the plan of salvation into chaos. Christ would no longer be the perfect, obedient Son. The devil grasped that Christ had come to be our representative, so he says, ‘Don’t do that; you do not have to represent them. Rise above it, just express yourself on earth.’ But if so, the Lord could not have lived perfectly under our condition. He had been commanded by the Father to do exactly that, to truly experience the curse. Yielding to this temptation will wreck the plan of salvation. Christ will not always have to live under human weakness, but until the time when he has endured the cross and been glorified, it must be so. He will never give way before this temptation. He shares our weakness, but not our sinful nature, even though he feels this very deeply. It is like a bomb shelter in war time, and people feel safe. They are crowded in and the bombs cannot reach them, but the noise is terrible and to be in it is terrifying. You are in the eye of the battle. This illustration falls down because Christ is not protected from the force of temptation by a wall, but by his own hatred of sin and love of righteousness. He could not fall and would not fall, but he felt all the power of temptation, just as we might. ‘Touched with a sympathy within, He knows our feeble frame’, says Isaac Watts, referring to Psalm 103:14.There are a number of reasons for the temptation of Christ. He is tempted to show he shares our weakness, that his human nature has not somehow been merged with his divine nature, so that it is easy for him to live in this fallen world. He knows the divine plan, and will not abandon it. He never wavered in his love for us. He knows our temptation and so he can be sympathetic. He knows how to deal with temptation and demonstrates this to us. He answers it by Scripture. He shows his triumph over temptation where Adam fell. He has come to destroy the works of the devil, and he defeats Satan right at the start his ministry to leave this in no doubt.