His Temptation Our Temptation :: From "My Utmost For His Highest"

Hebrews 4:14therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, jesus the son of god, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. 16let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Until we are born again, the only kind of temptation we understand is the kind mentioned in james 1:14, "each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed." but through regeneration we are lifted into another realm where there are other temptations to face, namely, the kind of temptations our lord faced. The temptations of jesus had no appeal to us as unbelievers because they were not at home in our human nature. Our lord’s temptations and ours are in different realms until we are born again and become his brothers. The temptations of jesus are not those of a mere man, but the temptations of god as man.

Through regeneration, the son of god is formed in us (see galatians 4:19 ), and in our physical life he has the same setting that he had on earth. Satan does not tempt us just to make us do wrong things— he tempts us to make us lose what god has put into us through regeneration, namely, the possibility of being of value to god. He does not come to us on the premise of tempting us to sin, but on the premise of shifting our point of view, and only the spirit of god can detect this as a temptation of the devil.

Temptation means a test of the possessions held within the inner, spiritual part of our being by a power outside us and foreign to us. This makes the temptation of our lord explainable. After jesus’ baptism, having accepted his mission of being the one "who takes away the sin of the world" ( john 1:29 ) he "was led up by the spirit into the wilderness" ( matthew 4:1 ) and into the testing devices of the devil. Yet he did not become weary or exhausted. He went through the temptation "without sin," and he retained all the possessions of his spiritual nature completely intact.

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Shared at the Mwafrika Chatroom on October 30, 2009.