But Jesus, full of [the] Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness
Luke opens Jesus' public life not with a miracle but with a walk from the Jordan into the desert. One verse holds two things together: fullness of the Holy Spirit, and the place where the devil waits.
The order matters: baptism, the Spirit's descent, the Father's voice — then the desert.
Here we see Jesus move on from the Jordan, "full of the Holy Spirit" (verse 1). He had just been baptized, sealed by the Spirit, and, above all, owned by the Father as His beloved Son. At once He was led in the Spirit in the wilderness. There the devil tempted Him for forty days. The principle is true of us too. We are sons of God by faith in Jesus, and we know it by the Holy Spirit living in us. So we too know what it is to be tempted by the devil. Temptation is hardly the way the devil deals with his own children. But once God delivers us, such conflicts begin.
Two phrases that sound alike are not the same.
"Full of," not "filled with" the Holy Spirit — that is the statement about the Lord. This distinction should be noticed. Full of the Holy Spirit seems to tell us what marked the person habitually, as a rule. So Stephen and Barnabas are described (Acts 6:5; 11:24)... Filled with the Spirit, on the other hand, is used of vessels taken up for God's service, whether for a longer or a shorter time. Instances of this last are Elizabeth and Zacharias (Luke 1:41, 67); the company at Pentecost; Peter too and Paul. Full of the Spirit was characteristic of the Lord throughout His ministry.
There is a reason Luke says this and John does not.
In the opening verse of Luke 4 Jesus is brought before us as the vessel of the Spirit of God, and the vessel is full. John presents the Son as come to bear witness to the Father. Luke shows the Lord as Son of Man, come to do the will of God. All that He does is by the Spirit of God. There is, as it were, nothing of self, but a vessel filled by God to carry out His desires in all things.
Luke's wording differs from Matthew's and Mark's, and our verse keeps the difference.
He who was to baptise with the Holy Spirit must be God to do that. And He returned from the Jordan full of the Holy Spirit, to be led in the wilderness during forty days and tempted by the devil. Luke probably wrote "in," not "into." In Matthew and in Mark we read that He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Luke, however, tells us how during all those forty days He was under the guidance of the Spirit.
The first man was tested too. He was not tested like this.
He was going to be tried as Adam was tried — yes, as Adam never was tried. This Second Adam was going to meet the tempter in no Paradise, but in the wilderness. It was in the ruin of this world. It was in the scene of death over which God's judgment hung. Here innocence was not the question, but divine power in holiness surrounded by evil. Here One who was fully man depended on God, and, where there was no food and no water, He lived by the word of God.
The Spirit did the leading. So the test was no experiment with an uncertain outcome.
He enters into conditions that resulted from the fall and stands there for God. He is seen in these conditions as a perfect, sinless, incorruptible, subject Man, and it is as such that He overcomes the devil. The temptation was not to see whether He was sinless or not, but to show openly that He was. The movement was His own in perfect holy Manhood, as subject to the leading of the Spirit.
We measure power by what it does. Here it shows in what it withstands.
Notice how faithfulness in trial and temptation shows the power of the Spirit as much as the energy of action. Jesus was led by the Spirit to be tempted. He overcame Satan by the word through the Spirit. He returned in that power, working miracles and casting out devils. But the power had been exercised all through the temptation, only in standing fast.
- Full — Jesus was full of the Spirit, not filled with Him. The first describes what a person is day by day; the second, a vessel taken up for one task.
- Led — the Spirit who filled Him also moved Him, and kept Him under that guidance for all forty days, not just on the way in.
- Wilderness — Adam was tried in Paradise; the Second Man met the tempter in a desert, with no food and no water, living by the word of God.
- Shown — the test did not ask whether He was sinless. It showed that He was.
- Returned — the power that held firm in the desert is the power that then worked miracles. Standing fast was the victory.
forty days, tempted of the devil; and in those days he did not eat anything, and when they were finished he hungered.
Luke sets the Lord's first public conflict in a desert: forty days there, no food, and the devil at work on Him the whole time. Why did God lead Him to that place, what does the number forty mean, and why did Satan wait until He was hungry?
Where a test happens shapes it. Adam was tested in a garden; this Man was tested in a desert.
Here then is something for us to think about. The perfect Man, the true Israel, is in the wilderness. He is surrounded by the wild beasts, fasting for forty days. He stands in the presence of the great adversary of God, of man, of Israel. There was not a single feature in the scene to speak for God. It was not with the second Adam as it was with the first. He was not surrounded by all the delights of Eden. Around Him lay the dreariness and desolation of a desert. He was there in loneliness and hunger — but He was there for God!
Why forty days? The number turns up elsewhere in Scripture, attached to a time of testing.
Forty days the Lord was in the wilderness, fasting all that time. For forty years Israel was in the desert. God tested them there, to know what was in their heart, and whether they would keep His commandments or not (Deut. 8:2)... He gave the people of Nineveh forty days to repent, or the threatened judgment would fall on them (Jonah 3:4). So it seems that the number forty has to do with the idea of testing. The Lord spent forty days in the wilderness without food. He proved Himself faithful, and truly dependent on God.
Israel had a long version of the same test. The result was not the same.
The Israelites had forty years of trial in the wilderness. All through it they showed how little they had learned the lessons God put them there to learn. The Lord is there forty days, tested to the full. He proves Himself always perfect, and beyond the need of learning — Master and not disciple.
Others had fasted forty days before Him. What made this fast different was who was waiting at the end of it.
So He goes out into the wilderness to fast His forty days. It is a complete contrast with all the surroundings of the first man. He does not go, as Moses or Elijah did, to meet God. He goes in weakness, with the hunger of those forty days upon Him, to meet man's adversary and be fully tested. Did the Spirit of God ever lead up anyone else to be tempted by the devil in such utter need, in all the reality of human weakness?
The hunger at the end was real, and its timing matters.
Luke, as well as Mark, records that He was tempted through the forty days, during which He ate nothing. Matthew and Luke carry us on to the end of that time, when He was hungry. He never used His divine power to relieve Himself from any consequence of the place He had taken as Man. The enemy chose this moment of human weakness. He came against Him with the armour he trusted in.
What He refused was not food, but food obtained apart from God's word.
The Lord at once takes the lowest ground, which is in fact the highest ground morally. Feeding the body is not the first thing. The first thing is living by the word of God. He waits for a word from Him whose will He came to do. He refuses, even in His hunger, to take a single step towards satisfying His sinless wants without divine direction. The true and only right place of man is dependence.
The word "tempted" needs care here. Its meaning changes with the person being tested.
He had to know, not sin, but suffering. He had to be tempted to the utmost, sin excepted, in order to help those who are tempted. Temptation means trial. In Christ's case it never means what it means in fallen man — the inward pull towards evil. This is what the Holy Spirit denies of Him. Had there been in Him the least inward taint of sin, His sense of evil would have been weakened, His sufferings lessened, and His sympathy hindered.
- Place. The trial ran in a desert, not a garden. Not one feature of the scene spoke for God — but the Man in it was there for God.
- Period. Forty is the number of a full test. Forty years left Israel with nothing learned; forty days proved Christ faithful and dependent on God.
- Purpose. Moses and Elijah fasted forty days to meet God; He fasted forty days to meet the devil, in real weakness and real need.
- Pressure. Satan waited for the hunger at the end. Christ would never use His divine power to spare Himself anything that belonged to His place as Man.
- Purity. He was tested from outside at every point. Nothing inside Him answered the appeal. That is why His sympathy is greater, not smaller.