Then Jesus was carried up into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted of the devil
The heavens have just opened over Jesus at His baptism, and the same Spirit now leads Him into empty country to meet the devil. Two questions come up at once: why would God's Spirit lead anyone toward temptation, and what does "tempted" mean when the one tempted has no sin?
The order of events is not accidental. The testing comes after the public approval, and it rests on it:
The temptation in the wilderness follows the public testimony of God to His Son. It is founded on it — "If you are the Son of God" — and necessarily follows it. This is the divine order. It would have dishonoured both if God had waited to see whether His Son could stand all tests before approving Him. On the other hand, that approval was a challenge to the accuser. The Spirit led Christ in the wilderness forty days, while Satan was allowed to attack Him.
Each Gospel uses a different word for this move. Each word fits the way that Gospel shows Him:
In Mark 1:12 the Spirit "drove" Him, for Mark speaks of His servant character. Matthew 4:1 reads that He was "carried" by the Spirit (JND trans.), for Matthew views Him as King, carried like a king in triumph. But as the Man Christ Jesus He was "led," for He is here willingly dependent on the leading of His God and Father.
Whatever word a Gospel uses, it sets Him apart from every other person who has walked into testing:
Every other man is driven into the scene of temptation by his own lusts, the folly and wretchedness of his own heart. Man goes there by the very nature of what is in him, and there he is defeated, and falls. But Christ is led by the Spirit of God into the wilderness.
Here the word does not mean what it usually means for us:
In the sense we have it here, it is entirely from without. Our Lord never knew what it was to be tempted from within. He "in every respect has been tempted as we are." But the Holy Spirit qualifies this by adding, "yet without sin." He did not simply refuse to yield to sin. He never had the principle of it, never the least motion of any thought or wish contrary to God.
Adam's case makes the point clear. Being tempted does not prove anything is wrong inside:
But the Spirit of God did lead Christ into temptation — Matthew 4 and Luke 4 tell us so plainly. He was not led into any exercise of a sinful nature, but into Satan's trial of what He was. The first Adam was innocent and had no sin, yet he was tempted, and so tempted that he fell into sin. So temptation clearly does not imply existing evil, or a sinful nature.
The place matters. It is the opposite of the garden where the first man failed:
When the first man was created God pronounced all to be very good, but Satan came promptly on the scene, tempted man and ruined him. The Second Man has now appeared, and again Satan comes on the scene promptly. But this time he meets Man, full of the Holy Spirit, who cannot be touched by his tricks. When the first man fell, he knew no pangs of hunger, for he lived in the fertile garden planted by his Creator's hand. The Second Man victoriously stood, though the garden had been turned into a wilderness and He was hungry.
The wilderness was not a pause before His work. It was the right start to it:
This victory over the tempter was the righteous opening that all His works and doings needed. It was, therefore, the Spirit that led Him up to this action. As we read, "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." Before the Son of God could go out and plunder the house of the strong man, He must bind him (Matthew 12:29).
The same pattern holds for His people:
He was just baptised, sealed with the Spirit, and, above all, owned by the Father as His beloved Son. At once the Spirit led Him into the wilderness. The principle is true of us too. We are sons of God by faith in Jesus, and we know it by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 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 when we are delivered, such conflicts begin.
Yet Jesus never told His disciples to seek out what He walked into. Commentators note the tension with the prayer "lead us not into temptation," and answer it this way:
It expresses the necessity of being kept in constant dependence upon God, kept from Satan's power, and not treating the testings of the pathway as something to be lightly entered upon. The soul that knows humility would not seek the temptations of an Abraham or of a Job.
- Owned first. God declared His delight in His Son before any test, not after — approval came first, and the testing was built on it.
- Led, not lured. Everyone else is pulled into temptation by what is inside him. Jesus went because the Spirit led Him.
- Tested from outside. Temptation here means attack from outside, not a pull from within. Adam was sinless and still tempted, so being tempted proves nothing about the heart.
- Won in a desert. The first man fell surrounded by plenty; the Second Man stood His ground hungry in a wasteland.
- Bound, then plundered. Jesus had to tie up the strong man before He could empty his house. This victory opened the way for all His work.
and having fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards he hungered.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.