Why did Jesus need to be led into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted (Matthew 4:1)?

There is but one more word to be considered before we turn to the temptations themselves and take them up in their order. It is the word tempt. It is here where much misunderstanding comes in. The word tempt has different meanings. One of them is inciting or enticing to evil, to seduce. This always presupposes evil present in some form, the possibility that the person can be enticed and incited to evil, that in the person there is something which responds or may respond to the evil placed before the soul. This could never be the case with our Lord. There was no sin, no evil in Him. He is absolutely holy. Therefore the word tempt in this form can never apply to Him. But the word tempt means also, put to test. To test means to bring to trial and examination; compare with a standard; in this sense only it can refer to our Lord. He was tempted means, He was tested as to His ability to do that for which He had come. The test or tempting is to bring out that He is the pure gold, the Holy One, the spotless One, the One who alone can do the work for which He appeared, to put away sin by sacrificing Himself. Therefore the Spirit led Him up into the wilderness. The word tempting or testing has also a special significance in connection with Israel . The Lord, as Messiah and King, is closely identified with His people. He goes through their history, so to speak, and fulfills all, and at last He died for that nation. Israel was tested or proved, and failed. "There He made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there He proved them." The Septuagint translates the Hebrew "Nissohu" with a Greek word which is used in the fourth chapter of Matthew. The Hebrew means testing, to find out if it is really so by a test. The same word is used in Deuteronomy the eighth chapter. "And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God has led thee these forty years in the wilderness that He might humble thee, to prove (test) thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments or no" (Deut. 8:2). The Lord, the true Israel then is tested and He does not fail. And now we come to the temptations themselves. The devil begins to address Him, who has come to crush his head. It would be very interesting to make a careful study of the words of Satan we have in the Word of God. They are contained in Genesis the third chapter, the first chapter of Job, and here in the Gospel. The words he speaks in these passages establish him in his true character, the liar and murderer from beginning, the accuser. He places before our Lord three temptations, the test is threefold.

He is now to be tested as to His ability for the path upon which He has entered. The book of Job shows us Satan allowed of God for this purpose to be the sifter of God's wheat ― the "accuser of the brethren." He who is to be the First-born among these pleads for Himself no exemption from this trial. He is expressly led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil: designated thus according to the meaning of the term as "the false accuser."

Then as to Satan. In the first place, and seasonably and properly so, the Lord meets him as a tempter. Satan sought in the wilderness to impregnate Him with these moral corruptions which he had succeeded in implanting in Adam and the human nature. This victory over the tempter was the needed righteous introduction to all His works and doings touching Him. It was, therefore, the Spirit that led Him up to this action. As we read, "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil." Ere the Son of God could go forth and spoil the house of the strong man, he must bind him. (Matt. 12:29) Ere he could "reprove" the works of darkness, he must show that He had no fellowship with them. (Eph. 5:2) He must withstand the enemy, and keep him outside Himself, ere He could enter his kingdom to destroy his works.

Having thus in grace taken up His position as man on earth, He commences (Matt. 4) His earthly career, being led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. The righteous and holy man, the Son of God, enjoying the privileges proper to such a one, He must undergo the trial of those devices through which the first Adam fell. It is His spiritual condition which is tested. It is not now an innocent man in the enjoyment of all God's natural blessings, who is put to the proof in the midst of those blessings which should have made him remember God. Christ, nigh to God as His beloved Son, but in the midst of trial, having the knowledge of good and evil, and as to outward circumstances come down into the midst of man's fallen state, must have His faithfulness to this position fully tried with respect to His perfect obedience. To maintain this position, He must have no other will than that of His Father, and fulfil it or suffer it, whatever might be the consequences to Himself. He must fulfil it in the midst of all the difficulties, the privations, the isolation, the desert, where Satan's power was, which might tempt Him to follow an easier path than that which should be only for the glory of His Father. He must renounce all the rights that belonged to His own Person, save as He should receive them from God, yielding them up to Him with a perfect trust.

The enemy did his utmost to induce Him to make use of His privileges, "if thou be the Son of God," for His own relief, apart from the command of God, and in avoidance of the sufferings which might accompany the performance of His will. But it was to lead Him to do His own will, not God's.

At thirty years of age He took His place in Jordan with the repentant remnant of Israel, entering in by the door according to divine appointment, and He fulfilled righteousness in being baptised of John. He was at once owned of God by being sealed with the Holy Ghost, as distinct from all the others baptised, a voice from heaven declaring "Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased." The gospel of John, at this moment, shows the momentous issues which hung upon the truth of His person. The taking away of the sin of the world by the Lamb of God, the baptising with the Holy Ghost, and Himself as the powerful attraction and commanding object for repentant sinners. The gospels of Matthew and Luke here record His being led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. It was necessary that the tempter of man should be overcome by man, and Jesus overcame all the wiles of Satan by the spiritual power of the word of God. Thus vanquished, the devil left Him for a season.

Here, then, we have the devil meeting man in the power of the Spirit of God - man tempted, not in paradise, but in the wilderness. Jesus does not say, "I am God, and you are Satan; go away." That would not have glorified God, nor have helped us. But as the Lord was led into the wilderness, not by lust (God forbid the thought!) but by the Holy Ghost, so in His blessed grace He puts Himself in the place where man was. He has help from none, not even from John the Baptist. There was all that might have stumbled rather, had it been possible; through all He goes as man. He must be tempted, and must overcome where man not only had failed, but was lying under the power of wickedness.

But the blessed and gracious Lord has fully entered into our case, the place of His people, and He now takes that in which they are in conflict with Satan, as well as that in which they are in relationship with God. Thus anointed as man, He was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Many things here suggest themselves to the mind: the difference of the position of Adam and Eve, when they were tempted; the difference of the character of the forty days during which Moses and Elias were estranged, so to speak, from the common lot of humanity; but I confine myself here to the great fact of the temptation, and the Lord's undergoing it, as the other side of our position from our relationship in Him with God. Only remark that the temptation follows this. That is fully established, and it is as anointed therein of the Holy Ghost that He enters into it. The tempter comes to Him. The point of His temptation was to lead Him out of the place He had taken as man, and first out of that of obedience, or of a servant, His perfect place as man. If Thou be the Son of God, use your authority, speak so that these stones become bread. In a word, do an act of your own will, since you are nothing less than Son of God. But the blessed Lord holds fast to the simple place of obedience, of the servant, of man, but perfect Man.

(1) The temptation in the wilderness follows the public testimony of God to His Son. It is founded on it: — "If Thou be the Son of God"; and necessarily follows it. This is the divine order: for it would have been dishonor to both, if God had waited to see if His Son could stand all tests before approving Him. On the other hand that approval was a challenge to the accuser, the Spirit leading Christ in the wilderness forty days, while Satan was permitted to assail Him. Fasting and hungry with the famine of those days upon Him, the devil appeals to Him, if He be the Son of God, to put forth His power and make bread of the stones which are around Him. Thus He would take Himself out of the place of dependence by using a power which had not been given to man. But the true life of man is not that which is sustained by bread but by the word of God. Obedience, dependence, communion; are its characteristics and its strength. Against one walking in such a path all the suggestions of the enemy are unavailing.

Let us now look at Matthew 4. You see there are three temptations. Observe — "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil" (Matt. 4:1). It is a very remarkable thing that. The Lord was full of the Holy Ghost. And He is actually said to be led by the Spirit of God into temptation. It was of course absolutely necessary in His pathway. How otherwise could He succour us in temptation? He has known what it was to be tempted in all points, yet without sin. The temptation, you will observe, is threefold. You and I have never known the depth of temptation He knew, for the outward circumstances of the Lord were more difficult than ever yours and mine are. There was no one who ever had so little of the outwardly expressed favour of God as He. Born in one man's stable, and buried in another man's tomb, He truly said, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has not where to lay his head" (Matt. 8:20). If it was a question of tribute money, He said, "Show me a penny" (Luke 20:24). Why? He had not a penny. I do not believe there is one here that has not a penny in their pocket. Therefore, outwardly, there was none who ever had so much against him as He. But, oh, inwardly, what joy and peace in the Father's love!

I think so! He enters into conditions resultant 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 bring into manifestation the fact that He was. The movement was His own in perfect holy Manhood, as subject to the leading of the Spirit.