I was leading a Bible study on the temptations of Jesus when someone remarked, “But Jesus wasn’t really tempted. He was the Son of God after all.” That took me aback for a moment. Then I answered, “No, Jesus was really tempted. Otherwise his temptations are meaningless.” Without thinking about it too much, I had always connected the temptations of Jesus with the death of Jesus. After all, the last temptation of Jesus takes place on the cross. The passers by demand, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:40). The temptation was for Jesus to escape suffering and thus prove that he was God’s Son. The language is the same as that used by the Devil in the first temptation in the wilderness: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Matthew 4:3).

The notion that Jesus wasn’t really tempted is tied to a whole bunch of peculiar attitudes about Jesus. Some have said Jesus didn’t really suffer on the cross or that he didn’t die on the cross. It’s part of the desire to separate the Son of God from the man Jesus. The belief that God could become flesh was more than some could accept, yet it is essential to the Christian faith. In Jesus God identified with everything that it is to be human except sin. Temptation was part of Jesus’ experience, but sin was not.

Real flesh, real temptation, real suffering, real death and real resurrection. In those realities is our hope.

Read Hebrews 4:14-16 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne