Tempted To Avoid The Cross

Tempted To Avoid The Cross

Jesus was led out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted there by the Devil. –Matthew 4:1

Recently I discovered something surprising in this verse. What surprised me was that it was the Holy Spirit who led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. While Jesus may have purposed to pray and prepare for fulfilling the plan of God through his ministry, the Holy Spirit led him there to be tempted. God wanted his Son to be tempted in his human body just as you and I are tempted. This would prepare him not only for his ministry on the earth, but his priestly ministry in heaven. Once again we see God using what Satan intended for evil to accomplish his own good purpose.

We might think it was easy for Jesus to resist the temptation Satan threw at him because, after all, he’s God. But Jesus didn’t exploit his inherent deity to overcome temptation. He faced it in his full humanity, using only the same weapons that we have at our disposal: the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, and absolute trust in his heavenly Father.

Since he was a boy lingering in the Temple, Jesus had maintained his focus on completing the work his Father had sent him to do. He had waited until God’s appointed time until, at the age of thirty, Jesus was stepping out of the shadows, each day taking one step closer to the Cross. Satan tempted Jesus to use spectacular signs to please the Jewish masses who were looking for a Messiah to save them from their Roman occupiers, not from their sin. He tempted Jesus to compromise on God’s plan to gain his most noble desire—to gather Jerusalem to himself as a hen gathers her chicks (Matthew 23:37). Satan’s temptation was to induce Christ to finish the work without the suffering, without the personal humiliation of obedience and self-denial, without the rejection and misunderstanding of people—in a word, without the Cross.

Satan tempts us in the same way, trying to convince us that we can experience the glory of God without the suffering of Christ, that we can accomplish a great work for God without the cost of carrying our cross. Would you refuse to give in to the temptation to avoid suffering at the cost of rejecting the Cross? Would you use Scripture as your shield against Satan?

Sinless Savior, you understand the intensity of the temptation I face, and you show me how to withstand it through the strengthening power of your Word.

DIGGING DEEPER