Luke 4:1-13 - Christ Passed the Test
- Chad Werkhoven
- 1 hour ago
- 5 min read
Jesus passed the test that we failed.
Gospels: Week 2 - Jesus' Preparation & Beginning of Ministry
We're visiting a different book each day as we work through all four gospels chronologically over the coming months.
Luke 4:1–13 (NASB95)
1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He became hungry.
3 And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’ ”
5 And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 And the devil said to Him, “I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. 7 Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.”
8 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.’ ”
9 And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here; 10 for it is written, ‘He will command His angels concerning You to guard You,’ 11 and, ‘On their hands they will bear You up, So that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’ ”
12 And Jesus answered and said to him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”
13 When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time.
Heidelberg Catechism
Q&A 60
Q. How are you right with God?
A. Only by true faith in Jesus Christ.
Even though my conscience accuses me
of having grievously sinned against
all God’s commandments
and of never having kept any of them,
and even though I am still inclined toward all evil,
nevertheless,
without my deserving it at all,
out of sheer grace,
God grants and credits to me
the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ,
as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner,
as if I had been as perfectly obedient
as Christ was obedient for me.
All I need to do
is to accept this gift of God with a believing heart.
Summary
Today's episode comes immediately after Jesus' baptism, in which the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove, so as the passage begins, Luke emphasizes that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit. But the Spirit leads Jesus here differently than He ever has or ever will lead us; He led Jesus into the wilderness for forty days to be tempted by the devil.
Although Spiritually strong, Jesus became physically weakened, since He ate nothing during those days. Although it's certainly not the main point of this passage, there is wisdom in understanding that your spiritual and physical aspects are very much connected. You're much more susceptible to temptation when you're physically exhausted, and since most of us don't get the amount of rest we need (not just sleep), we're all much more vulnerable to the devil even though we eat very well.
Knowing that Jesus is weakened, the devil pounces, and presents Jesus with the same temptations he'd put before Adam and Eve, albeit packaged differently. He begins by telling Jesus He can have more if He'd just take matters into His own hands. If You are the Son of God, the devil begins, tell this stone to become bread.
Next, the devil offers Jesus the same shortcut he'd offered Adam and Eve, ironically offering to Jesus, the divine Son of God, the glory that belongs to God alone. All Jesus had to do was worship before him, and it would all be His.
Finally, the devil puts God Himself on trial, just as he'd done so long before in the Garden when he asked did God really say...? After all, God had promised in His Word that He'd commanded His angels to guard Jesus and bear Him up in their hands. So it only makes sense, the devil tempts Jesus, that if You are the Son of God You can safely jump from the temple's pinnacle.
But although there's never anything new with the devil's temptations, there is something very different about how Jesus resists them. Unlike Adam, our first covenant representative, Jesus - the new Adam - remained perfectly obedient to God's covenant requirements, so that God could grant and credit to you the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ (QA 60).
Dig Deeper
There's a whole lot of scripture quoting going on as the devil tempts Jesus.
Notice that Jesus doesn't use any miraculous or divine powers to resist sin. Rather, He uses a resource that's readily available to us: God's Word. Jesus rebuffs the devil's three temptations with three quotations from Scripture. This is one more reason for you to have lots of it memorized, like Jesus did (and remember, Jesus wasn't born having the Bible memorized; He learned it the hard way, just like you must).
But the devil throws Scripture right back at Jesus as he tempts Him the third time, quoting Psalm 91:11-12. So it's not enough to just know the words of the Bible! You see this all the time - people quoting God's Word verbatim in a way that promotes or condones sin!
You need to both know well what God says in His Word, but you also need a well developed theological lens through which you can interpret and apply it correctly. This is where our Confessions (The Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession and the Canons of Dordt) are helpful. They summarize the whole of Scripture enabling you to then correctly understand each particular part of it.
The primary point of today's passage is that Jesus passed the test that Adam and his offspring failed. It's for this reason, Hebrews 9 tells us, that Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who sent His Son to do what we could not to grant to us the rightousness we require;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that you will fully trust in Christ's perfect obedience even as you rely on God's Word to resist sin;
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
