The Temptations of Jesus - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages According to the Deffinbaugh (2006), there are three reasons why the temptation accounts are of great significance: “( “(1) First, the temptation accounts confront the student of the New Testament with some tensions within the biblical text; (2) Second, from the standpoint of our Lord’s ministry and calling, His entire mission is contingent upon His victory over every temptation of Satan; (3) Third, by studying the temptation of our Lord by Satan, we learn a great deal about our adversary, Satan and (4) Finally, we see in our Lord’s successful resistance to Satan’s solicitations those very means which God has made available to us to withstand Satan’s attacks.”

In the first verse “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil”, it can be clearly deduced that it was the Spirit that led Jesus to the wilderness, specifically, to be tested by the devil. Ross (2006) averred that “it was the plan of God for Jesus to begin His ministry with this challenge--and that it was not the devil’s doing. The devil was willing to tempt Jesus, to be sure; but it was the Spirit of God leading Jesus to it. The devil could tempt Jesus with every power he had, but he would not succeed. The temptation episode was God’s way of showing that Jesus was the perfect man, that He could resist sin, that he could defeat Satan.” This is very aptly explained by Ross and clearly depicted the ultimate objective or purpose of the temptations of Jesus.

The second verse “After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.” Apparently, when one reads this verse, it can be implied that facts are merely stipulated. However, several scholars have attempted to make some parallelism between the fasting of Jesus for 40 days and the nation of Israel which was in the wilderness 40 years. Israel hungered even as our Lord did. In both cases, God was testing man. The third verse “The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread” was, in fact, Jesus’ first temptation. ...Download file to see next pagesRead More