The temptations of Jesus in the wilderness immediately after his baptism give us further insight into the mystery of the incarnation. All three synoptic Gospels record the event, beginning by pointing out its intentional nature:
“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” (Matthew 4:1)
This was no accidental encounter. It was orchestrated by God himself. Mark’s Gospel states that the Spirit “impelled” Jesus to go into the wilderness (Mark 1:12). Jesus had no choice about this; it was an essential part of God’s plan for him at this precise point in time. And notice the intended purpose: Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness not for prayer and meditation or personal reflection (although it is highly likely that Jesus did utilise the time in this way), but “to be tempted by the devil”. This was a divinely orchestrated encounter.
All three synoptics indicate that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days and fasted for the whole time (Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13) and both Mark and Luke are very clear that Jesus was tempted throughout the entire forty days:
“And he was in the wilderness for forty days being tempted by Satan.” (Mark 1:13; Luke 4:2)
What are we to make of all this? Why did Jesus need to undergo such an extreme and prolonged period of testing prior to commencing his public ministry? It wasn’t because the Father had doubts about him and wanted to make sure he was up to the task, because God is omniscient and already knew that his Son was ready and able. Rather, the temptations of Jesus served several important theological purposes. I will start by briefly outlining the obvious ones that are most commonly understood, and then move on to explore some further implications for our understanding of the incarnation.
COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD IMPLICATIONS
Fulfillment of Israel’s Story
The wilderness temptations of Jesus mirror Israel’s experiences during their 40 years of wandering in the desert. Israel was tested and often failed, but Jesus, the true Israelite, succeeded where they did not. Deuteronomy 8:2-3 reflects on Israel’s testing:
“Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”
Significantly, Jesus’ responses to Satan’s temptations all come from Deuteronomy, further linking His experience to Israel’s.
Second Adam
The New Testament refers to Jesus as the “second Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45-49). Where the first Adam failed in the face of temptation in the idyllic Garden of Eden (Genesis 3), Jesus succeeded in the harsh conditions of the wilderness. His victory over temptation signifies the beginning of the restoration of humanity through Jesus, the new representative head of the human race.
Affirmation of Sonship
Each of Satan’s temptations begins with a direct challenge to Jesus’ divine identity: “If you are the Son of God…” This directly follows God’s declaration at Jesus’ baptism: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Jesus’ resistance to temptation affirms His identity as the Son of God, who perfectly obeys the Father’s will, unlike Adam and Israel who failed in their obedience.
Revelation of Jesus’ Mission
The temptations reveal the nature of Jesus’ messianic mission. Satan’s third recorded temptation is that he would give Jesus rulership over the whole world if he would fall down and worship him, but Jesus rebukes him and refuses. The devil offered Jesus a short cut, the possibility of bypassing the cross altogether and gaining the whole world, but it would have involved an unthinkable compromise, placing himself under the rulership of Satan himself.
Rather than seizing power and glory through compromise or political dominance, Jesus chose the path of humble service, suffering, and submission to God’s will – a path that would ultimately lead to his sacrificial death on the cross. This path is consistent with the suffering servant motif found in Isaiah 53, indicating that Jesus’ mission involved sacrifice and obedience unto death.
Model of Resistance to Temptation
Jesus’ response to temptation provides a model for believers. He relies on Scripture and demonstrates absolute trust in God’s provision and plan. This teaches believers the importance of knowing and applying God’s Word in times of testing and temptation.
Dependence on God
The temptations emphasise the necessity of reliance on God rather than on oneself. Jesus rejects the temptation to use divine power for personal gain, illustrating that true obedience involves trusting in God’s timing and provision. Similarly, believers are called to live by faith, trusting God’s promises rather than succumbing to immediate gratifications or solutions.
Victory Over Satan
Jesus’ victory in the wilderness is a foreshadowing of His ultimate victory over Satan, sin, and death, which will be achieved through his crucifixion and resurrection. It pre-empts his defeat of the powers of darkness, which He will ultimately accomplish on the cross (Colossians 2:15).
Identification with Human Weakness
Jesus was ultimately declared to be our true and complete representative, able to substitute for us on the cross and able to stand before the Father to intercede for us. In order for Jesus to fulfill this role, however, he had to experience the full extent of human weakness and temptation. Thus the writer of Hebrews states, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness formed a significant part of him undergoing the same temptations that we all face. His temptations were real and severe, made even more intense by the fact that he was fasting for the entire duration. During this time, he faced the same types of temptations that all humans do, including the desire for physical sustenance, the temptation to test God, and the lure of power and glory. Yet he did not give in.
FURTHER IMPLICATIONS FOR THE INCARNATION
All of the above points are fairly standard theological reflections on Jesus’ wilderness temptations. You will find them expounded by countless Bible commentaries. Any reasonable preacher will highlight these kinds of implications in a sermon on this passage. For this reason, I have chosen to mention them only briefly. But Jesus’ temptations also have some profound implications for our investigation of the nature of his incarnation – implications which are less commonly explored.
An important question needs to be asked: Why did Satan bother tempting Jesus at all? Surely, he was doomed to failure. If Jesus in human form remained fully invested with all his divine attributes – his omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence – then Satan had literally nothing to offer Jesus that he did not already have; nothing to tempt him with. If the Son of God in his incarnate state retained his full powers and his complete dominion over all creation to the same extent and in the same manner as he did in Heaven, then Satan’s temptations would have been pointless. They would have amounted to attempting to bribe a billionaire with a dollar coin. This is why we do not read of Satan ever arriving in Heaven asking God to kneel before him in order to be given authority over creation – because God already had that.[1] Satan doesn’t bother to tempt the eternal God, because God already has and controls everything. This accords with scripture which asserts that “God cannot be tempted by evil” (James 1:13). He is beyond temptation.
Satan’s temptations of Jesus, therefore, infers that he was now ‘temptable’ (to invent a new word!) in a way that he was not previously. Satan clearly senses that Jesus is somehow diminished and vulnerable for the first time in eternity. Jesus is no longer beyond temptation.
What has changed? In what sense are we to understand this ‘diminishment’? Why is Jesus now vulnerable?
I point us back to the profound explanation of Christ’s incarnation given to us in Philippians 2, where we are told that in coming to Earth, Christ “emptied himself and made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (verse 7). As I explored in a previous chapter, this “emptying” appears to have been more than the mere loss of heavenly glory, but also involved the voluntary laying aside of certain divine attributes. At the very least, it involved choosing to not access certain powers and privileges while on Earth. And Satan appears to have sensed this. Jesus was a real human in every sense, fully experiencing our limitations and “taking [our] very nature” (Philippians 2:7). Having “emptied himself” he is now temptable.
We see indications of this in the specific temptations that are recorded by the Gospels in this wilderness encounter with the devil (Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13).
Two of the three recorded temptations[2] begin with Satan saying to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God”. There is an acknowledgement of diminished glory in these words. Christ’s divinity was no longer obvious as it had always been from eternity. Satan would not have said these words to Jesus if he had come into Jesus’ presence in Heaven because the divine glory and power of the Son of God would have been blazingly obvious. But in his incarnate state, Jesus’ divinity, although still fully in place and uncompromised, was no longer obvious. He had “emptied himself”. We have already discussed the evidence that Jesus emptied himself of more than his mere heavenly glory; that he clearly also laid aside his omnipresence, at the very least, and possibly also his access to his own divine power and omniscience.
One of the three recorded temptations gives further evidence that Christ’s emptying of himself involved no longer accessing his own power. Satan took Jesus to stand on the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem and said to him,
“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels to guard you and they will lift you up so that you do not strike your foot against a stone.’” (Matt 4:6 and Luke 4:9-10)
There is an implicit acknowledgement of Jesus’ powerlessness in these words. If Jesus were to be kept from harm in this proposed scenario, he would need to rely on angelic assistance provided by his Father in Heaven. This is the only inference we can make from this. If Jesus had thrown himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, he would not have been able to save himself but would have needed the protection of angels.
Let us be clear about something at this point. The role of the angels in heaven is not to protect God, but simply to worship him. God does not need their protection because his power is infinitely greater than theirs. Yet the incarnate Jesus needed the protection of angels. The simplest and most logical conclusion is that Jesus was no longer in direct connection with his eternal power while on Earth but was “in very nature” one of us (Philippians 2:7).
In these temptations Satan appears to have had a clear understanding of Jesus’ diminished power. We even see this in his quotation of scripture to Jesus during the previously quoted temptation (which, in itself, is a fascinating detail!). His statement about angels “guarding” and protecting Jesus is a quote from Psalm 91:11-2, where God promises to protect his Son through angelic intervention.
This brings to mind another messianic psalm which is reiterated in the book of Hebrews and applied to Jesus: “You made him a little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8: 5 and Hebrews 2:7). Significantly, the original statement in Psalm 8:5 is in the plural; “God made them a little lower than the angels”. There the psalmist is referring God’s creation of humankind and it is reference to us as being lower than the angels in in terms of both power and glory. Humans do not have spiritual power as the angels do, nor do we have the same kind of blinding glory that they manifest. Indeed, humans find the power and glory of angels terrifying when they appear to us (Luke 1:12; 2:9; 24:4). Yet this understanding of humans being “lower than the angels” is applied to the incarnate Jesus by the writer of Hebrews. He changes the plural “them” of Psalm 8:5 to the singular “him” to refer to Jesus: “God made him a little lower than the angels” (Hebrews 2:7). This is an extremely important reference for our understanding of the incarnation. In the same way that humans are lower than the angels, Jesus also became lower than the angels while he lived as one of us. He became just like us.
All of this points toward Jesus’ diminished glory and capacities while on Earth.
Once again, let me reiterate that Jesus remained fully divine during his incarnation. He did not discard his divinity to become a human. He merely chose not to access certain of his attributes and powers while on Earth. And because this was a self-limitation rather than an externally imposed one, it does not in any way compromise the essence of his Godhood, nor should it diminish our worship of him. If anything, Christ’s willingness to empty himself in order to become fully immersed in our human existence ought to increase our awe and wonder at the mystery of the incarnation and fill our hearts with gratitude.
[1] Satan’s wager with God regarding Job in the Old Testament is an entirely different scenario. God was not being tempted as Jesus is here being tempted to worship Satan in order to receive dominion.
[2] There were a lot more than these temptations, because Satan tempted Jesus over a period of forty days.