Temptation of Jesus
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
Definition
The temptation of Jesus is the episode, recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels, in which Jesus was “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matt. 4:1) for forty days immediately after his baptism, and there resisted three direct temptations from Satan (Matt. 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13). Scripture treats the temptation as real, not staged: the same Christ later described as a high priest who is able to sympathize with human weakness is “one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).
Confessional Definition
The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession states that the Son of God, in becoming man, took “man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities of it, yet without sin.”1 Real temptation is one such common infirmity of human nature; Christ’s taking it on without thereby taking on sin is exactly what the wilderness episode displays.
Biblical Basis
Each of Satan’s three temptations attacked a different point: turning stones to bread after a forty-day fast (appeal to bodily need), casting himself from the temple to force God’s rescue (presuming on God’s promises), and worshiping Satan in exchange for “all the kingdoms of the world” (seeking the messianic inheritance by a shortcut, apart from the cross). Jesus answered each from Deuteronomy (Deut. 8:3; 6:16; 6:13), refusing to use his own divine power for self-interest, to test God, or to bypass the Father’s appointed path (Matt. 4:1-11). Hebrews grounds the church’s confidence in prayer directly in this event: “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).
Objections and Responses
If Christ could not have sinned, was his temptation genuinely real, or only an appearance? Hodge distinguishes Christ’s actual sinlessness from a prior, built-in inability to sin: “this sinlessness of our Lord… does not amount to absolute impeccability. It was not a non potest peccare. If He was a true man He must have been capable of sinning.” Temptation, Hodge argues, itself implies the possibility of sin: “If from the constitution of his person it was impossible for Christ to sin, then his temptation was unreal and without effect, and He cannot sympathize with his people.”2 This question is treated at greater length in Impeccability of Jesus and Sinlessness of Jesus.