Luke 4:1-12

Sometimes I worry about failing to abstain from sin. I worry about how my actions will affect people if I mess up. Normally, though, this doesn’t keep me from sin. It actually makes me more likely to sin because the focus is on myself.

Jesus literally had the weight of the world on His shoulders; to be the perfect sacrificial Lamb, He had to be sinless. Yet somehow, I can’t see Him having the same mentality I do about sin. 1 John 4:18 says that perfect love casts out fear, and Jesus’ love was perfect. Therefore, His motivation to not sin would have been something other than a mortal terror that He would mess up.

Our text, Luke 4:1-12, supports this. It details the temptation of Jesus, and presents the method He used to fight off Satan: quoting scripture. Note that He didn’t just use scripture as His defense, He quoted it word-for-word. He relied purely on the message from His Father, not adding His own thoughts or reasoning. He leaned on the Father entirely to get Him through temptation. This point is emphasized by the fact that He fasts during His temptation. Fasting was – and is – a way to get closer to God by abstaining from earthly things, even something as needed as food. When the devil tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread, what he’s trying to do is shift Jesus’s focus from spiritual things to earthly things. But Jesus says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Lk. 4:4).” By fasting and quoting scripture, Jesus sets an example for what we should do. If even Jesus did not get through temptation by His own strength, but looked to the Father, how much more ought we, the fallible creatures, in order to follow His example!

Yet the method for overcoming temptation is not the only thing that this passage tells us. It also tells us the reason why Jesus held fast. Why did Jesus refuse to sin? Because “it is written.” Jesus knew what His Father said, what His Father wanted. He loved His Father, and always sought to do His will. Jesus resisted sin out of love for His Father. This explains why He was leaning on His Father to get through; His Father was the reason Jesus was fighting sin in the first place! It also makes His use and direct quotation of scripture so much more meaningful. According to first Corinthians 13:5, love “does not seek its own.” Jesus was seeking God’s will so completely that He even had the Father’s thoughts in His head, word-for-word. Through the way He handled His temptation, He proved He loved His Father.

This is why He is able to return “in the power of the Spirit to Galilee (Lk. 4:14).” He had affirmed His love for His Father even in very trying circumstances. Indeed, I don’t want to speak for the Spirit, but this may be the reason the Spirit led Him into the wilderness in the first place: not because God wanted Jesus to be battered with a certain amount of suffering for His life to be “worth it,” but because love is proved when it holds up even under extreme pressure. Whether or not this was the purpose of Jesus’s temptation, it provides a good example for us. When we are tempted, we can see it as an opportunity to prove our love for both God, and thus find encouragement to hold fast to His commands.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright ©1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by Permission. All rights reserved.

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Jadyn Allen

My name is Jadyn, and I’m currently a student at Freed-Hardeman University. I’m planning to attend law school and eventually practice adoption law. My favorite chapter of the Bible is Nehemiah 9, and I’m a huge fan of origami and fantasy books, especially the Fablehaven series!

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