My Dear Brother:I received your letter this morning, and I will set down a few thoughts as to your question regarding the nature of our Lord's temptations, and His sufferings in connection with them. There are two kinds of temptation, both of which are spoken of in the first chapter of James-vers. 2, 14. The same word in the original is used for both, and for the reason that it is a test in both cases:in the first, the test is from without, and may be rejected; in the second, it is allurement from within, and shows a nature that is evil. That our Lord's temptation was only from without, is instantly seen if we quote James i:14- "Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed." What horrible blasphemy it would be to say this was true of Him !
This confines all His temptations to the trials from without, and which met with no response whatever from Him. The response they meet with from men's hearts is the "lust" of the 14th verse.
And yet He "suffered being tempted." What was the nature of the sufferings ?
(1) Was not the very presence of evil cause of acutest pain to a nature that had but one characteristic-the love of God. So, for Him, His being in a world away from God could only cause Him pain. Nothing here could give Him joy but faith, repentance and trust on the part of those who had been drawn by the grace of God.
(2) To be personally approached with suggestions that were not the will of God, would add to His suffering-just as, in a certain measure, a pure-minded person would recoil from the near approach of an evil person more than in contemplating him at a distance. The fresh ingredient in His sufferings, however, would be the attempt to get Him to depart from the path of God, the very thought of which would be abhorrent to Him. The evil in the world was ever present to His holy mind.
(3) To refuse the temptations offered meant, in a world like this, to go on in the path of suffering. Faithfulness, obedience to God, where everything was unfaithfulness and disobedience, could only mean suffering-deprivation, dishonor, sorrow. To refuse to turn the stone into bread meant, for the time, hunger,-and it was a sort of prophecy of His whole path,-poverty:"the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." To refuse to cast Himself down from the pinnacle meant to lose the eclat of popularity which such a miracle would have brought:not that such popularity had the slightest attraction for Him, but it meant, prophetically, the whole path of rejection, shame, scorn, which, for a nature that was love, would be suffering. He would not tempt God, as if He needed to prove His care. To refuse to worship the god of this world was to ensure the active enmity of the whole world, with the cross at the close. All this only shows that suffering was a necessity for Him in a world like this. The very refusal to be anything else than perfectly righteous involved Him in constant suffering, and this was because He was perfectly holy. The reason why there is so little suffering now is because there is so little of that which is like Him. Yet where there are true-hearted witnesses for Him, there will be the suffering which goes with it.
Every other temptation appeals to the flesh, or is the flesh enticing one into an easy path. Therefore the being " touched with the feeling of our infirmities " refers not to our failures, or sins, but to the trials of the way. Are we poor ? He was more so. Are we despised ? He was a reproach of men. Are we exposed to Satan's malice ? None was ever so much so as He was.
Patient holiness must suffer in the presence of sin. And whatever brought out that perfect holiness would bring out the suffering. For one to yield and go on with the evil, even in thought, is to prove himself unholy.
Of course we can enlarge upon such a theme, but I think we have the principles before us. Any suggestion that our Lord had an inclination to yield, is blasphemous.
But how feebly do some of us respond to all this, and thus show a nature unlike His, who endured the cross !Our Lord was not stoically indifferent to the suffering :it was real to Him. He was a Man.
Affectionately, in His grace.
S. R.