27/01/2013 - The reason why Jesus was tempted

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For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.

Hebrews 2: 18

We cannot tell what the extent of God’s love towards us is nor can we describe its very essence – a God who gave His Son to deliver us from death. Jesus – The One who was tempted in all things with the purpose of supporting and rescuing us – is The Only One who can assist those who are tempted. Do not give in to any temptation nor should you go in despair whenever tempted. Be careful because once you’re tempted Satan will prompt his second strategy: he’ll try to convince you that you’re worthless for being subjected to one of his temptations.

What the Lord God did to save and prevent us from falling into temptation go much beyond men’s reasoning. As a matter of fact, The Bible says that God loved the world in such a unique manner; after all, being aware of the sort of temptation we’d be subjected to He caused His Son to be tempted in all things and wounded due to our weaknesses and to our corrupt desires so we could be assisted by Him at an appropriate time (Isaiah 53).

The awesome work Jesus did was to deliver us from eternal doom but if He had stopped helping us right then, as the days went on, whenever temptations came up, we’d be risking falling and our salvation would have been pointless. But the revelation from God to us is that He’s provided us with the solution we need every time we’re tempted by the enemy: He made Jesus feel in His body our pains so He then learned what to do for us to be delivered from all temptations.

For being tempted and not falling The Lord Jesus is The Only One who can help us in those moments of weakness. As long as we’re living in this world we’ll always be tempted. Considering that the devil will never get converted he won’t change his evil purpose of attempting to take men out of the divine presence. In fact, our adversary utilises whatever means possible to try to separate us from God but Jesus can rescue us if we cry out to Him.

Therefore, look out! Do not accept any of the devil’s proposals, neither the direct nor the indirect ones – those we cannot easily perceive coming from him. What really matters is for us to be connected to The Word and every time something unusual comes up you’re expected to promptly make a parallel between that and the scriptural point of view. If that happens to be condemned by The Holy Book the best thing to do is not accepting it because if we give in to any temptation we’ll be putting ourselves under the devil´s control.

How can we be assisted by Jesus? By turning our eyes away from the immoral proposals of our false friend. You only need to say a prayer of faith – and do it with all your heart – for that trap to be exterminated for good. There’s no reason for us to accept being tempted nor do we need to get desperate whenever tempted because those who are offered the stew of lentil and yet reject it will surely come out of that trial even stronger than before spiritually speaking.

The devil will never give up trying to seduce us into error. Once Jesus demanded the devil to go away, The Word says that the latter abandoned Him till a most appropriate time (Luke 4: 13). Although you have not fallen, nor have you accepted any of his lewd proposals, you must never forget that he’ll do whatever it takes for you to believe that you are also to blame somehow for just being tempted. Again, being tempted doesn’t make us guilty but falling for an error does. Therefore, you must always keep an eye out never to accept any of the proposals of the deceiver. Stand firm in The Word, resist the devil and he’ll flee from you because that is a biblical promise (James 4: 7).

In Christ, with love,

R. R. Soares