Unlike John the Baptist, whose austere spirit was unfolded in the
desert, Jesus grew up among men, passing through and sanctifying
childhood and youth, home duties, and innocent pleasures. But ere He
enters on His work, the need which every soul appointed to high and hard
tasks has felt, namely, the need for seclusion and communion with God in
solitude, was felt by Him. As it had been for Moses and Elijah, the
wilderness was His school; and as the collective Israel, so the personal
Son of God, has to be led into the wilderness, that there God may 'speak
to His heart.' So deep and rapt was the communion, that, for forty days,
spirit so mastered flesh that the need and desire for food were
suspended. But when He touched earth again, the pinch of hunger began.
Analogous cases of the power of high emotion to hold physical wants in
abeyance are sufficiently familiar to make so extreme an instance
explicable.
We have to distinguish in the first temptation between the sphere in
which it moves, the act suggested, and the true nature of the act as
dragged to light in Christ's answer. The sphere is that of the physical
nature. Hunger has nothing to do with right or wrong. It asserts itself
independent of all considerations. In itself neutral, it may, like all
physical cravings, lead to sin. Most men are most tempted by fleshly
desires. Satan had tried the same bait before on the first Adam. It had
answered so well then, that he thinks himself wise in bringing it out
once more. Adam, in his garden, surrounded by all that sense needed, had
yielded, and thereby had turned the garden into desert; Christ, in the
desert, pressed by hunger, does not yield, and thereby turns the desert
into a garden again. At the beginning of His course He is tempted by the
innocent desire to secure physical support; at its close He is tempted
by the innocent desire to avoid physical pain. He overcomes both, and by
His victories in the wilderness so unlike the garden, and in Gethsemane,
another garden, so unlike the first, He brings 'a statelier Eden back to
man.'
The act suggested seems not only innocent, but in accordance with His
dignity. It was a strange anomaly for 'the Son of God,' on whose head
the dove had descended, and in whose ears the voice had sounded, to be
at the point of starving. What more unbecoming than that one possessed
of His mysterious closeness to God should be suffering from such ignoble
necessities? What more foolish than to continue to hunger, when a word
could spread a table in the wilderness? John had said that God could
make children of Abraham out of these stones. Could He not make bread
out of them? The suggestion sounds benevolent, sensible, almost
religious. The need is real, the remedy possible and easy; the result
desirable as preserving valuable life, and putting an end to an anomaly,
and the objections apparently _nil_. The bait is skilfully wound over
the barbed hook.
Christ's answer tears it away, and discloses the sharp points. He will
not discuss with Satan whether He is Son of God or no. To the Jews He
was wont to answer, 'I say unto you'; to Satan He answers, 'It is
written.' He puts honour on 'the sword of the Spirit, which is the word
of God,' and sets us an example of how to wield it. The words quoted are
found in the account of Israel's miraculous sustenance in the desert by
the manna, and are applied by Christ to Himself, not as Son of God, but
as simple man. They contain the great truth that God can feed men, in
their physical life, by bread or without bread. When He does it by bread
or other ordinary means, it is even then not the material substance in
itself, but His will operating through it, which feeds. He can abolish
all the outward means, and still keep a man alive. There is no reference
to the truth which is sometimes forcibly inserted into this saying, that
man has a higher than bodily life, and needs more than material bread to
feed the hunger of the soul. The whole scope of the words is to state
the law of physical nourishment as dependent at last on the divine will,
and therefore equally capable of being accomplished with or without
bread, by ordinary means or apart from these.
The bearing of the words on Christ's hunger is twofold: First, He will
not use His miraculous powers to provide food, for that would be to
distrust God, and so to cast off His filial dependence; second, He will
not separate Himself from His brethren, and provide for Himself by a way
not open to them, for that would really be to reverse the very purpose
of His incarnation and to defeat His whole work. He has come to bear all
man's burdens, and shall He begin by separating Himself from them?
Therefore He answers in words which declare the law for 'man,' and
thereby merges all that was distinctive in His position in a loving
participation in our lot. If the Captain of our Salvation had begun by
refusing to share the privations of the rank and file, and had provided
dainties for Himself, what would have become of His making common cause
with them? The temptation addressed to Christ's physical nature was, to
put it roughly, 'Look out for yourself.' His answer was, 'As Son of God,
I hold by My filial dependence. As man, I share My brethren's lot, and
am content to live as they live.'