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Luk_4:1. In the Spirit, ἐí ôῷ ðíåýì .; in Matthew, ὑðὸ ôïῦ ðíåýì .—There appears to be no doubt that this signifies the Holy Spirit, which had just been poured out in all its fulness upon the baptized Jesus. Full of the Holy Spirit, that now more than ever penetrated and inspired Him, He was driven with irresistible might not only toward ( åéò ) the wilderness, but into ( åí ) the wilderness, where He abides awhile, not only with the unexpected consequence, but with the definite purpose ( ðåéñáóèῆíáé , Matthew), that He there, according to God’s supreme providence and under His especial permission, should be tempted of the devil.
Luk_4:2. Forty days tempted by the devil.—If we read with Lachmann, ἐí ôῆ ἐñÞìῳ , which appears to deserve the preference, we may perhaps refer the designation of time, viz., forty days, to the immediately preceding words, ἤãåôï åἰò ôὴí ἔñçìïí , and translate: “He was led in the Spirit into the wilderness forty days, and tempted by the devil.” In this way even the appearance of a discrepancy between Matthew and Luke, in regard to the actual point when the temptation began, is avoided.
Into the wilderness.—We are to understand the word “wilderness” not with some of the older expositors in a figurative, but in a literal, sense, and probably (agreeably to tradition) to refer it to the wilderness of Quarantania, between Jericho and Jerusalem. As to the locality, see the Gospel of Matthew by Lange, p. 81. There is still shown the mountain upon which the tempter is said to have taken the Lord, lying over against Abarim, from whose summit Moses overlooked the promised land. Trustworthy travellers relate, that in the neighborhood of this mountain there are found many stones whose form and whose color even agrees with that of bread, so that they could easily deceive the hasty observer. See Sepp, Leben Jesu, ii p. 92.
By the devil.—We come here to the natural question, what we are to think as to the agent of the temptation and the manner in which the tempter approached the Lord. As to the former, the views may properly be divided into two classes. Some will acknowledge here no working of the devil whatever, and understand it either of one or of several human tempters, or, of tempting thoughts and conceptions, which are supposed to have arisen in the mind of Jesus Himself in view of His Messianic work. Others assume an actual temptation of the devil, whether in visible form as the Gospels relate, or through the working of the invisible evil spirit upon the pure øõ÷Þ of the Lord, capable as it nevertheless was of temptation. The different advocates of these explanations may be found named in Hase, Meyer, and De Wette. It cannot be difficult for us to make a choice among these different explanations. That the narrative can scarcely be understood literally appears hardly to need an intimation. A corporal appearance of the devil, a temporary ἐíóÜñêùóéò of the evil principle, is without any analogy in the Holy Scriptures. How should the devil have had power over the body of the Lord to carry Him through air and clouds whither he would? If the Lord did not know him, what should we have to think of His all-surpassing knowledge? And if He did know him, how could He consent to hold discourse with such a tempter? Where lies the mountain from which all the kingdoms of the earth can be viewed with a glance, and how could the Lord during the forty days in which He abides in the silent wilderness all at once stand upon the pinnacle of the temple? But this impossibity of understanding the narrative êáôὰ ῥçôüí does not for all this give us a right to find here an historical or philosophical myth. If even the previous history exhibits a purely historical character, still less do we move in a nebulous, mythical sphere at the beginning of the public life of Jesus. Analogies which are presented with the history of the temptations of Job, David, and others, would at most only prove the possibility, but by no means the probability or certainty of the invention of a narrative of a temptation of the Messiah. We see plainly that the Evangelists are persuaded that they are relating an historical fact, and we have no right, upon philosophical grounds, to bring in doubt the possibility of the chief fact here related.—Quite as unsatisfactory is the interpretation of it as a dream, vision, or parable. If the Lord had wished to teach His apostles in a similitude from what fundamental principles He started in His Messianic activity, and to what temptations they also were exposed, He would certainly have availed Himself of another form of instruction. Moreover, it is hard to see how such a parable could with any ground have been understood as history. The difficulty does not lessen but increases, if we assume that the parable in this form does not come from Jesus Himself, but from one of His disciples, who invented it in order to warn the first believers against sensuous Messianic expectations; and if we understand it as a dream or a vision, the narrative then really loses all significance. What value has a conflict that has arisen from self-deceit, and does he deserve the name of a victor who strives against spectres of the night? If this vision was effected by the devil in the soul of Jesus (Olshausen), we do not then comprehend what significance is to be attributed to a temptation that was not combated with rational self-consciousness. Or if this dream was a product of the fantasy of Jesus Himself (Paulus), we could then no longer ascribe any perfect sinlessness to Him whose imagination could, sponte sua, defile itself with such odious conceptions.
As respects the opinion that we have here to understand a human tempter, this, in its older form, has been already too often combated for us to lose now even a word in disputing it. The only form in which it deserves consideration is that in which Lange (Leben Jesu, p. 218) brings it up. He is far from denying the diabolical ground of the temptation, but maintains that the medium of it was a visit of the Sanhedrim, who, after John—subsequently to their interview with him—had referred them (Joh_1:19-28) to Jesus, had, in Lange’s view, approached Him with the full pomp and impetuousness of their Messianic expectations, and laid before Him a plan of Messianic activity wholly different from that which had originally come to maturity in His own mind. We cannot possibly read the brilliant exposition of this view in its details without recognizing the author’s gift of intuition and combination. If we saw ourselves necessitated to look for historical foundation of this kind for our present narrative, we should undoubtedly seek in vain to project a better. But, on the other hand, it must not be overlooked that the Evangelists themselves do not make the least mention of so early a meeting of the Lord with the Sanhedrim; that there is as little proof of John’s having designated the Messiah to the Sanhedrim as there is probability of any such interview with the yet unknown Nazarene; that, finally, the offence speedily taken by the Sanhedrim against the Lord after His public appearance admits of a sufficient explanation even without assuming so secret a back-ground. All these reasons now give weight to the question whether we should not do better (Ullmann) to understand here tempting thoughts, which had come up in the soul of the Lord from the worldly form of the Messianic expectations among the Jews, which, however, He at once, through the might of His holy will, repelled from Him, and which, when He afterward communicated these inner experiences of His to His disciples, He ascribed, in oriental style, to the devil the prince of this world. However, on considering the matter more closely, this interpretation also offers difficulties, so that Strauss for once did not say untruly that the Lord in this case would have communicated to His disciples “a confused mixture of truth and fiction.” Why He should have related to His friends this history of His inward conflict in such a form, can scarcely be understood. As to the first and second temptations at least, we do not see how they could proceed from the worldly-minded expectation of the contemporaries of the Lord. This, at all events, would have sprung more from the consciousness of His own miraculous power and the certainty of the protection of God than from the corrupt notions of the spirit of the times. “If Jesus had had even in the most fleeting manner such thoughts, He would not have been Christ, and this explanation appears to me as the most wretched neoteric outrage that has been committed against His person” (Schleiermacher). If these tempting thoughts were purely theoretical and objective, occasioned by conceptions having nothing attractive for the Lord, where is the temptation? and if these evil thoughts proceeded actually from the heart of the Son of Man (Mat_15:19), where is His sinlessness? We, for our part, believe that we can only explain the origin of the temptation by assuming the direct operation of the (invisible) evil spirit upon the mind and the sensibility of the Redeemer. In this case, 1. the credibility of the narrative is recognized, and we are as little necessitated to understand the devil at the beginning as the angels at the end of the narrative, in a merely figurative sense; 2. the sinlessness of the Lord is preserved: the tempting thoughts originate not from within, but are brought upon Him from without; 3. and, finally, the abandonment of a spiritless literal interpretation is vindicated. But if the Evil One worked directly, although invisibly, upon the God-man, the temptation must have taken place ἐí ðíåýìáôé , alone, and we are justified in representing to ourselves the Lord upon the pinnacle of the temple without His having left the wilderness. There is no other conception which, like this, holds fast to what is essential in the purely historical interpretation without falling into the absurdities that necessarily spring from the assumption of a bodily appearance of the devil.
We feel conscious that this opinion can find no favor in the eyes of those who despise the doctrine of a personality of the Evil One as a superstition of the middle ages. But we cannot join with them, since we are thoroughly persuaded that very many scruples against the biblical demonology proceed from exaggeration or misunderstanding. That Jesus and the apostles did speak of a personal evil spirit and of his operations, is subject to no doubt, and that in this they accommodated themselves to a superstitious popular fancy, is wholly without proof. If any one, philosophically reasoning, persists in seeing in their expressions only the personification of an abstract idea, let him look to it how he can answer for it; but let him not at all events impose this conception on Jesus and the apostles. Never is Rationalism weaker than when it seeks to vindicate itself exegetically. That the old demonology did not receive its fuller development among the Jews until after the Babylonian captivity, we must no doubt concede; but so far is it from being of Chaldean and Persian origin, that, on the other hand, it distinguishes itself in essence and character from this and every dualistic theory, intended to explain the riddle of sin. That even in higher regions of the spiritual world freedom has been misused to sin, is as far from being unreasonable as is the conception that the fallen angels unite with a high degree of intellectual development a deep moral degeneracy. Both facts are daily to be seen among men, and whoever is willing to believe in personal good angels, but not in a personal Satan, is thoroughly inconsistent. The possibility of a direct working of the Evil One upon the spirit of the Lord, admits of being opposed neither with psychological nor with scriptural arguments. Its intention could be no other than to bring Him to a fall, and thus to frustrate the work of Redemption, and its permission by the Father can seem strange to no one who understands what this means: “Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered!”
And He did eat nothing in those days.—A comparison with Mat_11:18 shows, that it is not indispensably necessary to understand such an expression of an entire abstinence from all food. “He might have been able, as well as John, to partake of locusts and wild honey without essentially annulling the fast.” (Lange.) On the other hand, however, nothing hinders us from understanding this fasting of the Lord in its strictest sense. If there are examples of an uncommonly long fasting, even in men whose physical and psychical development has been disturbed by sin, how much more conceivable is it with Him whose bodily organism had been weakened by no sin, whose soul, more than that of any one, could control the flesh and constrain it to obedience. Immediately after such a fast, hunger must necessarily have made itself felt with unexampled power; and undoubtedly by the abstinence from bodily nourishment, the susceptibility of the soul to the influence of the Prince of Darkness, and the combat with him, was not a little heightened. According to Matthew and Luke, the hunger makes itself felt not in the course of the forty lays, but only at the end of them.
Luk_4:3. If Thou be the Son of God command.—The voice of the evil spirit evidently links itself with the remembrances of the heavenly voice at the Jordan. Here also, is the devil a Simia Dei, since he permits an echo of the word of truth to be heard.—This stone, ôῷ ëßèῳ ôïýôῳ , more äåéêôéêῶò , than in Matthew, who retains his ordinary plural, ïἱ ëßèïé ïὗôïé , in an oratio indirecta. The point of attachment for the temptation is partly the exalted self-consciousness, partly the painful necessity of the Lord; the purpose of the temptation, to have Him use His miraculous power for the satisfaction of His own necessity.
Luk_4:4. That man shall not live by bread alone.—In Matthew the citation, Deu_8:3, is quoted more fully, and moreover from the LXX. We need not deny that the Lord uses the declaration in a somewhat different sense from that in which Moses means it; nor is there any reason for referring the appellation “Man” exclusively or principally to the Messiah. In a divinely free manner He uses the word of Scripture to indicate that man, even without the use of bread, may behold his life lengthened and sustained by any means whatever of which God may avail Himself to strengthen his bodily energies. In other words: God does not need His miraculous power in order to allay painful hunger. For that He possesses innumerable means, and the Son will await the way which the Father may please to use.
Luk_4:5. Taking Him up into a high mountain.—As already remarked, Luke assigns to the third and severest temptation the middle place. “Matthœus eo temporis ordine describit assultus, quo facti sunt, Lucas gradationem observat in locis, it describit desertum, montem, templum. Quœ ordinis non modo innoxia sed etiam salubris varietas, argumento est, non alterum Evangelistam ab altero scripsisse” (Bengel). The difficulty, however, which the narrative of Luk_5:8 offers, according to the Recepta, namely, that the Lord, after He had recognized and unmasked the Evil One, can yet admit for the third time discourse with him; this difficulty vanishes if we assume, with Tischendorf and others, that the words, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” are here spurious, and have been transferred from the parallel passage in Matthew.
Showed unto Him.—Of course, ἐí ðíåýìáôé , not one after the other, but all together, ἐí ῥéðῆ ὀöèáëìïῦ , 1Co_15:52.
All the kingdoms of the world.—Not the Jewish land, but the heathen world surrounding it and extending beyond the sight, which is several times spoken of in the New Testament as subject to the prince of this world, while Jehovah is the head of the theocratic state. Besides this, it deserves consideration that the address of Satan to the Lord on this occasion is communicated by Luke somewhat more at length than by Matthew.
For it has been committed to me, etc.—A paraphrase of the preceding words for the benefit and edification of Theophilus and other readers, who were unacquainted or little acquainted with the demonology of the Jews.
Luk_4:7. If Thou, therefore, wilt fall down before me.—We need not here understand an actually idolatrous adoration. It is sufficient if we understand it of an Oriental homage which is often rendered to mighty monarchs, Mat_2:2. As the first temptation is addressed to sensual appetite, this is addressed to the craving for the possession of kingly dignity, upon which the Messiah is conscious of being assuredly able to reckon. The temptation lies in the alternative; dominion without conflict on the one hand, bloody strife on the other, against the might of darkness, if its alluring voice should be repelled. The lie which is at the bottom of the arrogant promise of the tempter (“to me is it committed,” etc.), is truly Satanic; but it is this very arrogance of demand which enables the Lord (Matt.) to know with whom He is striving in this moment, and He has at once the “ ὕðáãå ὀðßóù ìïõ ” ready against Satan, in that He yet again hurls upon him a decisive word of the Scripture.
Luk_4:8. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, Deu_6:13.—According to the LXX., with a variation of ðñïóêõíÞóåéò instead of öïâçèÞóç , on account of the preceding words of Satan. The Lord does not only publicly express the monotheistic principle, but shows at the same time that He will rather dispense with all the kingdoms of the world, however by right they belong to Him, than obtain them in an unlawful way. His answer is a declaration of war; His rejection of the homage He paid for with His life; and so repulsed, Satan could not return the third time. Before it came to this pass, however, that he retreated, still another temptation took place previously; according to Matthew’s accurate account, the second, which, however, Luke relates as the third.
Luk_4:9. And he brought Him to Jerusalem.—Although in itself it is very probable that the Lord, during this period, spent a single day, êáôὰóÜñêá , at Jerusalem (Lange), it nevertheless appears more probable to us that He did not in body leave the wilderness at all before the combat was quite ended. Before the inner consciousness of the Lord, it was, without doubt, as if He stood upon the ðôåñýãéïí , and as respects the ability of the Evil One to transport Him in spirit to a place so entirely different, we may well call to mind the expression of Gregory: “Nil mirum est, si Christus a Diabolo se permisit circumduci, qui a membris illius se perrhisit crucifigi.”
On the pinnacle of the temple, not íáïῦ , but ̔ åñïῦ .—The access to the êïñõöÞ was apparently permitted to no one but the priests and Levites alone, but nothing hinders us from understanding one of the accessory buildings, whose pinnacle constituted a sort of cornice ( ἀêñùôÞñéïí ), and of which Josephus also relates that from it one could throw a look that made him dizzy, into an incalculable depth (Ant. Jud. xv. 15, 11). It is true, if any one cast himself down there he would not descend before the eyes of the citizens of the city, but in the obscure vale of Kedron. But the promise, moreover, is precisely this, that in falling He should not reach the bottom, but in His fall should be held up by the angels, and doubtless be brought into the midst of the astonished inhabitants of the city and frequenters of the temple, who a moment before had seen him, with shuddering terror, upon the eminence.
Luk_4:10. For it is written, He shall give.—“The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose.” And this time he combats the Lord with His own weapons. The passage, Psa_91:11-12, is not Messianic (Usteri), but speaks of the saints in general, and the devil leaves the Lord to draw a conclusion a minori ad majus from the safety of the saints to that of the Messiah, the chief favorite of God. By a literal interpretation of the figurative utterance he tempts the Lord to work a miracle of display, not upon the heart and conscience but upon the imagination of the people, and thus in a few moments to bring about an extraordinary success. This time he works not upon the desire of enjoyment or possession, but of honor and elevation. Now it will undoubtedly have to be shown, whether the Lord really believes the word of the Scripture with which He has already repeatedly defended Himself. He is tempted on the side of that same believing confidence which has just held Him back from turning stones into bread, and the greatness of His triumph consists in this, that He at once discovers the just limit that separates confidence and presumption.
Luk_4:12. And Jesus answering.—The Lord answers a third time with a word of Scripture, out of Deut. (6:16), still more striking in Matt., ðÜëéí ãÝãñáðôáé , rursus. The word of the law which He mentions contains no contradiction of the devil’s quotation from the Psalm, but a rectification of the misuse which the Evil One had made of it. Apart from the special signification of the utterance for the Israelitish people (on occasion of the strife at Marah, Exo_17:2) the Lord gives him to feel that whoever throws himself uncalled into danger in the hope that God will deliver him, displays no heroic courage of faith, but commits an act of presumptuous folly.
Luk_4:13. And when the devil had ended all the temptation.—The coming and ministration of the angels is to be supplied from Matthew and Mark. See, as to this, Lange, Matthew, p. 86. Without doubt, it is in the spirit of the narration if we conceive to ourselves these as invisible witnesses of the combat and triumph of Jesus. (Comp. 1Co_4:9.) While they, soon after the departing of Satan from Him, serve Him whether spiritually or bodily. (Comp. 1Ki_19:5.)
Until a season.—It is a very significant intimation for the apprehension of the whole history of the temptation which Luke gives us in these concluding words. Unwittingly he gives us occasion in these forty days to see not only the beginning but also the type of the different temptations which were perpetually returning for the God-man. Without doubt he has regard, moreover, particularly to the time when Satan entered into Judas (Luk_22:3) and the whole power of darkness rose against the Suffering One. Yet he may also have thought on the activity of the Evil One in opposing the Lord previously to this. Comp. Luk_10:18; Luk_13:16; Luk_22:31.
2. The fact now, which can be derived with sufficient certainty from the different narrations, is apparently this: 1. At the beginning of His course, the Saviour was exposed to temptations to act in direct opposition to the high principles to which He showed Himself faithful through life. 2. These temptations were directly occasioned by the Prince of this world, who wished to bring the second Adam, like the first, to apostasy, in order thus to destroy the work of redemption. 3. The Lord, with clear consciousness and steadfastness, combatted these temptations with the sword of the Spirit (Eph_6:17), and left the field of conflict without a single wound. 4. The Victor, as a sign of the Father’s approbation, was served by the angels of heaven and received their homage.—Every explanation of the history of the temptation which acknowledges what is essential in these great elements of it, deserves from the Christian point of view to be admitted and weighed. In respect to the external side of the fact (the condition of the Lord, the manner of the temptation, the locality, etc.), it will, perhaps, never be possible to find an explanation which satisfactorily resolves all difficulties. Yet this is of less consequence if only the inner significance of the above named facts remains acknowledged, and these, themselves, are not assailed.
3. The history of the temptation throws the brightest light upon the person of the Lord. On the one hand, we learn to know Him here from His own word (Luk_4:4) as a man like His brethren in all things (Heb_2:17); on the other hand, Satan himself proclaims Him as God’s Son (Luk_4:3), and this time, at least, has the father of lies become a witness of the truth. The true humanity of the Lord reveals itself not less in the hunger which He feels than in His capacity of being tempted. His divine majesty shows itself in the manner in which He combats, in the victory which He achieves, in the crown which He wins.
4. Dogmatics has in the treatment of the history of the temptation, the difficult problem, on the one hand, to regard the Lord as truly tempted, so that the temptations do not glide from Him as something merely external, as water from a rock, without making any impression upon His sensibility; on the other hand, to vindicate the word of the apostolic writer, ÷ùñὶò ἁìáñôßáò (Heb_4:15). That both the one and the other, are impossible, if an absolute non potuit peccare is asserted of the Lord, is self-evident. The ἀíáìáñôçóßá of the Lord by no means excluded the possibility of sinning; but on the other hand consisted in this, that He, filled with boundless abhorrence of sin, combatted and overcame it under whatever form it might show itself. Only the Father is ἀðåὶñáóôïò êáêῶí (Jam_1:13), but the Logos, once entered within the bounds of finite humanity, comes through his ὁìïßùìá óáñêὸò ἀìáñôßáò (Rom_8:13) into personal contact with sin. Like every true man, the Lord had a sensuous perception of the pleasant and the unpleasant. For this feeling natural enjoyment must have been preferable to want, honor to shame, riches to poverty, life to death. Upon this feeling the might of temptation works, and whoever in this of itself could already find something sinful, would have to prefer an accusation against God, who originally so constituted our human nature. He would, moreover, be obliged to consider the first man as a sinner born, for in the very commandment of probation and in the added threatening (Gen_2:16-17) the existence of this feeling is presupposed. Every representation by which there is ascribed to the Lord even a minimum of the peccatum originale (Irving) is condemned by the Christian consciousness in the most decided manner.
5. On the other hand, the potuit non peccare, can and must, be vindicated here as vigorously as the realiter non peccavit. He did not awaken the conception of what was evil, of Himself within Himself, but it came from without to Him through the operation of another spirit upon His own. This would have amounted to an inward sin only in the case that the Lord’s will had inclined a moment to practise that which He had learned to know as morally evil. That the three thoughts: to work a miracle for Himself; to work upon the people through outward display; and to attain earthly dominion—considered altogether for itself and as yet without reference to God’s will—had something attractive for His delicate and pure moral sense, is so little to be denied that the opposite, in a true man, would scarcely be conceivable. It lay in the very nature of the case that such conceptions at this moment must produce upon the spirit and sensibility of the Lord a double impression. Why should He otherwise have at once reached out for a weapon with which to combat the enemy? But here we could speak of sin, only in case that the desire for evil had really been awakened, that the wish to be able to give an ear to the Evil One had come up in His sensibility. But of this we perceive no trace. The temptation comes before His eyes in its most alluring colors; He has a living sense of all that it possesses which is attractive; He reflects that He might be able to succumb, yet instantaneously He repels it from Him as something foreign and unhallowed. It places itself before His imagination, but finds no point of attachment in His will; it works upon the øõ÷Þ , yet before this can be stained the tempter is already conquered through the ðíåῦìá .
Two examples for a more particular elucidation. There was as yet no sin when Eve saw that the forbidden tree had its attraction, nor yet when the permission to eat of this tree appeared to her desirable, so long, that is, as she was considering this act without any relation to the prohibition that had been received; only when in unconscious and conscious conflict with the commandment the actual desire rose in her mind, and she was filled with dissatisfaction at the commandment, did sin then creep into her heart, even before she had stretched out her hand after the apple.—It was as yet no sin that the Lord in Gethsemane exhibited a natural dread of death, a natural longing for life; no sin as yet that He in the immediate presence of death, and in the consciousness of being able to escape it, had a double sense of the worth of life, nor was it even as yet any sin that He prayed and wished that the cup might pass from Him: only if He had allowed this wish to prevail contrary to the will of God, after He had clearly perceived this will; if the resolution to submit Himself to God’s recognized will had been preceded by reluctance and conflict; if, in a word, not His deed but His will even had then moved in another direction from God’s will, then would the Man of Sorrows have been also a child of sin.
6. The temptations here vanquished perpetually returned in the public life of the Lord. The first, e.g., Mat_27:40; the second, Joh_7:3-4; the third, Joh_6:14. It cannot surprise us that the Lord, therefore, saw in the entreaty of Peter, Mat_16:22, a Satanic back-ground. To whichever of these temptations He had given a hearing, still either His perfect obedience or His perfect love of man would have been stained, and herewith His perfect capability of being a Redeemer of sinners would have been annihilated.
7. The history of the temptation throws light upon the work of the Lord. We learn here to recognize this as a work that was given Him by the Father Himself to do, which He entered upon with clear self-consciousness, which was preceded by severe conflict, and which was directed entirely to destroying the works of the devil. 1Jn_3:9. In His perfect obedience, the second Adam, He here stands over against the first as the Restorer of the Paradise which Adam lost by his sin. “Adam fell in Paradise and made it a wilderness; Christ conquered in a wilderness and made it a paradise, where the beasts lost their savageness and the angels abode.” (Olshausen.)
8. The threefold temptation of Jesus is the symbol and type of the temptations against which every Christian has to strive. 1Jn_2:16. First temptation =the lust of the flesh; the second =the lust of the eye; the third =pride, of which John says: “It is not of the Father, but of the world.”
9. The temptation of Jesus as it repeats itself, as well in His own life as in the lives of His people, was, on the other hand, in a certain sense adumbrated in the temptations and trials of the most eminent men of God under the ancient covenant. (Joseph, Job, David, and others.) It lies in the nature of the case, that in proportion as one is placed on a higher eminence in the kingdom of God, he is also exposed to severer temptations. It is remarkable that almost at the same time with this temptation of the Lord a similar temptation encountered His Forerunner. See Lange, Leben Jesu, p. 451 ff.
10. The origin of all these temptations, and very especially of the temptation of Jesus, was the working of the devil. The history of His temptation may be called a striking revelation of the existence, the might, the laws, and the working of the kingdom of darkness. The existence of this kingdom of the personal Evil One, is not revealed by the Holy God. It reveals itself in facts like these. It is here shown that there is an Evil Spirit, an enemy of God, and of His kingdom. He knows Christ and hates Him. He uses the Scripture and perverts it; to lead astray is his joy, and lying is his power; God’s word the only weapon that vanquishes him. It is noticeable how the most exalted moments of development for the kingdom of God have been at all times accompanied by an intenser reaction of the kingdom of darkness. Where the history of mankind begins, there the father of lies shows himself. When Israel is about to become a theocratic people, he imitates the miracles of Moses through the Egyptian sorcerers; when the Son of God appears in the flesh, He increases the number of the äáéìïíé æüìåíïé , and seeks to bring Him Himself to apostasy; and when the last development of the kingdom of God approaches, there does he rage most vehemently because his time is short. Rev_20:7.
11. With the best right, at all times, has the Saviour’s “It is written” been considered as one of the strongest proofs for the divine authority of the Holy Scripture. The Christian who regards the whole Bible with the eye with which the Lord viewed the Old Testament, cannot possibly restrict the rule which He gave on another occasion, ὅôé ïὐ äýíáôáé ëíèῆíáé ἡ ãñáöὴ . Joh_10:35. It is remarkable, moreover, of what high importance even those parts of Scripture can be, which to us, superficially considered, appear less important for Christian life and faith. All three citations of the Lord are taken from one book (Deuteronomy), and yet the word of God, out of this one book, is for Him enough to put the Devil and his power to flight. 1Co_12:22-23, holds good, also, of the organic whole of the Scripture.
12. In the inquiry respecting the historical reality of the angelophanies in the life of the Lord, we must above all not overlook their infrequeney, which affords the strongest argument against an invention. From the settlement of the child in Nazareth we have met no angels on His way, and after this appearance we shall not see them in visible form again before the night of Gethsemane falls. Would a writer of myths have been able to content himself with so little? But if now, after the decisive ὕðáãå ὀðßóù ìïõ had been addressed to Satan, no angels had appeared, we should almost have had occasion to doubt the reality of their existence. Comp. Lange, Gospel of Matthew, p. 86: Jésus tenté au desert, trois méditations par Ad. Monod, Paris, 1854.
13. An eminent work of art, setting forth the history of the temptation in a genuine Protestant spirit, has proceeded from Ary Scheffer.
From the Jordan of glorification to the wilderness of temptation. This is the way of God; as with Christ, so with the Christian; and, moreover: 1. An old, and yet an ever new; 2. a hard, and yet a good; 3. a dark, and yet a light; 4. a lonesome, and yet a blessed way.—The temptations which follow a Christian, even into solitude.—Christian fasting in its opposition: 1. To Judaizing fasting, which sees in abstinence from food something in itself meritorious; 2. to heathenish wantonness, which says: “Let us eat and drink, for,” etc.; again, 3. to the ultramontane: “Touch not, taste not, handle not;” 4. to the ultra-Protestant: ðÜíôá ἔîåóôéí , but without the limiting ïὐ ðÜíôá óõìöÝñåé .—Doubt of the truth of God’s word the first way to sin; Song of Solomon , 1. In Paradise, Gen_3:2; so here, Luk_4:3; Luke 3. so always.—The temptation to misuse, ever united with the possession of peculiar power.—The unpermitted ways of providing one’s bread.—“It is written” ( ãÝãñáðôáé ), the sword of the Spirit: 1. How beautifully it glitters; 2. how deeply it wounds; 3. how decisively it triumphs.—Man lives not by bread alone; he cannot, he may not, he need not.—God can in all manner of ways remove the need of His own.—The dangerous mountain heights in the spiritual life.—The Evil One, the prince of this world: 1. Extent; 2. limits of his might.—Never does Satan lie more outrageously than when he promises.—The worship of the Devil in its more refined forms: 1. How old it Isaiah 2. how richly it appears to reward; 3. how miserably it ends.—To worship the Lord and serve Him alone: 1. A difficult; 2. a holy; 3. a blessed requirement.—Even the sanctuary is no asylum against severe and renewed temptation.—The Lord of the temple upon the pinnacle of the temple and—upon the brink of the abyss.—The highest standpoints border on the deepest abysses.—The Devil also a Doctor of Divinity.—The misuse of Holy Scripture: 1. In many ways the letter used as a weapon to combat the spirit; a poetical word as a weapon to contest the requirement of the law; an Old Testament declaration as a weapon to combat a declaration of the New Testament; 2. dangerous, because the word of Scripture, in and of itself, is holy, finds an echo in the spirit, and is used with so much craft; to be vanquished only by a right, that is, an intelligent, persevering searching of the Scriptures, prompted by the longing for salvation.—No angels’ help to be expected for him that would tempt God.—The ministration of angels to the saints: 1. How far to be expected; 2. how far not.—What is it to tempt God? Why is this sin so great? How is this sin best avoided?—When the Scripture is used believingly, wisely, and perseveringly, there must the Devil at last give way.—When the Devil gives way, it is still always “for a season;” every time he comes back in order: 1. To mislead; but also, 2. to be combatted; and, 3. to be conquered anew.—The angels come to serve Him who has refused their help when it would tempt God.—The noblest triumphs over the kingdom of darkness are celebrated in secret.—Heaven is a sympathizing witness of the conflict carried on on earth.—God permits no one to be tempted above his power of resistance, but gives with the temptation the way of escape. 1Co_10:13.
Starke:—Whoever gives himself to be guided by God’s spirit, like Christ, comes, it is true, into temptation; but yet he also comes out again.—Satan seeks in particular to make God’s children doubtful of their being his children.—The weapons of Christ and His Christians are not carnal, but yet mighty before God.—The glory and joy of the world is brief and momentary:—When the Devil is not ashamed to lie to Christ’s face, of what, then, is he to be ashamed?—Osiander:—Whoever, to obtain honor and happiness, professes a strange religion, worships the Devil.—Nova Bibl. Wirt.:—The Devil is a lofty-seeming spirit; let us, in the might of God, destroy all high things, and in the low valleys of humility be quiet and still.—The Devil can, it is true, strongly draw saints toward sin, but not constrain them by force; persuadere potest, precipitare non potest.—Jerome:—The Scripture is the only rule and standard of our faith and life; to that let us cleave. Psa_119:105.—As Satan continually comes back, so does God come ever back to help us.
Stier:—How the threefold tempter of the wilderness repeats himself with added strength in the passion.—Rautenberg:—Christ is tempted even as we, yet without sin. This word is: 1. A light for our blindness; 2. a spur for our slackness; 3. a staff for our weakness.—Bachmann:—The temptation of Jesus was a temptation: 1. To doubt of God; 2. to presuming upon God; 3. to apostasy from God’s word.—Oettinger:—In the kingdom of God there is: 1. No spiritual consecration without spiritual trials; 2. no spiritual trials without spiritual weapons; 3. no spiritual weapons without spiritual victory.—Arndt:—The temptation of the Lord: 1. Its character; 2. its importance so far as it is set forth, (a) representatively, (b) figuratively, for us.—Fuchs:—The means to a victory over the temptations of the Devil: 1. Watch continually, in every place; 2. watch and pray evermore; 3. use diligently God’s word.—Van Oosterzee:—The temptation in the wilderness the image of the conflict of the Christian life: 1. The temptation; 2. the enemy, 3. the attack; 4. the weapon; 5. the victory; 6. the crown. Finally, the question: If you fight against Christ, how can you still have courage, if you fight under Christ, how can you still be anxious?—The three temptations of the Lord: that in the morning, the noon, the evening of life. Sensuality especially the sin of the youth, ambition especially that of the man, avarice especially that of the old man. Whoever has overcome the first of these three temptations must count upon the second, whoever sees the second behind him will soon be covertly approached by the third. But in these all, we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. Over against forty days’ temptation in the first stand the forty days’ peace and joy in the second life of the Lord.
Footnotes:
Luk_4:2.—The adverb is wanting in Codd. B., D., L., [Cod. Sin.], etc., and probably is to be expunged as by Lachmann, Tischendorf and Meyer, because apparently inserted from the parallel passage, Mat_4:2.
Luk_4:4.—Van Oosterzee omits the clause, ἀëë ’ ἐðὶ ðáíôὶ ῥÞìáôé Èåïῦ , supported by Tischendorf, but against Lachmann and Meyer. Meyer remarks that “it is supported by almost all the old versions and fathers, and that, if it had been inserted from Mat_4:4, would as a vox solennis have doubtless been more precisely like that passage.” Alford omits it, Tregelles brackets it. Cod. B. and Cod. Sin. both omit it.—C. C. S.]
Luk_4:5.—Text. rec.: åἰò ὅñïò ὑøçëüí . The genuineness of this reading is at least doubtful [omitted by Codd. B., L., Cod. Sin.], and to be regarded as a paraphrastic emendation from Mat_4:8, and is therefore omitted by Tischendorf, [Tregelles, Alford, and defended by Meyer, with reason, as absolutely necessary in the text.—C. C. S.]
Luk_4:8.—Text. rec.: Ὕðáãå ὀðßóù ìïõ , óáôáíᾶ . Apparently an interpolation from Mat_4:10. At least it is wanting in Codd. B., D., L., [Cod. Sin.], most versions, and in fathers of authority, and is moreover a serious (and, at the same time, critically suspicious) obstacle to the harmony of the evangelical narratives.