4:15 For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin.
In the preceding verse we were urged to “hold fast [our] profession.” The reason we can do this – the reason we must do this – is because we have such a high priest.
The priests of the Old Covenant, as indeed the priests of most of the world’s religions, held themselves aloof from the people. They emphasized their separateness, their holiness. In fact there are many even within the Church today who teach that leaders should hold themselves apart from their people. Far be it from them to allow anyone to see them as having any human needs or weaknesses!
Jesus was not like that. Even though He alone, of all mankind, had the right to hold Himself apart from the rest of man, He did not do so. He chose to partake fully in humanity, laying aside everything that it meant to be God and being made like us in every way. Not only that, but He chose to come as a man at the humblest level. He was born into a family that was so poor that it could not afford the regular offering for purification after the birth, but had to bring the “poor man’s alternative” of a pair of doves or two young pigeons. (Luke 2:24, Leviticus 12:8) He lived as an ordinary man among ordinary people, sharing with them all the hardships of life in the Middle Eastern world of 2000 years ago. He knew what it felt like to be human! He knew what it was like to be poor!
He knew what it was like to be part of a despised, persecuted, downtrodden race. He could have chosen to come like Paul, a Jew who could proudly say that he had been born a Roman citizen, with all the privileges that involved. Instead, He chose to be born into a family who came from Nazareth, a town considered even by the Jews to be “the pits”. Those from Nazareth were despised even by their own people.
He also knew what it was like to be subjected to temptation. It is difficult for us to get our heads around the concept that the One Who was God in the flesh could be truly tempted, but temptation is common to the human experience, therefore the One Who was representing humanity had to experience it.
In fact, temptation was essential to the fulfillment of His mission on earth. His task was to undo what had been done by Adam. God gave man free will, and our first parents used that will to chose the devil’s way rather than God’s. Therefore the Second Adam had to also have free will – there had to be a real possibility of Him choosing other than God. And He had to freely use that will to chose God’s way rather than the devil’s. We may wrestle with the question of what would have happened if He had chosen sin, but the possibility had to be real.
If we think for a moment about just the temptations in the wilderness after His baptism, we will see how real these temptations must have been. The first one invited Him to turn stones into bread. He had been fasting for 40 days. (Note, this was a true 40-day fast; nothing passed His lips for 40 days. It was not 40 1-day fasts with a meal at the end of each day, as some people do and claim to have fasted 40 days) He was hungry, weak, and very much in need of food. Most of us could have readily justified doing this. Eating would in itself not have been sinful. He had completed His fasting time, so He would not be sinning by breaking the fast. The power of the Holy Spirit within Him had been instrumental in creating the universe – surely it would not have been sinful to use that power to create the food He needed. The temptation was real, and strong.
But He knew that the sin would not lie in the act itself, but in the motivation: a desire to justify Himself, and to become his own source of supply rather than looking to the Father as His supply. If He had done this, He would have been acting as God to Himself – the very temptation to which Adam and Eve had yielded.
Then the devil tempted Him to take the rulership of the world without having to go through the cross: “All this I will give you, if you bow down and worship me.” Looking forward through the years, knowing the physical pain, the mental and emotional anguish and humiliation, and the spiritual defilement that He would have to experience, this must have been a very real temptation indeed. Who of us would not willingly take up an offer to reach our goals without any suffering?
The last temptation was to presume upon God. The devil even used Scripture to back that one! How wrong could it be for the Christ to claim the Scripture and show Himself to be God’s beloved Son? Many would see it as simply a demonstration of faith. In fact, many have done so and learned to their great loss that God has no obligation to back presumption. We presume upon God when we tear promises out of His Word and attach them to things that He has not authorized. I think, for instance, of the young girls in the Indonesian revival who thought that, because Jesus walked on water, they should do so too. They tried to walk across a flooded river and, tragically, drowned. God had not told them to do it, and did not back their presumption.
These were by no means the only temptations that came to Jesus. Even though we are not given details of others, we can be sure that the devil was constantly attacking Him throughout His life, just as he attacks us. Temptation is common to man.
The difference is that Jesus did not at any point yield to those temptations. Sin is not a natural part of man’s make-up, but the result of our choices. Jesus made the right choices every time, and remained without sin.
Sometimes we excuse our sin by saying, “Well, I’m only human after all.” Jesus was the most fully human person who has ever lived, and He did not sin. Being human does not make us sinners; making wrong choices does.