The first of the three great temptations, when the forty days’ exposure to the devil was ended, was the suggestion which appealed to the Lord’s feelings of hunger. “If Thou art Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” Why not? He was God’s Son; He was hungry. Surely it was an admirable opportunity to prove His divine mission, as well as to satisfy the natural need of the body. Could He not turn stones into bread? This was what may be called the natural appeal. The second (at least in the Gospel of Luke, who was inspired to present the temptations in their moral order, whether or not the order of historic sequence was preserved) was the worldly appeal — the offer of all the kingdoms of the world on condition of Christ’s doing homage before the devil. The third (in Luke — for Matthew here keeps to the simple order of the facts and shows it was the second historically) was the spiritual appeal, and so not merely on the pinnacle or edge of the temple, but through the Word of God. But in all, the Holy One of God defeated the devil, and this through the Word used in obedience.
Thus we have seen the Lord entirely refuses the temptation to make the stones bread. It was the devil’s suggestion, not God’s word, which itself, and not bread, is the true food of the believer’s life. With unwavering perfectness Christ lives as man, the Son of God on earth, by the word of God; He does homage to Jehovah His God, and serves Him only, as the Son of Man, and trusts Him as the Messiah, not tempting Him as did the people of old in the desert. And here remark a feature in this scene which distinguishes Christ from others who might seem to approach Him, at least circumstantially. Moses and Elijah fasted forty days, but Moses was in the presence of God, sustained so long on high, and Elijah was miraculously fed by an angel before entering on a similar term of abstinence. It was not so with the Lord Jesus, who was in the presence of Satan, unlike the one, and was without any such previous sustenance as the other had enjoyed.
It is true the Lord Jesus did not come into an earth stainless and happy, but fallen. But to argue thence that He was in a fallen condition of humanity is utterly, inexcusably, impiously false. He could and did suffer, no doubt, from hunger, thirst and weariness, but these things are in no way the index that human nature was fallen in Him, but of the circumstances through which humanity, holy or unholy, might pass. In his innocence Adam had no such experience; after his fall this and more was his lot. The holy person of Jesus did know these circumstances and magnified God in them; what have they to do with the state of His humanity? with its holiness as contradistinguished from a fallen or an unfallen Adam’s? Who will venture to affirm that Adam, if kept from food even in Eden, would not have suffered from hunger? The argument is worthless, save to betray the will to depreciate the Lord of glory. The grand vice of it all is merging Him as much as possible in the fallen condition of the race. If innocent human nature had to do with a paradisaical state, certainly neither fallen humanity nor holy humanity when here below was spared from tasting the bitterness of a wilderness world. This therefore does not affect the momentous point of the different state of humanity in Adam fallen and in Christ even while living here below. Thus the argument founded on our Lord’s suffering hunger and thirst and weariness is a manifest sophism, because it confounds the circumstances which humanity may experience with humanity itself. It assumes from these circumstances an identity in the state of manhood contrary to the most express teaching of the Bible and to all true knowledge of Christ. God tells us the facts to enhance our sense of the Saviour’s grace and exalt His moral glory in our eyes; man, set on by Satan, hastens to pervert the facts so as to tarnish His humanity and debase His person.