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“And Jesus…was…forty days tempted of the devil. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he [the devil] departed from Him for a season” (Luke 4:1-2,13).
Before He started out on His earthly service, the Lord Jesus was tempted by Satan in three different ways. Satan was trying to get the Lord Jesus to sin by tempting Him with the same kind of temptations that he uses on us. Some people would say that this was to see if the Lord Jesus would sin, but it is more accurate to say that this was to prove that He could not sin. If the Lord Jesus had had a sinful fallen nature (as we do), He could have given in to these temptations. But our Lord simply quoted Scripture, and Satan was defeated. The temptations proved who He was—the Son of God.
There are some dear believers who would say that the Lord Jesus was capable of sinning, but did not. This is a blasphemous thing to say, for if He could have sinned, then He would have had a sinful nature. Then He could not have died for us, and we would have no Savior. But, blessed be His name, “He did no sin” (1 Peter 2:22), “In Him is no sin” (1 John 3:5), and “He [God] hath made Him [the Lord Jesus] to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). In every way the Word of God guards the Person of the Lord Jesus.
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