The Temptations of Christ
Hebrews 4:15 teaches us that Christ had both a weakened human nature (He was “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” and “in all points tempted like as we are”) and a sinless human nature (“yet without sin”).
This raises questions about Christ’s temptations. How could He be tempted if He was sinless? How could the temptations be real if it was not possible for Him to sin?
That His temptations were real is clear from Scripture. When they were finished He needed the ministry of angels (Matt. 4:11). That does not answer the questions, however.
Some say that it was possible for Christ to sin in His human nature but not in His divine nature. This, we believe, is an unacceptable answer. It ends by saying what we must not say, that He was not perfect. Even if it were true that He was able to sin only in His human nature, it was nevertheless He, the only begotten Son of God, who was able to sin! That is blasphemous talk.
Without pretending to be able to explain the great mystery, that “God was manifest in the flesh” (I Tim. 3:16), we believe that Scripture does help us to understand His temptations.
We should understand that the New Testament really uses just one word where we have two words in English, “temptation” and “trial.” By using just one word the Bible teaches us that temptation and trial, which seem so different to us, are just two different sides to the same spiritual struggle against Satan and sin. When Satan “tempts” us, God is at the same time “trying” us.
That is a tremendous testimony to God’s sovereignty over sin and Satan, a testimony we make every time we pray to God, “Lead us not into temptation.”
It is also helpful in understanding Christ’s temptations.
It means that when Christ was being “tempted” by Satan, He was also being “tested” by God. When we think of His temptations in that way, it is somewhat easier to understand that He could be “tempted” without even the possibility of sin and to understand why He was tempted.
His “temptations” were a great spiritual battle against sin and Satan, a “test” sent by God to prove to us that He was in fact without sin. From that point of view it is not necessary even to think of the possibility of His sinning.
It is important for us to understand this. His sinlessness in the struggle against Satan is part of our encouragement in the same battle. We must “look unto Jesus” lest we grow “wearied and faint in our minds” (Heb. 12:2-3). Rev. Ron Hanko
An Earthly Millennium? (2)
“Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Matt. 11:11).
In Jesus’ beautiful vindication of John the Baptist’s ministry recorded in this chapter, Jesus says something apparently contradictory about John: he is the greatest born of women, but he is also less than the least in the kingdom of heaven. How can that be?
We must remember that the kingdom of heaven, which Jesus speaks of in this text, was not established until Jesus had come to perform His work of suffering and dying, rising and being exalted in heaven.
In the old dispensation God gave His people many pictures of the kingdom of heaven, pictures which are sometimes in Scripture called “types” or “shadows.” The people of Israel lived in an old dispensational theocracy, which was a picture of the true and eternal kingdom of heaven which Christ would establish. All that belonged to that theocracy were also pictures, in their own way, of different aspects of the kingdom. But the kingdom itself was always yet to come, for it was spiritual and heavenly—as the saints themselves understood.
All the prophets also prophesied of the coming of that kingdom, and their prophecies were eagerly read so that the saints who lived in expectation of that kingdom could learn all that was possible to know about it (I Pet. 1:10-12). They were like a man and his wife who read all the travel brochures of America because they want to know all they can about it before travelling there to see it.
John the Baptist was one of these prophets. He was one of them because he talked about the same thing: the coming of the kingdom (Matt. 3:2). But he was one of them also because he lived and preached in the old dispensation.
Even though his life and ministry are described in the New Testament, he lived and died in the Old. He died before Christ’s work had been performed and the real and heavenly kingdom established.
But although John lived and died in the old dispensation, he was the greatest of all the prophets because he lived the closest to the new dispensation, preached the baptism of repentance and pointed out “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,” and actually baptized the Lord Himself. The nature of the work which John performed made him the greatest of all the prophets, of all those who were born of women.
Yet, at the same time, John is also less than the least in the kingdom of heaven. How can this be?
The very lowliest person in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John because that lowliest of persons lives in the dispensation of the kingdom—and John never did.
The kingdom is so blessed and so glorious that the very least in it is greater than one who never lived in it on this earth.
We can, I think, illustrate that.
Supposing that you, a rich and powerful executive, had 20 excellent and costly picture books of Singapore. And supposing that the little boy next door, very poor and without much education, had none. If that little boy were, by a generous neighbour, taken on a trip to Singapore, actually to be there, to walk its streets, to taste its food, to live with its people, to smell its smells—that boy would be greater than you with all your books.
Books are nice and the pictures are beautiful. But they are not the real thing. I may show my pictures of Giants’ Causeway to someone who has never been there and it may impress him with the beauty of the place, but you have to be there personally to appreciate it. You have to smell the sea and hear the crash of the waves. You have to pick up the stones and roll them between your fingers. You have to walk the paths and look up at the hills or down on the cove. No pictures can take the place of being there.
So it is with the kingdom of heaven. It is so great, so wonderful, so blessed, so filled with riches, that the very least in the kingdom is greater than John—he who, though being the greatest of the prophets, lived and died knowing nothing but the pictures.
Let us be thankful for what we have! It is a great gift of grace. Prof. Herman Hanko
Did Adam Have the Moral Law?
A question arises from our previous discussion of the permanence of the moral law: was the law as given to Adam the same in essence as the moral law of the Ten Commandments?
Obviously, if the moral law is permanent and an expression of the very nature of God Himself, it would seem to follow that it is from the beginning and that the law which Adam had must have been in essence the moral law.
This is, indeed, what Scripture teaches. Romans 5:13-14 clearly teaches that the moral law is from the beginning. Specifically, these verses say something about the law during the period from Adam to Moses, that is, up to the time that the Ten Commandments were given to Moses at Mount Sinai.
On the one hand the passage makes it clear that there is a sense in which the law was not given until Moses (“until the law”). Nevertheless, as verse 13 indicates, there must have been law in the world before that time “for sin is not imputed when there is no law.” And sin definitely was imputed to all those who lived during the time from Adam to Moses (and to Adam also).
The difference between the time before Moses and after, therefore, was only this: that at Mount Sinai the law which was in the world from the very beginning was written in tables of stone as Ten Commandments.
That law which was in the world from the beginning was essentially the same as the moral law given to Moses in the Ten Commandments. Romans 5 also makes that clear.
Normally, when referring to the law of Moses, the Greek New Testament is very careful to refer to it as “the law” in distinction from law in a more general sense. Yet in Romans 5:13 the Greek New Testament speaks of the law of Moses simply as “law,” not “the Law” (this is not clear from our English translations). Literally in Romans 5:13 we read, “Until law, sin was in the world” (the word “the” is not actually present in the Greek).
Romans 5:13 refers to the law of Moses simply as “law” in order to identify it with law in general—law as it was given from the beginning, even from Adam to Moses. That is, the law as given at Sinai belongs to law as it has always been in the world.
One more evidence, however, that the moral law and the law by which Adam lived are the same is the fact that both have the same penalty. God said to Adam, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:17). The penalty attached to the moral law is the same: “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Gal. 3:10). Rev. Ron Hanko
