Temptation of Christ: Resisting Sin

The gospels were presenting another credential, another proof that Jesus is Messiah.

When you test something, it has to be a real test, otherwise it doesn’t prove anything. When a bridge is built, certain guarantees go with the bridge:
* It is guaranteed not to fall apart.
* It is guaranteed to hold up a certain amount of tonnage over a certain period of time.
* It is guaranteed to withstand all kinds of weather and other stressors.

All those guarantees are backed up by test after test. Every test is documented, proving the guarantees are genuine. No test, no guarantee.

The temptations God allowed Satan to test Jesus with were real, they tested Jesus to the limit of His emotions and intellect, to the limit of His physical, emotional and intellectual strength. The test was going to reveal whether Jesus, being a man, was also a sinner.

"Sin" is a Greek word, referring to an archer missing the mark with his arrow. Anything less than a bull's eye is sin. The "mark," in Biblical terms, is God's glory, and God's law. God's glory is the Spirit of His law, the beauty of His holiness. God's law expresses His righteousness and is the ultimate standard for inner and outer lives. Every human misses achieving this standard, this "mark;" every person sins. But Jesus never did. How?

Jesus was delivered from sinning by the same means you and I have access to today. He was filled with the Holy Spirit, just as believers are today, and He had studied God's word in the same way you and I are studying God’s word here today.

He memorized scripture exactly the way any other ordinary person sets about memorizing something -- He did the plain hard work of getting God's word into His mind for the Spirit to recall when He needed it.

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