Mat 4:1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the
wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
Jesus was LED by the
SPIRIT with the purpose of being TEMPTED of the devil.
This is TRUTH!
I know I've talked
about it before but it needs talking about again and again. Jesus COULD be
tempted! Really and truly TEMPTED. Jesus had the ABILITY to sin, it wasn't
stripped from Him. Too many want to
believe that it was impossible for Him to sin, that He had some sort of sin
repelling shield around Him, that because He was GOD in FLESH, He was above
being able to sin and that's a LIE.
Why would ANYONE
waste their time trying to tempt someone who is above succumbing to temptation?
Trying to tempt a dead person would be just as profitable as trying to tempt
someone above succumbing to sin.
Jesus HAD to defeat
Satan just as if He were one of us or else it would prove nothing. God
defeating Satan we'd expect, right? There is no real contest there at all.
We KNOW God can
defeat Satan, He created Him. However, He created him as an Angel of Light, and
then Satan chose to let sin enter His heart changing him, separating himself
from God. We know if God had wanted to
He could have destroyed Satan right then and there when sin began. So, why
didn't He? Because God is NOT a God who dictates, He's NOT a puppet master. God
created beings with free will. Giving the beings free will is what love is all
about, recognizing the power of that love.
God did not destroy Satan instantly because it would prove nothing other
than God's ability to destroy those who choose to separate themselves from Him.
It wouldn't have proven WHY that separated being is a being without love and
destined to a life of pain and heartache.
When Satan chose to separate himself from God there was a result of that
separation and to witness that result -all the beings of all the worlds would
need time to understand why destroying the being choosing sin was much better
than letting sin reign, than letting separation from God in the created beings,
exist.
Before humankind was tempted to join Satan in sin God had a plan for that possibility. He had a great hope that the plan wouldn't be needed but He'd create a new and different being, a being more like Him than the angels, and He gave the new creatures the freedom to choose as well.
On their own the new
beings did NOT sin. They didn't. They chose NOT to sin of their own accord.
However, when Satan tempted them, when he challenged them, lied to them using
his own evil sinning ways to do so, they relented and succumbed to the temptation.
They chose to
believe another and in choosing they separated themselves from God by not
believing in Him. They couldn't have
believed Him, that He'd told the truth about their choosing to disobey. God offered them everything except the fruit
of one single tree. That tree represented trust and faith in God, their
Creator. If they trusted Him and believed Him they wouldn't eat that fruit.
Still God did not
wipe these new beings out of existence. Instead of doing that He did what ONLY
love could do. He offered a sacrifice of Himself. God with God, one God
declared the Father, the other declared the Son. The Son was decreed to die, willingly die in
order to offer salvation to His new beings.
This love wanted to repair the breech, to heal the separation introduced
by sin. This love wanted life for His creations, not death, not sin.
God declared the Son
divested Himself of His God powers when He took on human flesh. Not only did He
NOT put on the flesh of an adult human being, He put on the human flesh of a
helpless, dependent infant. He endured
life and all its pains. He teethed as a child, He fell down and scraped His
knee as a child. He endured the hardships of the life of one not born into
royalty, not born into wealth. He felt hunger pangs, He became thirsty in need
of water. He took on human flesh fully and the only power He used as He grew up
into adulthood and onwards was the power of His Father. Yes, He knew His Father in heaven. He knew
that He faced the challenge of trusting and believing in the Father's truth.
Raised to know the God of the Jewish people, His knowledge took on a special
knowing through the choice not to sin, to NOT separate Himself from the Father.
Each and every childhood temptation He faced left Him only stronger in His faith,
stronger in His relationship with the Father.
When He was led of
the Spirit of God to the wilderness to be tempted by Satan He was strong in His
relationship with the Father. You see, when Jesus became a human being just
like us, He became a flesh and spirit being.
His spirit was one with God the Father's spirit. Just because He took on flesh did not mean He
was completely spiritless. To be like us in all ways He had to be part spirit,
just as we are. There is a part of us that can only be satisfied by reuniting
with our God. That part of us millions and millions of people try to satisfy
with other things only to be guaranteed to fall short of being truly
satisfied. We are only sincerely
satisfied when we are reunited with our Father and our Savior Jesus Christ
through the Holy Spirit.
More tomorrow by the
grace of our LORD and SAVIOR, now and forever….
Amen.
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