To God be the Glory FOREVER, AMEN AND AMEN! ! !

Actually, these verses are difficult because they involve two issues, the nature of temptation and the nature of Christ. The first we have experience with; with the second we as human beings have no experience, and we must rely on the simple statements of Scripture.

The Greek term for "temptation" could also be translated "test." Human beings are tested to see if we will obey God when the chips are down (see Gen 22:1, the classic example of passing a test). We are tested to see if we will remain faithful when there is nothing to win (for example, Job 1--2). We are tested to see if our hearts are truly for God or whether we are trying to serve two masters (Jas 1:14-15; compare Jas 4:3-4). Jesus experienced all of these things. In Matthew 4 Jesus faces three tests, parallel to the tests of Israel in the wilderness: (1) When he appears to be starving will he, like Israel, demand that God feed him? He passes the test and refuses, being willing to trust God to the point of death if necessary. As long as God has said, "Fast," he will fast. (2) Could he be certain that God would care for him? Why not test God to be sure that he would come through? Jesus passes this test because his trust in God is unshakable. He will not put God to the test, for he has genuine faith. (3) Will God really give him the kingdoms of this world? Does that not look impossible, since Satan controls them? Is not God's way an unlikely and difficult one? One little compromise is all it will take to bring the kingdom without pain. Jesus again passes the test because he refuses to compromise with evil, however enticing or even spiritual it may seem. Thus Jesus demonstrates he is God's true Son, as Israel in the wilderness proved to be a false son. These three examples are precisely the same types of tests that we as human beings face.

But what makes us fail the test? James (Jas 1:14) and Paul (Rom 7:17) trace the cause to a principle within us that James calls "desire" and the Jews called the "evil impulse," or yeser. None of the writers believe that this is guilt-producing in the sense that simply to have it made one guilty. Rather it was just "desire"--or what a psychologist might call a "drive." Food is desirable because I am hungry; shelter is desirable because I am cold. But hunger also makes my neighbors' food desirable. Likewise their house or clothing might be desirable if I were cold. As we see in observing a baby, drive or desire has no moral boundaries. Part of becoming godly is to learn when to say yes to desire and when to say no. Err on the side of saying no too often and one might become an ascetic, refusing God's good gifts, or possibly even die. Err on the side of saying yes too much and one becomes a libertine, breaking God's boundaries in some way or another. Satan's destructive purposes are served by either error.

Did Jesus have desire? The answer, found in Hebrews, is that he "has been tempted in every way, just as we are." Matthew 4:2 states that he was hungry. The drive or desire was present. Likewise we assume that all other normal human drives were present. He felt thirst, weariness, sexual desire, loneliness and all else that we feel. Some of these he felt to the extreme. Think of the loneliness that he felt when he cried out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus was, according to this text and the witness of the New Testament in general, fully human.

The one exception to human experience we find in Jesus is that he did not sin. In Matthew 4 he never gives in, but passes each of the tests. In Gethsemane he struggles mightily, but in the end says, "Not my will, but yours." At the cross he surely felt the impulse of pain and anger as he was stripped naked and nailed to the crossbar, but his response is "Father, forgive them." To each situation, Hebrews asserts, he gave the proper response in the sight of God. He was without sin. Could he have sinned? Scripture never enters into such philosophical speculation. But it certainly implies that there was virtue in not sinning and that the test was real, which seems to imply the possibility of failing. One point, however, Hebrews makes crystal clear: whether Jesus could sin or not, the issue in the end is academic. He did not sin.

Although the church through the ages often practically has denied the humanity of Christ, picturing him as more divine than human, it has refused to allow that distortion doctrinally. The creeds assert that there were not two natures, as if the human nature would feel something and the divine nature would give the right response. There was also no attenuation of the human nature so that he experienced human feelings in some less intense manner than other human beings. He was, the creeds assert, fully incarnate, everything that we as human beings are, except that he never sinned. While the creeds are not Scripture, they safeguard what the author of Hebrews is attempting to express: Jesus experienced testing just as all of us do.

The reason for this dogmatic statement is important. According to Hebrews 4:15, Jesus can "sympathize with our weaknesses." He can do this, the argument runs, because he has experienced the same type of weaknesses. He may be exalted at God's right hand now, but he fully and experientially understands all that human beings are going through. "Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted" (Heb 2:18). One must have experience with a situation to be helpful in the sit- uation, but even then one will not be helpful unless the experience is successful. A person who failed a test is hardly the one to coach another on how to prepare for the test. Jesus took the very same test as we do, indeed, a more intense form of the very same test. But he passed. He "was without sin." He did not fail in any way. As a result he can in fact respond with true sympathy to human beings now suffering under testing, for he truly "feels with," having himself felt the same pain and impulses. He can also show by example the successful way through the test.

The Incarnation is a mystery, but the witness of Hebrews is that it was real. There is no way Jesus was not like us, except in our sinning. Offensive as this may be to the mind, which prefers a Greek view of a God untouched by real human feelings and testings, it is comforting to the heart, which is precisely why the author of Hebrews taught it.

One might object that a major part of human experience is that of guilt, which Jesus could not share because he did not sin. Such a response would be correct when one considers Jesus' life, but it breaks down at the cross. There Jesus did take sin upon himself--even if it was not his own--experiencing fully what it means to be guilty before God. In fact, because he knew God so well, it is likely that he experienced our guilt far more keenly than we do. Therefore there is truly no human experience other than the act of sinning with which Jesus cannot identify.