Glory to Golgotha-Spiritual Reading
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from glory to go go to controversial issues in The Life of christ. Written by Donald Mccloy I'd Chapter four christ really tempted. In the previous chapter, we looked briefly at the question where the christ human nature was fallen, arguing that it was not too many minds. However, this immediately suggests a difficulty. How then could he be tempted? There can be no denying the reality of the Lord's temptations. The new testament pointers are too explicit. He was led into the desert to be tempted by the Devil Mark 1 12. He can help those who attempted only because he himself has been tempted Hebrews 2 18 and his temptations, although without sin were exactly like those of his brethren. Hebrews 4 15. In every instance, the temptation was repelled and our Lord remained sinless, but he did not win these victories effortlessly in the desert. The struggle is preceded by a lone fast at caesarea philippi. When peter became the devil's mouthpiece, the Lord's rebuke. Get thee behind me. Satan is so sharp as to suggest that the temptation has struck a raw nerve in gas Simoni. The agony of resistance is so intense that the Lord sweats great drops of blood and cries to God with strong crying in tears at last. Indeed God's will is embraced and done, but the temptation is not repelled easily and automatically. On the contrary, the narrative conveys the very distinct impression that the Lord has to summon all his resources, internal and external to repel this last great attack of the adversary foothold. But what foothold would temptation have found in christ? What was the point of contact? We cannot accept the premise that only fallen or sinful beings can be tempted unless we are ready to believe that God actually created sinners, we must hold that sin is the result of temptation rather than temptation, the result of sin. This was certainly the case with the first atom as originally created. He was good and upright only through temptation did he fall into sin and that temptation itself entirely external. Adam was not morally and spiritually neutral. He was positively holy. And yet temp table. It was the same with christ. The prince of this world had nothing on him, John 1430. There was no evil passion to mortify and no sinful proclivity to which temptation could address itself. Where then, did satan find a point of contact? The answer must be surely in his humanness, his humanness had no vices, but it did not have deep basic instincts. He was perfectly sinless. He could not simultaneously gratify those instincts and obey. He had to choose. And it was the necessity of such choice which made temptation possible. It would be irreverent to probe too deeply into what these instincts were. But there are some things which can be safely deduced from the Gospel narrative. For example, the Lord had an ordinary human need for food, and it was this which made possible his first temptation in the desert equally. He had human social instincts, and these would lead him to shrink from any course of action which would distress his family and friends. For the same reason, he could dread a line of duty which involved at last utter friendliness and loneliness. Again, he instinctively shrank from sin. Yet his duty meant intimate involvement with it. He must live a month Senate. He must be identified with them and be reputed one of them. At last, he would be dealt with simply as a center. It was not an holiness to shrink from that on a deeper level. Still, there was a point of contact for the Tempter in The Savior's love for God from eternity he had been with God seeing his face and being assured of his love, to fear the loss of these things. To be tempted to avoid losing them was no sin. The temptation would be strong precisely in proportion to his holiness. He trembled before the Cross, not only from ordinary instincts of self preservation, but from the terrible knowledge that emit not simply death, but the loss of God God, whom he had never lost before, and in whose company he had gone up both of them together from Bethlehem to calvary. We may also say it would have been a sin to not be tempted to put away the cup. Such a desire was no vice, but a holy passion to restrain.