The temptations of Jesus came from without, from the devil. No temptation could take hold of Jesus, for though indeed He had two wills, divine and human, His human will was always in complete harmony with His divine will, and could never turn against it and consent to sin. When, therefore, Jesus was tempted, His temptation could only come from without, as was also the case with our first parents in Paradise.
Why our Lord was tempted.
1. Because He came into the world to fight and overcome sin and Satan. The Saviour began His strife with the infernal serpent as soon as He began His public life, by victoriously repulsing Satan’s three temptations. He gloriously carried on the strife to the end, crushing the serpent’s head by His Death and Resurrection.
2. Because the Son of God wished to do violence to Himself, and abase Himself in order to redeem us. It was a great humiliation to the Son of God that Satan, the essence of all that is evil, should approach Him and dare to try to tempt Him to sin and disobedience against God. O Divine Saviour, how low didst Thou stoop, even to exposing Thyself to the contact and seductions of hell!
3. Because Jesus is the spiritual Father of mankind, and the second Adam. He desired, therefore, to be tempted as was the first Adam, in order to expiate the Fall of our first parents. Compare the temptation of Adam and Eve, and the temptation of Christ. The former took place in the midst of the beauty and abundance of Paradise, the latter in the bare desert, and when our Lord was in a state of painful hunger. Satan tempted our first parents to gluttony, pride and the lust of the eyes; and succeeded. He tried to allure our Lord to the same three lusts; and was overcome. Angels came and drove Adam and Eve from Paradise; whereas angels came and ministered to Jesus.
4. In order to show us how to meet temptations to evil.
5. In order to comfort and encourage us in the many trials and temptations of this life. St. Paul writes thus: “For we have not a High Priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities: but One tempted in all things like as we are, without sin. Let us go, therefore, with confidence to the throne of grace: that we may obtain mercy and find grace in seasonable aid” (Hebr. 4, 15. 16).
The different kinds of temptation. In the first temptation Satan wished to induce the Saviour, instead of trusting in God and patiently enduring hunger, to create bread by His own power, against His Father’s will. He sought, therefore, to make our Lord sin by sensuality and an unlawful desire for food, or in other words by gluttony. By the second temptation Satan tried to awaken a spiritual pride in Jesus, saying: “Throw yourself down; God will help you and see that no evil befalls you!” The cunning seducer wished thereby to change a humble and submissive confidence in God’s mercy into a proud
