Luke 4:2b. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I believe this is quite an understatement. If you didn’t eat anything for forty days, how hungry would you be? But the hunger of Jesus sets up the next verse and the first temptation. And by the way, before we look at Luke 4:3, it is an age old theological question whether Jesus could have sinned or not. Well, I have read all the books, and studied all the arguments, and my current opinion is… “I don’t know.”<\/p>\n

I know that in His deity, He could not have sinned, for God cannot sin, nor is tempted by anything (Jas 1:13). But Christ was certainly tempted in His humanity, and probably to a much greater degree than we are, because He was tempted by Satan.<\/p>\n

Think about it this way: How much temptation does it take for you to sin? For most of us, it doesn’t take much at all. We have a sinful flesh that will lead us off into temptation every chance it gets. And so Satan doesn’t have to come and tempt us, or even send some of His minions to do the job. Our flesh causes us to sin at the drop of hat, and so he doesn’t have to expend any energy tempting us.<\/p>\n

This is so true that probably not a single one of us will ever, in our entire lives, be directly tempted by Satan himself. He is not like God who can be everywhere at once. He can only be in once place at one time, and with over six billion people on the planet, he probably has more important things to take care of than tempting you to cheat on your taxes or watch that dirty movie. Your flesh will lead you off into those temptations all by itself, no help from Satan required.<\/p>\n

But Jesus was tempted directly by Satan because Jesus was without sinful flesh. This is what Hebrews 4:15 means when it says that He was tempted in all ways as we are, but without sin. He had no sinful flesh to tempt Him like we do, and so was tempted directly by Satan, just as Eve (and Adam, if he was by her side) in the garden.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, let’s turn to look at the first temptation in verse 3.<\/p>\n

Luke 4:3. And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Satan is saying, “Since you are the Son of God[3], use your divine gifts to satisfy your own fleshly desires.” There is a sense of the devil mocking Jesus here. Satan is saying, “How pathetic. The Son of God is struggling with hunger. That’s so human. Come on, you’re better than this. You deserve more. Go ahead, make some bread for yourself. You know you want it.”<\/p>\n

This is kind of a “bread from heaven” idea that Satan tempts Jesus with. The Israelites got to eat bread when they were hungry and in the wilderness. It came down in the form of manna from heaven. Satan is saying, “Jesus, you are hungry too, and you are in the wilderness, just like they were. God gave bread to them. He’ll let you use your power to make bread for yourself. Go on. It’s okay. God won’t mind.”<\/p>\n