JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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To argue that because Jesus was sinless He could not have experienced real temptation is
to assume that if a person does not commit certain sins it must be because he never felt the
appeal of them. But that is simply not true. We can all testify to that. How much more so in the
case of Jesus!
Jesus' temptation was not exactly like ours in that He did not experience the
consciousness of past sin. But neither did Adam, our representative. And he (Adam) fell! Jesus
actually felt the power of temptation much more than we ever have or will. Only the person who
does not yield to a temptation knows the full extent of that temptation.
The person who yields to a particular temptation has not felt its full power because he
gives in before its awful enticement. We reach our limits in withstanding the agonies of the pain
of temptation and collapse before its awesome force. The awful allurement, the tension, is
relieved when we sin.
Jesus is the only human being who has never given in to sin. He is the only one who has
endured to the utmost the strength of temptation. He is the one person who has known and felt
the full power and depth of temptation by the ultimate tempter himself—Satan, and yet did not
succumb. Never was man tempted as He was!
The Bible is clear in pointing out that Jesus experienced every kind of temptation:
"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weak-
nesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are,
yet without sin" (Heb 4:15).
"Tempted in every way—just as we are" shows Jesus' identification with us in our
temptations. The only difference, which is a huge difference, is that He was "without sin."
HUMAN SUFFERING
Jesus was able to identify with man in His suffering only because He was and is a man.
It was through His sufferings that He was really identified with men. If Jesus had come into this
world in a form in which he could never have suffered, He would have been different from
people, and because He would have been different from people, He would have been no Savior
for people. Jeremy Taylor put it:
"When God would save men, He did it by way of a man."3
How opposite the Greek idea of God! Whereas the basis of the Greek concept of God is
detachment, the basis of the Christian idea of God is identity. It was through His sufferings that
Jesus identified Himself with man at the deepest core of his (man's) being.