LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Tasters from the King's Table
Are You the Christ, the Son of God?
Autor
Satan said to the Lord Jesus: "If you are Son of God, command that these stone become bread." The criminal on the cross told him: "If you are the Christ, save yourself and us."
When uniting both temptations, we have: "If You are the Christ, the Son of God..." The apostle John wrote, almost at the end of his gospel: "But these (things) are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name. (20:31).
In his first epistle, the same apostle writes: "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God:..." and later on he adds: "And who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" (5:1,5).
When Satan and the criminal tempted the Lord, they did it in the two most painful moments of his terrestrial life: amid the hunger of the desert and in the pain of the agony on the cross. Both aimed their darts toward the most painful part, because each one of them went toward unknown yet essential facts; Jesus' two fundamental attributes: His character as the Anointed, and as the Son of God. They attacked nothing less than His Person and His qualification to do the Work of God as the Messiah.
The temptation consisted in moving him to act: in the first case to transform stones into bread, and in the second, to survive the death on the cross. The Lord Jesus had the power to do both; however, having it, he didn't act in either sense. For Him it was more difficult to be refrained than to act, because he had the power to do it.
But that is not all: if he had given in, the temptation would not only have conquered him, but also, John would not have been able to write: that to he who believes in Him has life in His name, he is born again, and conquers the world. Would it not have been a great disgrace, the greatest ever?
But that didn't happen. Jesus conquered both temptations, and today as Christians we can affirm resolutely that which the devil and that wretch tried to ignore in those days: "Lord Jesus, You are the Christ, the Son of God!".