THE AGENT OF
TEMPTATION
Next as to THE AGENT OF THE TEMPTATION. Matthew says, "To be tempted of the devil";
(Matt 4:1) Mark, "Tempted of Satan"; (Mark 1:13) Luke, "Tempted of the devil." (Luke 4:2) The emphasis here is upon the fact that in the wilderness
experience Jesus
came face to face with the prince of the power of the air, with the god of this
world, with Lucifer, son of the morning, fallen from his high estate of the
first rank of heaven, and now leader of the hosts of darkness.
There have been many attempts to
account for the temptation in other ways. It has been suggested that some man
or company of men visited Him in the wilderness, and voiced the suggestions of
evil; some even holding that the tempter was a member of His own family, who
followed Him into the wilderness, and, with motives not unmixed with concern
for Him, yet became the voice of evil. As all this is pure imagination, and has
not the slightest warrant in Scripture, it must be dismissed at once as false.
The more serious error is that the
temptation arose from the natural operations of the mind of Christ. This is as
unwarranted as is the other. As evil was presented to the first man from
without, so also was it to the second. But no time need be taken with these
futile attempts to discount the actual accuracy of the scripture narrative. One
of the chief values of this account of the temptation lies in the fact that Jesus here dragged
Satan into the light, and revealed to all His followers the fact of his
personality, and the method of his operations.
TO DENY THE PERSONALITY OF SATAN IS
TO DENY SCRIPTURE. It is moreover to reflect upon humanity in a way that is
unwarranted by the whole scheme of revelation. If there be no personal devil, then all the
evil things that blot the page of human history are the outcome of human nature.
This is not possible of belief. Evil is not a natural product of God's
humanity. It is not a process of evolution. To hold that, in the last
analysis, is to make God the Author of sin. It is evident therefore that to deny the
personality of Satan is not to escape the problem of evil. If the
Bible account of the fall of man is not correct, there yet remains the unsolved
problem. While freely granting the mystery, man refuses to believe that the
genesis of evil lies within the fact of human nature, accepting the teaching of
Scripture that the problem lies further back, evil having originated prior to the creation of
man. Revelation takes man no further back than the fall of the
angels, which is declared and not explained. From that fall came the first
movement of evil in human life, and the ruin of a race. The Head of the new
race goes back to the point of the origin of evil in man, and confronts the
personality, who is the head and front of the offending.
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