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Christ Was Tested But Did Not Sin
To have simple inclinations to material or worldly goods, to appreciate them for what they
are worth, is natural and in no way blameworthy. Temptation, as we have seen, arises when
the desire for these things is incongruous with, or forbidden by, one's state in life or
one's vocation. In the case of Our Lord, His temptations consisted in being shown genuine
goods (things proportioned to human inclinations and not sinful to choose in themselves),
with, however, the price tag of compromising His own mission and supremacy. In other
words, it is one thing to choose bread when one is hungry; it is another thing to make
bread out of stones or to jump off the temple and preserve oneself from harm, simply to
prove that one is divine (hence Christ keeps in mind the words of Scripture: "Thou
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God" you shall not ask of God gratuitous signs of
His power, when the evil can be resisted without miraculous intervention). It is one thing
to rule over the earth, which Christ already does (the devil could not offer Christ what
already belonged to Him in virtue of His universal kingship); the situation is far
different when the arrangement suggested by the devil includes bowing down to worship him.
When Christ had suffered the wrong of being tempted by the devil who said, If Thou be the Son of God cast Thyself down, He was not troubled, nor did He upbraid the devil. But when the devil usurped to himself the honor due to God alone, saying, All these things will I give Thee, if, falling down, Thou wilt adore me, He was exasperated, and repulsed him saying Begone, Satan: in order that we might learn from His example to bear bravely insults leveled at ourselves, but not to allow ourselves so much as to listen to those insults which are aimed at God.9
The temptation for Christ was not the bread, the earthly dominion, or the demonstration
of power, for all these were fully His by right if He should wish to have them. The devil
owns or commands nothing save what the Lord allows him to interfere with for a time (cf.
Job 1-2). Christ was tempted rather in the sense that He allowed the devil, whom Scripture
calls "the tempter" or the one who tests (Mt. 4:3; 1 Th. 3:5), to mock and tease
Him with offers of relief and pomp contrary to Christ's divine mission. Being a man with
the power of free will, he was free to give ear to Satan's offers if He so willed; yet the
mystery of Christ, as of His Blessed Mother, teaches us that in Him, and, as a result of
His grace, in her, there was no room for capitulation, there were no stirrings of sin. In
an effort to gauge whether or not Christ was the Son of God, the devil vainly thought he
might succeed in stirring up evil inclinations in the Messiah.
As the Apostle says, Christ wished to be tempted in all things, without sin. Now
temptation which comes from an enemy can be without sin, because it comes about by merely
outward suggestion. But temptation which comes from the flesh cannot be without sin,
because such a temptation is caused by pleasure and concupiscence; and, as Augustine says,
it is not without sin that the flesh desireth against the spirit. And hence Christ wished
to be tempted by an enemy, but not by the flesh.10
As we stated at the beginning, it is not sinful to have disordered concupiscence, one of many sad inheritances from our disobedient first parents; sin occurs only when we act upon a desire for something evil. But when we bear in mind that our Lord, perfect God and perfect man, had no disorder in His soul and thus no interior temptation (or in the words of St. Thomas, "temptation which comes from the flesh"), the converse becomes evident: if Christ had truly desired what the devil offered Him, He would have sinned. In his folly the father of lies thought he could lead Jesus into sin, and that alone was his goal. Yet his ignorance prevented him from seeing that the Lord could have no inclination to serve a rebel whose malicious designs were transparently clear. As a man our Lord rebuffed the devil severely and sent him away, to give us an example of what to do when the devil or his servants whisper suggestions in our ear. Instead of exercising His divine power to cast the devil away, He allowed the devil to approach and make his vain suggestions, repelling him thereafter by means of the authority of the Law "so as to give more honor to His human nature and a greater punishment to His adversary, since the foe of the human race was vanquished, not as by God, but as by man," comments Pope St. Leo.11 He conquered once and for all the human temptation to strike bargains with the devil. He would not compromise His redemptive mission, a mission that was meant to include, for reasons largely hidden to us, forty days of fasting in the wilderness.
The distinction we drew earlier between two kinds of temptation can be applied to Christ in the following way. Our Lord was tempted "passively," that is, He allowed Himself to be tempted by an enemy outside of Him, the devil, who presented highly desirable goods to Him things which it would nonetheless have been wrong for Christ to desire or consent to within His heart. Because Christ was fasting in obedience to the Holy Spirit (Mt. 4:1; Mk. 1:12; Lk. 4:1), He did not consent to make stones into bread, although He had already announced that by the Father's will the very stones might become sons of Abraham (cf. Lk. 3:8; Lk. 19:40). Christ had more than twelve legions of angels at His beck and call (Mt. 26:53), but He would not tempt the Lord by making a show of power (Mt. 4:7; Lk. 4:12). Christ is indeed the King of heaven and earth, the King not only of individuals but of societies and nations as well; but He will not parade His authority like a self-admiring political potentate least of all, at the cost of prostrating Himself before the devil into whose hands the decadent vanity of these earthly kingdoms had fallen. But Jesus was not tempted "actively"; He did not undergo or experience the motions of unlawful desire that accompany an intention to pursue the objects presented to Him. Our Lord saw that the bread, the help of angels, and the earthly kingdoms have some goodness in them what would it mean to say that He was tempted if He did not at least appreciate the significance of what the devil was offering in mockery? but He did not feel in His heart a stirring to possess these things, certainly not on the insolent terms offered by His enemy. Far from drawing Christ aside from His redemptive mission, the devil's stratagem turned against itself like a trap sprung upon the hunter. Satan found out who this man truly was and in that moment tasted his own ultimate defeat. Christ's temptation proved to be a bitter reproach to the "prince of this world" (Jn. 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), even as it furnished an invaluable lesson to us who meditate on the confrontation. Christ Himself, the monarch and high priest of creation, stood to lose nothing from His encounter with a spirit over whom He has absolute authority.
Peter A. Kwasniewski is studying for a Doctorate in Philosophy at The Catholic
University of America, concentrating on medieval philosophy.
Endnotes
1. Summa Theologi¾ (ST) Ia, qu. 48, art. 5, obj. 3.
2. Sermons on the Lord's Prayer, IX.
3. ST Ia, qu. 44, art. 4, ad 3.
4. Qu¾stiones disputat¾ de malo qu. 2, art. 7, corp.
5. ST IIa-II¾, qu. 35, art. 4, ad 2.
6. ST Ia, qu. 48, art. 6, ad 3.
7. Qu¾stiones disputat¾ de veritate, qu. 5, art. 3, ad 1.
8. Summa contra Gentiles Lib. III, cap. 69.
9. ST IIIa, qu. 41, art. 4, ad 6.
10. ST IIIa, qu. 41, art. 1, ad 3.
11. Sermon 1, De Quadrag. 3, quoted in ST IIIa, qu. 41, art. 4, corp.