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To Be Tempted

Matthew 4:1-2 footnote from The OSB

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

(Matthew 4:1, NKJV)

“And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.”

(Matthew 4:2, NKJV)

Matthew 4:1

To be tempted is to be tested in fundamental areas of faith. As in Mark, the Spirit leads, or “throws”, Jesus in to the wilderness after His Baptism to be tested by a struggle with the devil. We who are baptized in Christ need not be defeated by temptations because we too are aided by the Holy Spirit. The wilderness is a battleground, an image of the world, both the dwelling place of demons and a source of divine tranquility and victory.

Matthew 4:2

Jesus reverses Israel’s falling to temptation in the wilderness. The Israelites were tested forty years in the wilderness and proved disobedient and disloyal. God humbled them by first letting them go hungry and then feeding them with manna to help them learn to be dependent on Him (Deuteronomy 8:2-51). Here, Jesus is tested with hunger for forty days, but He does not sin. His answers to Satan are from Deuteronomy, and all call for loyalty to God.

Jesus fasted to overcome temptation, giving us an example of our own power and limitations in the face of temptation. The hunger of His flesh does not control Him; rather, He controls His flesh. Our Lord’s fast of forty days is the foundation of the Church’s forty-day Lenten fast before Holy Week and of the fast before Christmas.

  1. “Now you shall remember the whole way the Lord your God led you in the desert, to deal harshly with you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He dealt harshly with you and weakened you with hunger, and fed you with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word proceeding from the mouth of God man shall live. Your garments did not wear out on you, nor did your feet become callused these forty years. You should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you.” (Deuteronomy 8:2-5) ↩︎