When we want a deep problem to study, let us fix our minds on the most marvelous thing that ever took place in earth or heaven–the incarnation of the Son of God. God gave his Son to die for sinful human beings a death of ignominy and shame. Ms. 76, 1903.
The humanity of the Son of God is everything to us. It is the golden chain that binds our souls to Christ, and through Christ to God. This is to be our study.
Christ was not in as favorable a position in the desolate wilderness to endure the temptations of Satan as was Adam when he was tempted in Eden.
The Son of God humbled himself and took man’s nature after the race had wandered four thousand years from Eden, and from their original state of purity and uprightness. Sin had been making its terrible marks upon the race for ages; and physical, mental, moral degeneracy prevailed throughout the human family.
When Adam was assailed by the tempter in Eden he was without the taint of sin. He stood in the strength of his perfection before God. All the organs and faculties of his being were equally developed, and harmoniously balanced.
Christ, in the wilderness of temptation, stood in Adam’s place to bear the test he failed to endure. Here Christ overcame in the sinner’s behalf, four thousand years after Adam turned his back upon the light of his home. Separated from the presence of God, the human family had been departing, every successive generation, farther from the original purity, wisdom, and knowledge which Adam possessed in Eden. Christ bore the sins and infirmities of the race as they existed when He came to the earth to help man. In behalf of the race, with the weaknesses of fallen man upon Him, He was to stand the temptations of Satan upon all points wherewith man would be assailed…In what contrast is the second Adam as He entered the gloomy wilderness to cope with Satan singlehanded! Since the fall the race had been decreasing in size and physical strength, and sinking lower in the scale of moral worth, up to the period of Christ’s advent to the earth. And in order to elevate fallen man, Christ must reach him where he was. He took human nature, and bore the infirmities and degeneracy of the race. He, who knew no sin, became sin for us. He humiliated Himself to the lowest depths of human woe, that He might be qualified to reach man, and bring him up from .the degradation in• which sin had plunged him. RH, Aug 4, 1874/ 1 SM 271-280, July 28, 1874
Jesus was sinless and had no dread of the consequences of sin. With this exception His condition was as yours. You have not a difficulty that did not press with equal weight upon Him, not a sorrow that His heart has not experienced. His feelings could be hurt with neglect, with indifference of professed friends, as easily as yours. Is your path thorny? Christ’s was so in a tenfold sense. Are you distressed? So was he. How well fitted was Christ to be an example! … It is not as a man bending under the pressure of age that Jesus is revealed to us traversing the hills of Judea. He was in the strength of His manhood. Jesus once stood in the age just where you now stand. Your circumstances, your cogitations at this period of your life, Jesus has had. He cannot overlook you at this critical period. He sees your dangers. He is acquainted with your temptations. He invites you to follow His example. Letter B-17, 1878
Had He not been fully human, Christ could not have been our substitute. ST, June 17, 1897
While bearing human nature, He (Christ) was dependent on the Omnipotent for His life. In His humanity, He laid hold of the divinity of God; and this every member of the human family has the privilege of doing. Christ did nothing that human nature may not do if it partakes of the divine nature…If we repent of our transgression, and receive Christ as the Life-giver, our personal Saviour, we become one with Him, and our will is brought into harmony with the divine will. We become partaker of the life of Christ, which is eternal. We derive immortality from God by receiving the life of Christ; for .in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. This life is the mystical union and cooperation of the divine with the human. ST 23:5, June 17, 1897
Unless there is a possibility of yielding, temptation is not temptation. Temptation comes and is resisted when man is powerfully influenced to do a wrong action, and knowing that he can do it, resists by faith with a firm hold upon divine power. This was the ordeal through which Christ passed. In His closing hours, while hanging upon the cross, He experienced to the fullest extent what man must experience when striving against sin. He realized how bad man may become by yielding to sin. He realized the terrible consequence of the transgression of God’s law; for the iniquity of the whole world was upon Him. MS 29, 1899, p.4 (Manuscript Release No. 347)
Adam was tempted by the enemy, and he fell. It was not indwelling sin which caused him to yield; for God made him pure and upright in His own image. He was as faultless as the angels before the throne. There was in him no corrupt principles, no tendencies to evil. But when Christ came to meet the temptations of Satan, He bore “the likeness of sinful flesh”. ST, Oct 17, 1900
Those who claim that it was not possible for Christ to sin, cannot believe that He really took upon Himself human nature. But was not Christ actually tempted, not only by Satan in the wilderness, but all through His life, from childhood to manhood? In all points He was tempted as we are, and because He successfully resisted temptation under every form, He gave man the perfect example, and through the ample provision Christ has made, we may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption which is in the world through lust.
Jesus says, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne”. Here is the beginning of our confidence which we must hold steadfast unto the end. If Jesus resisted Satan’s temptations, He will help us to resist. He came to bring divine power to combine with human effort. Ms 141, 1901.
In His humanity Christ was dependent upon the Father, even as humanity is now dependent upon God for divine power in attaining unto perfection of character. ST 33:422, July 3, 1907
We are not to serve God as if we were not human, but we are to serve Him as those who have been redeemed by the Son of God, and through the righteousness of Christ we shall stand before God pardoned, as if we had never sinned. ST 38: (531), Aug 29, 1911
Christ’s overcoming and obedience is that of a true human being. In our conclusions we make many mistakes because of our erroneous views of the human nature of our Lord. When we give to His human nature a power that is not possible for man to have in his conflicts with Satan, we destroy the completeness of His humanity. His imputed grace and power He gives to all who receive Him by faith.
The obedience of Christ to His Father was the same obedience that is required of man. Man cannot overcome Satan’s power without divine power to combine with his instrumentality. So with Jesus Christ: He could lay hold of divine power. He came not to our world to give the obedience of a lesser God to a greater, but as a man to obey God’s holy law, and in this way He is our example. The Lord Jesus came not to reveal what a God could do, but what a man could do, through faith in God’s power to help in every emergency. Man is through faith, to be a partaker in the divine nature, and to overcome every temptation wherewith he is beset.
The Lord now demands that, every son and daughter of Adam, through faith in Jesus Christ, serve Him in human nature which we now have. The Lord Jesus has bridged the gulf that sin has made. He has connected earth with heaven, and finite man with the infinite God. Jesus, the world’s Redeemer, could only keep the commandments of God in the same way that humanity can keep them. (MS 1, 1892)-(BC 7:929).
E.G. White