Luke 4:1 And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, Temptation does not cease as we rise in She scale of moral elevation. Even Jesus, the highest, the holiest, the Messiah, was tempted; as truly as the vilest drunkard or profligate amongst ourselves is tempted, though in a very different way. Temptation never ceases, but it alters its form. As we rise in the moral scale by victory over it, it rises also, becomes more refined, takes a subtler and (if we may say so)a nobler form; so that to know what a man's temptations are, is to know what the man himself is. We may be known by our wishes, our hopes, our fears; and we may be known also by our temptations. To fall short of the ideal of the Messiahship was the Messiah's temptation. It was sin in its most refined and subtle form of shortcoming, failure, missing the mark. With Him it was no question of transgression; He was far above that; it was missing the ideal, nothing more, nothing worse, a mere trifle, we might think; yet to Jesus Himself this to us seeming trifle was agony. And is there not an ideal for every one of us? Is it not in us to be something, which we are not yet; to fill our place in the world, however small it be, in a higher, better, nobler way than we have yet learned to fill it? (D. J. Vaughan, M. A. .) Parallel Verses KJV: And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, |
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