The Temptations of Christ
Within the bible we can read many accounts of the life of Jesus. There are actually four whole books wholly devoted to just his life. Through these four books we get a very in depth look at his life. Yet in the books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we see different views and different aspects on Jesus and his teaching. Every once and a while we notice that more than one of these books have the same story in them. This is not a common occurrence within the four books of Jesus' life, but when it does happen it is important to take notice, because more than one author thought the story was important to include. There is one story within these books that I have taken time to study. Found within the books Matthew, Mark and Luke the bible accounts of Jesus being lead by the holy spirit into the wilderness. Here he spends 40 days without any food and during that time he is tempted by Satan himself. This temptation helped insure our salvation because Jesus did not fail. Of the three accounts of Jesus' temptation, the first of the three can be found in Matthew 4:1-11. Here we are told that Jesus was lead out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit so that he could be tempted by the devil. It says that he became very hungry becaus
e he had no food. The devil soon came at began to tempt him to use his Godly power to turn stones into bread. Jesus replied with the answer " No, the scriptures say that people need more than bread, they must feed on every word of God." I personally see this as a very difficult test because hunger is something that seems only quenchable by food, but every temptation including hunger is quenchable by the power of God. Then Satan tempted Jesus by taking him to the highest point of the temple and told him to jump off, possibly to make Jesus question if God was actually there and would rescue his son. Within this temptation Satan even used scripture to aid his temptation. To paraphrase what he said, "if you are the son of God, you can jump and your father would save you." With that temptation Jesus replied by saying "the scriptures also say not to test the Lord your God." Then the final temptation Satan offers him the control over the whole world, the power to do anything he wanted here on earth. The only catch was that Jesus would have to bow down and worship Satan himself. Jesus replied by saying "The scriptures say that we are only to serve and worship one God and that is the Lord your God." Every one of the temptations tested different aspects of Jesus' character. They tested his physical willpower, his emotional willpower, and his mental willpower. Every temptation we face with our lives test those aspects as well. This gives us a better understanding of how human Jesus really was. His temptations had the same pulls as our own temptations do but we can learn by example. The last account of the Temptation of Jesus can be found within the book of Luke. Luke 4:1-13 is probably the longest of the three accounts. It starts by telling us that he left for the wilderness from the Jordan River, where if you read through the third chapter of the same book you see that it is in the Jordan were Jesus was baptized. This shows that it is right at the beginning, when Jesus knew that he must begin his ministry, he was called into the wilderness to be tempted. While spending forty days in the wilderness, it says t
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1428
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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