The Temptation of Jesus

After Jesus is baptized, he immediately is led by the Spirit to the wilderness where he is tempted for 40 days. Just as Jesus’ baptism signified the new promised land, his time in the wilderness parallels the time that Israel spent in the wilderness before entering the promised land.

(A side note - Jesus just had a very public encounter with the Holy Spirit, and then disappeared for 40 days. Did anybody wonder what happened to him? Did he tell anyone where he was going? He didn’t have his disciples yet and there’s no park ranger, so who knew about his “wilderness plan"? Was John the Baptist his wilderness buddy? Just curious.)

Forty Days in the Desert

Jesus’ temptation, unlike his baptism, is accounted in only three of the gospels¹ and we see from reading the accounts that Jesus was: led into the desert by the Spirit, full of the Holy Spirit² and tempted by the devil for forty days. The three temptations that we read an account of occurred at the end of those forty days.³ (Again, my mind curiously wonders what the devil was tempting him on for the rest of the forty days.)

I don’t know about you, but being tempted for a full forty days sounds tiring enough, and since we know that Jesus had a physical body, he would have experienced all the same bodily feelings and emotions any of us would have felt if we had been in a desert with wild animals and no food for forty days.⁴

Watch and Pray

Knowing the physical state in which Jesus would have been in during these final three temptations, we can more deeply understand Jesus’ words to Peter before he is betrayed when he says,

“Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”⁵

Jesus says this because he truly knows what it feels like to be tempted. He knows what it feels like to be full of the Holy Spirit and yet how weak the flesh can become. Jesus is giving his disciples his first hand experience of overcoming temptation. He knows the power of prayer to resist temptation, because he spent the forty days fasting⁶, and we know that this means he was also praying, because fasting is always connected with prayer in the Bible.⁷

Preparing Our Hearts

The next time we are tempted, we can be reminded of Jesus’ weak flesh at the time of his temptation—his hunger, his exhaustion, his loneliness—he understands our physical needs. But he also knows that prayer and the Holy word of God are the antidote to giving in to the flesh. His example gives our flesh the strength we need to follow in his footsteps as we resist temptation with a willing spirit.

1. Matthew 4, Mark 1, Luke 4

2. Matthew 4:1, Luke 4:1

3. Luke 4:2

4. Mark 1:13

5. Matthew 26:41

6. Matthew 4:2

7. Daniel 9:3, Nehemiah 1:4, Acts 13:2-3