Tempted in All Points by L. A. HANSEN

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 15, 1910

Tempted in All Points

By L. A. HANSEN

L. A. HANSEN

“For we have not an high priest which can not be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” Heb. 4: 15, 16. We may obtain mercy and find help in time of need because Christ was tempted in all points like as we are, and is therefore touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

In the fifth chapter of Hebrews we read that it was “in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears,” that he “learned obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.” He learned by experience what strong crying and tears are, and what things the flesh must suffer, being thus fitted to become our high priest.

It may be difficult for us to understand how Christ was tempted in all points like as we are. We may sometimes consider the life of Christ, as presented in the Gospels, with a view to seeing how it can cover the experiences and temptations that come to us in our own lives. The recorded life of Christ does not seem to include just such temptations as ours. In fact, we think of some things in our own experience with a shrinking horror at the thought of connecting them in any way with the Christ-life. We are content, perhaps, with thinking that in a general way the germ, or principle, of all sin and temptation was bound up in the things that are recorded as having been met by him.

The record of the public ministry of Jesus, the last three and one-half years of his life, offers untold treasures in overcoming grace. It is impossible to exhaust the store of spiritual help that is here found. No suggestion is permissible that would imply that anything is wanting. But it is in place to suggest that there was more to the life of Jesus than is given in the record. That the long thirty years of his life, on which there is almost silence, must have abounded with experiences and trials, conflicts and victories, in our behalf, will surely not be doubted by any.

The more careful study we give to the public life of Christ, the more may we understand that it was the expression of principles and experiences gained in his previous private life. Those thirty years must not be passed over as of little moment in the perfecting of Christ as the Captain of our salvation. What he suffered during those years, how nearly his character was formed at their close, and how much they had to do with it, remain untold.

It is recorded that on two occasions the Father himself spoke from heaven. One of these was at the baptism of Christ, when he said, “Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” This was at the close of the thirty years, before his public ministry, before he had given a sermon or spoken a parable, and ere he had wrought a single miracle, or done any mighty works. Gethsemane, with its last test of the will and final conquest, was distant. Even the wilderness experience of temptation and victory was future. This approbation was evidently upon the thirty years of the Nazareth life of obedience to the Father’s will.

If we fail in finding our exact lot and portion presented in the recorded life of Jesus, may we not believe that these were fully met in that long part of his life that is unwritten? If his public-ministry life was unlike our sphere, can we not see in his private home life, with its every-day experiences, plenty of room for just such things as befall every one of us? Surely we may know that the word is true that he “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”

Takoma Park, D. C.