The Redeemer Comforted After Ending the Test

Christ Triumphant - A Devotional by E.G. White

The Redeemer Comforted After Ending the Test

Today's Text: Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him. Matthew 4:11

The Message:      After the foe had departed, Jesus fell exhausted to the earth. He had endured the test, but He now was fainting on the field of battle. What hand was there to be put beneath His head? How was He to be given care and nourishment so that He might regain His strength? Was He to be left to perish after gaining the victory? Oh, no; the angels of heaven had watched the conflict with intense interest, and they now came and ministered to the Son of God as He lay like one dying. He was strengthened with food, comforted with the message of His Father's love and the assurance that all heaven triumphed in His victory. He returned from the wilderness to proclaim with power His message of mercy and salvation.      What if Satan had gained the victory? What hope would we have had? Christ came to reveal to worlds unfallen, to angels, and to the human race that in God's law there is no restriction that we cannot obey. He came to represent God in humanity. He met every requirement that we are asked to meet.-Manuscript 155, 1902 (Sermons and Talks, 2:219, 220).      In their conflicts with Satan, the human family has all the help that Christ had. They need not be overcome. They may be more than conquerors through Him who has loved them and given His life for them.... The Son of God in His humanity wrestled with the very same fierce, apparently overwhelming, temptations that assail us-temptations to indulgence of appetite, to presumptuous venturing where God has not led them, and to the worship of the god of this world, to sacrifice an eternity of bliss for the fascinating pleasures of this life. Everyone will be tempted, but the Word declares that we shall not be tempted above our ability to bear. We may resist and defeat the wily foe.      Every soul has a heaven to win and a hell to shun. And the angelic agencies are all ready to come to the help of the tried and tempted soul. He, the Son of the infinite God, endured the test and trial in our behalf. The cross of Calvary stands vividly before every soul. When the cases of all are judged, and they are delivered to suffer for their contempt for God and their disregard of His honor in their disobedience, not one will have an excuse, not one will need to have perished. It was left to their own choice who should be their prince, Christ or Satan. All the help Christ received, every person may receive in the great trial.-Letter 116, 1899.

Commentary: My friend, the tests that were brought to bear upon the Son of God are the same temptations that are brought upon us.  Yet He was able to overcome those temptations through the same power that is available to us.  God offers to us the power to overcome sin in this life.  He offers to us the victorious life of His Son that we may be presented before Him without spot or wrinkle.  His experience may be ours by the indwelling of Jesus within our hearts. Before His death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven, Jesus told His disciples that He would send to them another Comforter saying "And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;  Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.  I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you."  (John 14:16-18).  In these verses Jesus is not saying that the Father will send another being, but that He would come to them in another form; in the form of the Holy Spirit.  Notice that the last verse says "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." For the whole of the Christian world to include the Seventh-day Adventist church it interprets these verses to prove that the Holy Spirit is a separate being from the Father and the Son, but this is not so.  Just before this in John 14:6 Jesus says that He is "the way, the truth, and the life", and in verse 17 He says of this Comforter "but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you."  He was speaking to them in parables because they were not able to understand the plain truths that He was sharing with them.  He was saying that He is the Comforter to come, but not in the flesh but in the Spirit. My friend, the trinity teaches that the Holy Spirit is another being separate from the Father and the Son.  It teaches that the one that the Father sends to us is not the Spirit of His Son, but the Spirit of another being that is to guide us, comfort us, and give us victory over sin in the flesh.  But how can this being comfort us in temptation if he does not know what it is like to battle with sin in the flesh, and has not gained the victory over sin in human flesh?  The answer is that he cannot. My friend, the Comforter is not the spirit of another being, but is the Spirit of Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit is the Comforter, and the Comforter is Jesus Christ the righteous.  The Greek word for Comforter, used only by John, is the same word that is translated as advocate in 1 John 2:1.  Therefore we can read that verse in this way "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an comforter with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:". May you look unto our Comforter Jesus Christ the righteous that He may impart His perfect life in you today. God bless,

Video of the Week Jeroboam and the Historian - Daniel Mesa Daniel Mesa shows how the Seventh-day Adventist church has been corrupted by the trinity in the story of Jeroboam when the nation of Israel was split into two nations.