THE FIRST TEMPTATION
Knowing that Our Lord was hungry, Satan pointed down to some little black stones that resembled round loaves of bread, and said:
“If Thou art the Son of God, Bid these stones turn into loaves of bread.”
Matthew 4:3
The first temptation of Our Blessed Lord was to become a kind of social reformer, and to give bread to the multitudes in the wilderness who could find nothing there but stones. The vision of social amelioration without spiritual regeneration has constituted a temptation to which many important men in history have succumbed completely. But to Him, this would not be adequate service of the father; there are deeper needs in man than crushed wheat; and there are greater joys than the full stomach. The evil spirit was saying, “Start with the primacy of the economic! Forget about sin!” He still says this today in different words, “My Commissar goes into classrooms and asks children to pray to God for bread. And when their prayers are not answered, my Commissar feeds them. The Dictator gives bread; God does not, because there is no God, there is no soul; there is only the body, pleasure, sex, the animal, and when we die, that is the end.” Satan was here trying to make Our Lord feel the terrific contrast between the Divine greatness He claimed and His actual destitution. He was tempting Him to reject the ignominies of human nature, the trials and the hunger, and to use the Divine power, if He really possessed it, to save His human nature and also to win the mob. Thus, he was appealing to Our Lord to stop acting as a man, and in the name of man, and to use His supernatural powers to give His human nature ease, comfort, and immunity from trial.
What could be more foolish than for God to be hungry, when He had once spread a miraculous table in the desert for Moses and his people? John had said that He could raise up children of Abraham from the very stones; why, then, could He not make bread of them for Himself? The need was real; the power, if He was God, was also real; why then was He submitting His human nature to all the ills and sufferings to which mankind is heir? Why was God accepting such humiliation just to redeem His own creatures? “If You are the Son of God, as you claim to be, and You are here to undo the destruction wrought by sin, then save Yourself.” It was exactly the same kind of temptation men would hurl at Him in the hour of His crucifixion.
“Come down from that cross, If Thou art the Son of God.”
Matthew 27:40
The answer of Our Blessed Lord was that even while accepting human nature with all it’s failings and trials and self-denials, He nevertheless was not without Divine help.
“It is written, Man cannot live by bread only, There is life for him in all the words Which proceed from the mouth of God.”
Matthew 4:4
The words quoted were taken from the Old Testament account of the miraculous feeding of the Jews in the desert when manna fell to them from heaven. He refused to satisfy Satan’s burning curiosity as to whether He was, or was not, the Son of God; but He affirmed that God can feed men by something greater than bread. Our Lord would not use miraculous powers to provide food for Himself, as He would not use miraculous powers, later on, to come down from the Cross. Men in all ages would be hungry, and He was not going to dissociate Himself from His starving brethren. He had become man and He was willing to submit Himself to all of the ills of man until the moment of His glory would at last arrive.
