Luke 4:13Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

However, as the Evangelist points out, he did so with the anticipation of returning at a more favorable moment. This moment of opportunity is exemplified in the words of the Lord just before His suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane: “this is your hour and the power of darkness,” directed towards the religious leaders (Luke 22:53), or as He told His disciples shortly before: “the prince of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me” (John 14:30). It was during this critical time that the devil again sought to overwhelm the Lord with the dread of His impending crucifixion, yet this effort met the same defeat as before.

A noteworthy detail is that in the Garden of Gethsemane, after the intense assaults from the devil, an angel appeared to the Lord and strengthened His weary body (Luke 22:43). A similar occurrence happened in the desert; as soon as the tempter departed, behold, Saint Matthew remarked, angels came and ministered to Him. The service provided by the angels, as noted in Mark's Gospel, pertains to this moment rather than an earlier one. Until then, they had remained as silent onlookers during their Lord's formidable clash with the devil. Like bodyguards waiting on the sidelines during a struggle, they refrained from intervening, seemingly concerned that their involvement might detract from the honor of their King’s triumph. However, once the victory was secured, they immediately approached Him and ministered to Him, fulfilling all necessary actions to restore His physical strength, which had been drained from fasting and the arduous battle with the devil. The Greek term διακονεω—serve—most accurately reflects their role in this context. Yet simultaneously, they undeniably honored Him as the conqueror over the abyss, celebrating His initial victory over the devil, which stands as a promise of our future salvation and eternal joy.

However, this assumption relies on an understanding of the Divine and human will in Christ that completely negates the moral struggle of His human nature against temptation, which seems implausible. The actual events of Christ's life provide clear evidence against such a notion. We see that Christ often experienced profoundly human emotions of joy and sorrow, and at the moment of His deepest humiliation, He cried out: 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' It is evident that Christ's human nature, meant to serve as the ultimate example for humanity, at times operated independently, requiring Him to fulfill His mission through His own strength and undertake actions that could be regarded as purely human. This perspective addresses the aforementioned question. The self-activity granted to Christ as a true man during the temptation illustrates this point. The Divine presence within Him, along with all His attributes, remained concealed within His human nature, which alone confronted the original adversary and faced the same peril of temptation as the sinless nature of man in paradise. However, as He engaged in this perilous confrontation with the ruler of this world, the man Jesus never ceased to be God; thus, while genuinely facing the tempter’s accusations and the risk of falling, He could not experience a fall in the same manner as the first man did in paradise. At the most crucial juncture, had it arisen, the powers of the tempter would have encountered the innermost Divinity and been overcome; yet, the personal virtue of Christ as a man was fully demonstrated in His ability to repel the tempter through His purely human means. He thus succeeded in avoiding situations that could have revealed the vulnerability of His human capacity and diminished the honor of the eventual victorious outcome. Schaff states, 'Christ was no doubt tempted as we are, but He was never overcome by temptation. His sinlessness was above all the relative sinlessness of Adam before the fall; hence the necessity of trials and temptations, and the very possibility of the fall. If He had been endowed from the very beginning with an unconditional inability to sin, He could not have been a true man, and therefore could not have been a model for us to follow. But being a true man, Christ had to become a being morally free and morally responsible; and freedom implies the possibility of choosing between good and evil, it also implies the possibility of both fulfilling and not fulfilling the commandments of God. Thus, by properly exercising this freedom, the relative sinlessness in Christ gradually evolved into a more unconditional state. In other words, the initial possibility of not sinning, which includes the capability of sin yet excludes its actual occurrence, developed within Him to the impossibility of sinning—a state of sinlessness that cannot sin precisely because it chooses not to. This represents the highest level of freedom, where it aligns with moral necessity or an unwavering, essential self-determination towards good. At this stage, freedom resembles that of God and the saints in heaven, with the distinction that the saints reach this state through liberation from sin and death, while Christ achieved it through His own divine strength.

This spiritual struggle of our Savior against the adversary of salvation reflects a deeper parallel with the original temptation that our ancestors could not resist. The serpent, also known as the devil and Satan (Rev. 12:9; 20:2), first enticed humanity with pride, saying, "you will be like gods" (Gen. 3:5), and lured them toward lustful desires and greed as he pointed out, "the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes" (Gen. 3:6). This led to a bitter triumph for the enemy, resulting in humanity's subjugation to sin and the devil (Rom. 6:20).

However, the promised Seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15)—our Lord Jesus Christ—prevailed over the ancient tempter. Thus, just as condemnation came to all through one transgression, so too did the opportunity for salvation arrive for all through one act of righteousness, bringing life and justification (Rom. 5:18).