God is never the source of temptation to sin. Instead, the cycle begins with strong desires in our hearts. So perhaps you’re wondering if the devil is involved at all. Yes, he is.
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being
tempted by the devil. . . . And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
(Luke 4:1–2, 13)
We learn much from Satan’s tempting of Jesus. Though Jesus did not have a sin nature as we do, the devil struck at his humanity with full force, and yet Jesus endured. From the devil’s attacks and Jesus’s obedience despite them, we learn five ways Satan is involved in tempting us to sin. We also notice the chief means to resist the devil as our Savior did.
1.) Satan attacks when you’re most vulnerable. The devil’s first temptation appealed to a legitimate physical need for food. Jesus “was hungry” after his forty-day fast (Luke 4:2). Like a shrewd hunter, Satan aimed his arrow at the bull’s-eye of Jesus’s vulnerability. Philip Ryken explains, “What Jesus suffered in the wilderness
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