The temptation follows the natural lines of man’s powers.  Man was made with mastery of himself, kingship over nature and all its forces, and utter dependence, even for his very breath, upon God.  While made perfect in these, he would know them fully only through growth.  He had three relationships, to God, his fellows, and himself.  His relation to God would keep true the relation to himself, and adjust the relation to his fellows.  Keeping God in proper proportion in the perspective keeps one’s self in its true place always.  Utter dependence by every man upon God would make perfect harmony with his fellows.  The dominion of nature was through self-mastery, and this in turn would be only through the practice of utter dependence upon God.

Now all sin comes under this grouping, the relation to God, the relation to others, within one’s self.  Temptation follows the line of exaggeration, misuse, misadjustment, wrong motive.  It pushes trust over into unwarranted presumption.  Dominion over nature crosses the line into the relation to other men.  Fellow-feeling gives way to an ambition to get ahead of the other man and to boss him.  Proper appetite and desire become lust and passion.  The dominion that man was to have over nature, he seeks also to have over his brothers, so crossing the line of his own proper dominion and trespassing on God’s.  Only God is to have dominion over all men.  Where a man is lifted to eminence of rule among his fellows he is simply acting for Somebody else.  He is not a superior.  He is a servant of God, in ruling over his fellows.

John’s famous grouping of all sin as “the lust of the flesh, lust of eye and pride of life,” refers to what is out “in the world.”  It touches only two of these three:  sin in one’s self and in relation to his fellows, with the dominion line out of adjustment.  Out in the world God has been left clean out, so the phase of trust isn’t touched upon by John.

Jesus’ temptation follows these natural lines.  Improper use of power for the sake of the bodily appetite; to presume on God’s care in doing something unwarranted; to cross the line of dominion over nature and seek to control men.  For, be it remembered, Jesus was here as a man.  The realm of the body, the realm of religion, the realm of wrong ambition, these were the temptation lines followed then, and before, and ever since.

The going into the wilderness was planned by the Holy Spirit.  He was in charge of this campaign of Jesus to win back the allegiance of man and the dominion of the earth.  Jesus yielded Himself to the control of the Holy Spirit for His earthly mission, even as later the Holy Spirit yielded Himself wholly to the control of the exalted Jesus for His earthly mission.

Here the Spirit proves Himself a keen strategist.  He drives hard at the enemy.  He forces the fighting.  A decided victory over the chief at the start would demoralize all the forces.  It would be decisive of the whole conflict, and prophetic of the final outcome.  Every demon possessing a man on the earth heard of his chief’s rout that day, and recognized his Victor, and feared Him, and knew of his own utter defeat in that of his chief.  Having gotten the chief devil on the run, every sub-devil fled at Jesus’ approach.