The Temptation of Christ

Waldmark, 23 May 2008

Another Fallacy of the Trinity: The Temptation of Christ. Of the many reasons why Christian believers should reject the man-made doctrine of the trinity, the temptation of Christ by the Devil should be one of the most persuasive.

To Christians who believe in the doctrine of the Trinity:

Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He was born of the virgin Mary and he was, while he walked on planet earth, a human being. Human beings can be tempted. The Devil, Master Tempter, successfully tempted the first human beings, Eve and Adam, and they sinned because of Satan’s tempting.

In Matthew 4:1 we read ‘Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil’ (KJV) which tells us that he tried to achieve a similar result with Jesus: if the Devil would somehow have succeeded in tempting Jesus Christ, then Jesus would no longer have been without sin and, consequently, he would have been unfit to take on our sins or die as substitute for us. In other words, if Satan had succeeded in tempting Jesus, we would have been separated from God Almighty for all eternity.

Each and every Christian who subscribes to the doctrine of the Trinity (God the Father; God the Son; and God the Holy Spirit being three coequal Persons in one Godhead and Jesus being simultaneously God and human), implicitly denies the Temptation of Jesus. Of course, hardly any honest God-fearing Christian believer will openly admit to this. Most of them will strenuously confirm their adherence to the truth of the Bible, including the Temptation of Christ, but that is only because most of them have never thought through what it implies to believe in such a thing as the Trinity.

In James 1:13, it is written: ‘Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. (KJV).

It is important to understand that when James writes God cannot be tempted, he is not referring to some kind of strong character of God. It is not that God steadfastly refuses to be tempted but, rather, that God cannot be tempted in that God is holy and therefore outside the realm of temptation. Temptation does not affect God. God is outside the sphere of influence of temptation.

Jesus Christ was not outside that sphere. So how could Jesus, if he is God, be tempted with evil when God cannot be tempted?

Think this over for a minute. If Jesus Christ is God, and if God cannot be tempted, than Jesus Christ could not have been tempted. Are the verses in the Bible false, which state that Jesus was tempted by the Devil while He was in the desert?

• when Jesus was indeed tempted by the Devil and considering that Jesus is God, does this then mean that the Apostle James was wrong when he wrote that God cannot be tempted?
• or when James was right – God cannot be tempted – and Jesus being God, are we to conclude that Jesus therefore has not been tempted? But this leads inevitably to the conclusion that the account in question which relates that Jesus was tempted in the Desert is not accurate.

For me the thing is as clear as spring water. Jesus Christ is not God, he is the Son of God. A father is not the same is his son and a son is not the same as his father. Neither are a son and a father coequal; to declare a father and a son coequal (the word means: of equal rank and position) is to deny the concept of hierarchy. It is also a denial of the meaning of words.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God. This is what the Bible teaches. Jesus Christ sits at the right hand of God, who is his Father. This is what the Bible teaches; Jesus does not sit at the right hand of himself. Jesus Christ was born of a virgin and came to earth as a human being to die for the sins of mankind. This is what the Bible teaches. Human beings can be born of a woman, God can’t be. Human beings can die, God can’t. Human beings can be tempted, God can’t be.

Those who invented the Trinity and those who continue to teach it are aware of the above, so they have come up with a clever solution to this problem: everything that constitutes a logical problem refers to Jesus the Man, not to Jesus the God. Jesus was both God and man at the same time. So he died as a man even though he was eternal as God. He prayed as a man to God even though he was God. He was tempted as a man even though he couldn’t be tempted as God.

The Trinity is a prime example of a man-made doctrine. It is a doctrine of contradictions, caused by people who value man-made doctrines more than they value the Word of God. Foolishness attracts many fools. Make sure you’re not found in the company of fools when Jesus, the Son of God, returns or when you die, whichever happens first.

Tags: trinity, temptation