Daily Sacrifice, July 7 (4:1-2)
“Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil”— Luke 4:1, 2.
BEFORE the Lord began His public testimony, it was needful that He be tried, or tempted, not to see if He would sin, for from His birth He was the Holy One of God (Luke 1:35) as even demons later confessed (Luke 9:34), but to prove that He was beyond the reach of human frailty and sin; therefore the One fitted to take the place of the guilty and bear the judgment their sins deserved. Had He Himself been a sinner, either by nature or practice, He would not have been eligible to make propitiation for others (1 Peter 3:18; 2 Cor. 5:21). Only a sinless substitute could take the lost sinner’s place.
—George Hunt Smyttan.