In coming into the world, Christ Jesus declared that the purpose of the incarnation was to do His Father’s will.

John 6:38

“For I came down from Heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.”

Part of His humbling in becoming the Son of Man was His willingness to leave the place of equality in sovereignty as God to take the place of subordination in subserviency as man. The Father’s will was the Son’s delight; it was the very sustenance of His life.

John 4:34

“Jesus said unto them, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.”

He came, lived, and worked, all with one purpose and one passion to do His Father’s will. And what was the Father’s will concerning the human race and the incarnation of His Son?

John 6:40

“And this is the will of Him that sent Me: that everyone who seeth the Son and believeth in Him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the Last Day.”

God’s will was that every sinner should see in His Son a Savior and believe on Him as such that the Father might lift from him the sentence of death and raise him up into eternal life in Him.

Satan knew that this was the Father’s will. Satan also knew that Jesus Christ had yielded Himself unreservedly to the Father to carry out that will. His Satanic desire, his devilish determination, was to keep the Son of Man from doing the Father’s will if possible. The slightest shadow of questioning regarding His Father’s goodness would be doubt: failure to keep the holy law of God even in one point would be disobedience: the merest deflection of desire toward self-will would be disloyalty, and God’s second Man, His last Adam, would have been disqualified from becoming the world’s Savior and the Head of a race of holy, heavenly men. That Satan would tempt him from the center to the circumference of His life, yea, that His Father must even permit such temptation, would be easily understood even if Scripture did not state it so plainly.

Hebrews 4:15

“For we do not have a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

Hebrews 2:18

“For in that He Himself hath suffered, being tempted, He is able to succor those who are tempted.”

Hebrews 2:10

“For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”

To qualify as the Savior of men and the Head of a race of redeemed men, the Man Christ Jesus must be a victor over humanity’s temptations one by one.

Throughout the thirty years of private life as a child, a boy, and a young man, He had no doubt been tempted repeatedly to doubt the Father’s goodness, disobey the Father’s law, and be disloyal to the Father’s will. In the home, at the carpenter’s bench, in the manifold contacts of community life, He met a daily assault in the common temptations of man. That He came through these years of obscurity with His manhood unsullied and unstained is amply attested by the Father’s voice speaking those words of unqualified approval at His baptism. “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  (Matthew 3:17) As a Man, Jesus had lived in private a life of absolute sinlessness and wholly obedient to God’s will.  He emerged from private into public life and engaged upon His three years of public ministry. He publicly proclaimed Himself as the Messiah. But before He did this, an event of tremendous significance occurred. At the Jordan, Jesus was baptized by John. This was His first act of identification with humanity’s sin; it was the preliminary step in becoming the sinner’s Substitute.

Crowds of people were thronging to John to be baptized, confessing their sins. Jesus came to be baptized. He had no sin to confess, and He had no disobedience to God’s law to repent of. But there on the banks of the Jordan, God’s second Man publicly acknowledged and accepted His responsibility as the world’s Savior by thus identifying Himself with the world’s sin. The last Adam, through His baptism, committed Himself to bear all the consequences of a broken law on the part of sinners. At His baptism, the Man Christ Jesus began to be numbered with the transgressors, and the work of personal substitution, which ended at Calvary, was commenced.

Immediately after His baptism, His public ministry began, and we read, “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.” (Matthew 4:1) As a man, Jesus had met the manifold testings through the daily temptations incidental to private life, and in them all had come forth Victor. But now, as the Son of Man, He is to have the decisive test of His whole life in a personal conflict with the devil himself. Man’s salvation does not consist of deliverance from temptation but of deliverance from the possession and power of the tempter. The utter defeat and destruction of the devil himself was part of Christ’s work as Savior. Jesus Christ was committed to the salvation of mankind from sin in toto; this necessitated His going back to the very origin of sin in man and confronting and conquering its instigator. To such a task and to such a test, “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness.”

Source: “Life on the Highest Plane” by Ruth Paxson

Dear Lord Jesus, Thank You! Even though You had been tempted repeatedly to doubt the Father’s goodness, to disobey the Father’s law, and be disloyal to the Father’s will, You never yielded. You knew what was at stake – OUR SALVATION!