It's difficult to see how Christ could have been "powerfully influenced to do a wrong action" if His temptations were akin to that of a chocolate-hater being offered a piece of chocolate.



Christ could hardly "share our sorrows and temptations" if they were akin to a chocolate-hater being offered a piece of chocolate.

Regarding the idea that Christ took our nature results in a "low view" of Him, Waggoner commented:



As long as we have this flesh, we will be tempted. Not like the chocolate-hater is "tempted" with chocolate, but like the chocolate-lover. Such is the reality of our flesh. We can train our minds, by the grace of God, to resist and refuse temptations which entice the flesh, but the flesh will always be enticed by temptations; that's its nature (pardon the pun!).

This one is easy when you cant have sugar but still come across it everyday....

'Temptation' is when you are a diabetic and your best friend pulls out peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and purposely places them before you. You have a choice, eat them and go into catatonic state of shock and maybe die, or resist and eat some 'yummy' celery sticks.......and I sure do hate celery during the holidays...

'Desire and Sin' is when your mouth starts to water as you contemplate the chewy goodness and you sneak one of those peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and test the limits your body can take.. then your sugar tallys up at 300 to 350 and you feel like your passing out...

'Confessing and Repenting' is admiting you ate the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and never want to do it again and you need your glucophage or have them take you to the emergency room quicktime as your knees buckle....

Happy New Year, everyone, enjoy the festivities as I chew on my celery......

Well, substitute the chocolate for sleezy women...it doesn't matter what the temptation was, Jesus responded the same way every time. You find no record of Him struggling with sexual sin, ever. When he saw a provocative women, His first and only reaction was to help her recover from her sin...lust didn't have any hold on Him whatsoever. After all, she was a child of His.

It is true, Satan was there parading sleezy women in front of Him many times, trying to find something in Him to arouse....but he always failed.



If, when Satan comes to us, he is still able to find something somewhere in us, it doesn't matter where, ...if he can find ANYTHING in us that responds to his temptations...then....we are not safe to save. That is why we are still here! Jesus could have come a long time ago, He is only waiting for a people who reflect His character...but unfortunately, many are copying a wrong pattern...and they don't realize it...and they haven't made the connection in their minds yet, that this is the very reason that the Lord has not come back.

When people talk about "the flesh" and how our flesh will always desire sin....that is just an excuse to sin. What is your flesh? Your arms, your legs, your body, right? Your arms, legs and your body, they don't desire sin....they only do the bidding of your mind & your heart...it all has to do with the mind, not "the flesh"....that is why Jesus said, "Let this mind be in you..." and "I will give you a new heart..."

Sure, our bodies get physically hungery, and tired....but that doesn't make us desire sin. Jesus got physically hungry and tired, too.... Clearly we are told He took the nature of Adam after the Fall.

Well...must run! Happy New Year to you all!

Ladies and gent - you know who you are, you appear to be missing an operative factor, over, round and in all this: righteousness by faith, something actually pioneered by Christ our Saviour.

In short, his character was built by faith, as a human, as he pioneered the Christian experience. That that faith was required by him, instead of using his own divine insight, to fight sin, means that for us to know him from inspiration and prayer to the Father through him is to understand how he used "the faith of Jesus" (exaggeration for effect) to bend his human nature back from its sinfulness to his righteous use of it.

I say "bend back" because our sinfulness is a crooked, bent, sinful nature, and righteousness is by definition actually straightening a thing bent which, in this case, should be straight.

As an aside here, I would add to the traditional SDA, and Priebe's, definition of sin, seeing it also as a state of being: you see, the KJV is pragmatically accurate, but not truly accurate on the Greek with "transgression of the law"; it actually reads "lawlessness", if you check eg. the RSV. We were historically and still studiously are avoiding the error of Romanism's original sin, not so? If one excludes inherited guilt from Augustin's original sin, the remaining 3 elements are actually, otherwise correct: sinful humanity is inclined to sin, weak in, i.e. captive to, that inclinaton, and thus depraved, hopelessly alienated from rendering obedience to God out of love without the Spirit of God to assist, in Jesus' name. We have, essentially, a condemned nature, whether we sin or not, and Jesus also took our natural condemnation to the cross in his assumed sinful flesh.

Thus "Christ's humanity" is primarily an issue about salvation itself, not just Christian perfection, which is exclusively of secondary importance. I don't think pre-lapsers allow for the full meaning of sin, before they get anywhere near justification and faith - do they even include sanctification is a Gospel requirement of our faith walk?

I've checked with the GC BRI website, and at this link http://tinyurl.com/subj-justification, half way down, in Part II, there's a subheading confirming that justification by faith is also subject, ie. the new creation of the inner man, the renewal of the mind of regeneration and the rebirth, extending JBF far beyond a merely legal, Fordian Gospel, to actual inner renewal. Seems, though, that this is practically never openly preached and taught in church - we're still shy of Ford and his Evangelical school of thought, which many clergy in our midst still hold to? But, in this really obscure article, whose critiqued view on this precise point is highlighting our public silence on the issue and may have over emphasised the elements of this truth (I support the rest of the critiqued view), here is this truth re-affirmed by the GC as it was in the Palmdale Consensus statement, between the GC and Ford's (then) Austalasian Division, on what "righteousness by faith" actually means in the Bible, and in our church, published just once in the Review & Herald of the summer of 1976.

End of aside

In a nutshell, what those "overboarders" are doing, in the face of the openly defiant & facetious new theology - led by a majority in the Seminary(?!), is trying their best to describe the "faith of Jesus" as used by the Man himself. Ya'know, faith in action...

Never forget either his adopted sinfulness being fundamentally adapted to Christian use, or his divine nature combined with it to - Amen and Amen - link us by his humanity to his divine throne. He had to come down to the level of sinful man for his humanity to be the crucial link in the golden chain reconnecting us with God, his and also our Father.

the basic problem is making the assumption that those of us opposed to the wording and thought of this topic have anything to do with this "fordian gospel". once that thought is destroyed, what is actually written might be "heard".

when did Jesus not have faith? did He have to "develop" faith, or is philipians an accurate statement of what actually happened?

Php 2:6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
Php 2:7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
Php 2:8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

the whole point of this, given its context, is about humility, and thinking of others.

this gives me a very high goal to want to copy. the other view just gives me a picture of another Person struggling with temptation-self-centered. Jesus was other-centered. His hours spent in prayer and communing with the Father were not about overcoming temptation, but for strength, power and wisdom to show us the Father, and His holiness, to continually give to others.

"post-laps" have never given me that picture. the bible and egw do.

No, Teresa, I wasn't grouping anyone here with Ford: that was an aside on the meaning of sin, not a point directly about faith or righteousness.

Moreover, my point is that this topic isn't really about what makes a temptation a temptation - that's a nice point, too - but lessons on faith, taught by Jesus himself. Jones individually I think actually wrote a book called "Lessons on Faith": Tom would know the exact title, showing this pragmatic imperative of the truth on Christ's humanity. A truth indeed that is obvious to us all, but isn't spoken of much, eh.

I don't see that the following was commented upon:



Temptation is exactly the giving of chocolate to the chocolate lover, not the chocolate hater! If Christ hated chocolate, and someone offered him chocolate, then He could not have been tempted by chocolate. There would have been no "powerful influence" to do a wrong action. The powerful influence is what makes temptation hard.

It was mentioned that there is no record of Christ's struggling with sexual sin. There's no record of Christ's struggling with any sin. To suggest that Christ was struggling with sin would be to suggest that Christ had sinned.

However, there is reference to the fact that Christ was tempted in all points as we are, and that we should find comfort from that fact. If we are a chocolate lover, being tempted by chocolate, what comfort could we find in a chocolate hater refusing chocolate?

The Gospel is not that Jesus Christ was not tempted, and that we, by some process, can get to the same point to where we are also no longer tempted, but that Jesus Christ *was* tempted, sorely so, as we are, and that He overcame those temptations by faith. Through the faith of Jesus, we also, when tempted, can overcome as He overcame.

were Christs temptations general or specific? was there chocolate in Christs day? how about any form of tobacco, or smoking? if not, then how does the chocoholic or smoker find "comfort" that Christ was tempted in all points?

but my main point is, that i find Christs motivations for resisting sim more elevating to my sanctification than i do concentrating on the fact that He was tempted, or the fine details of what His human nature was.

maybe we are accidently making this into an either/or situation...



when we are really bringing out the different angles to the issue.

According to wiki, chocolate has been around for 3 millennia, in the new world, but it wasn't known in the old until the Spanish brought it back. Tobacco wasn't known where Christ was during His time. However, I'm pretty sure there was sex back then.

On the cross, Christ was tempted to use a drug, during a time He was suffering great pain.



He accepted the results of the working of the law of heredity to share our sorrows and temptations. This He did so we could be comforted. There is great comfort in knowing that Christ knows what we go through in our difficult times. We've been talking about chocolate, but there are more difficult things than chocolate in life. There are times we pass through, such as when losing a loved one, where we feel so alone, like there's no one who understands what we are going through. But there is One, who experienced our sorrows, and can comfort us with the comfort by which He Himself was comforted when He passed through like difficulties.