Daily Bible Reading 22nd April 2026 // Luke 4:1-13
1 And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were over, he was hungry. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” 4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” 5 And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written,
“‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve.’”
9 And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to guard you’,
11 and
“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”
12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13 And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
But there is an even deeper association with the Old Testament, and it is this: it is clear that the Temptation story is connected vitally to that of our Lord's baptism, the significance of which, as we have seen, is that He was anointed as God's King and Suffering Servant. The Temptation must therefore be understood in this light. Here is the King entering into enemy-occupied territory, to subdue the kingdom to Himself - through suffering. In this connection we need to see that the initiative lay with Him, not with Satan. He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. Newman's hymn says:
A second Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came
This is a most significant statement, for we need to see the Temptation in relation to Christ's role as the second or last Adam. The devil challenged the first man, Adam, in the Garden. Here is now the counter-attack: the last Adam challenged the devil, by His presence in the wilderness. The devil ruined the first Adam; the last Adam spoiled the devil. Christ's Temptation therefore takes on a representative character: it was for us, as our Representative, that He suffered, being tempted. As such, it belongs in some sense to the substitutionary work which He accomplished in His coming into the world to be the world's Saviour, and is part of what was involved for Him in following the path prophesied for the Messiah who was to come, in suffering and glory. It was part of what was involved in taking His stand with man in his sin and need. It was, in fact, a 'rehearsal', so to speak, a 'trial run', a foretaste, of His Passion on the cross, as His baptism in Jordan also was.