The Lord Omnipotent would “suffer temptations, … even more than man can suffer.” Paul later explained that Jesus Christ was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Some have asked if what Jesus experienced can really be called temptation because, after all, he never committed sin. C. S. Lewis responded this way: “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of [an] army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means.” 7
Lectures on Faith also describes how the Savior “descended in suffering below that which man can suffer; or, in other words, suffered greater sufferings, and was exposed to more powerful contradictions than any man can be. But, notwithstanding all this, he kept the law of God, and remained without sin.” 8 Jesus undoubtedly suffered in mortality more temptations than the three recounted in Matthew 4:1–11. Alma wrote that “he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind” (Alma 7:11). Temptation likely pursued Jesus throughout his mortal life, just as it does us, but he “gave no heed” to it (D&C 20:22). 9
Undoubtedly Jesus’ greatest temptation came at the time of his final suffering. Elder Talmage reminded us that in Gethsemane, Christ met and overcame all the horrors that Satan, “the prince of this world,” could inflict. 10 And Luke reminded us that while Jesus was hanging on the cross, He experienced a repetition of his earlier encounter with Satan after his forty-day fast. On that earlier occasion the adversary challenged the Master with at least three “if” clauses (Matthew 4:3–10). At the end, the same challenge was thrown up to him: “If thou be the king of the Jews, save thyself” (Luke 23:37).