Was Jesus Really Tempted In All Things?

Scripture tells us that Jesus was tempted in all points as we are (Heb. 4:15).

Yet we know He wasn’t crippled or handicapped. He didn’t live through old age. He wasn’t forced into retirement and then forced to try to make ends meet on a pension.

How, then, can Jesus understand all that humans go through?

What about the myriad temptations and problems with which this modern world confronts us? Jesus didn’t live in a society quite like this — far from it, in fact.

If we are to come boldly to God’s throne of grace (verse 16), how can we be sure that Jesus understands what we feel and mean? After all, He is God — an immortal, almighty spirit being — we are mere flesh, and very weak. If Jesus has never experienced the exact sufferings that we do, how can He understand our personal needs?

Sure, we realize that Paul said most trials are common to all (I Cor. 10:13). And in Christian fellowship we are often surprised and comforted to find someone else who has gone through similar difficulties as ourselves.

Yet we each have experienced unique pains, trials and sufferings that we feel no one else can properly understand. And we may even wonder whether God Himself can. Is God able to really appreciate the depth of troubles we go through?

Peter tells us that Jesus suffered for us, leaving us an example (I Pet. 2:21). In what specific sufferings did Jesus lead the way? What confidence can we have that He does understand the personal traumas of each and every one of His people? Let’s look at the facts.

The Truth About Fasting And Healing!

What is fasting? No one seems to know the real truth about this subject. Some call it the fast way to health, and others call it a starvation diet. If you miss a meal or two, will you die or be in serious health danger?

On the one hand sensible fasting is not a “starvation diet,” and those who have the “starvation fear” are at one erroneous extreme — whether ignorant layman or professional physician. Most doctors, incidentally, have studied medicine, not fasting as an aid toward elimination of disease.

In the “healing arts” — (an unfortunate and incorrect term) — professional men have tended to specialize each in his one field only. The medical physician seeks the cure almost exclusively by drugs, or surgery. The Chiropractor seeks to cure everything by manipulating the spine — perhaps with the aid of prescribed diet. The Naturopath by “natural” means. Medical doctors generally ridicule fasting in the case of sickness or disease, just as they would avoid recommending chiropractic treatments, or any other method outside their one field of medicine. Fasting is simply outside their field. A few medical doctors have advocated fasting, but certainly they are in the minority.

But to look on sensible fasting as “starvation” is an untrue extreme, based on plain ignorance. On the other hand, some go to the opposite extreme of regarding fasting as a cure-all. Neither extreme is the truth!