The first part of the Article affirms the perfection of the human nature assumed by our Lord at His Incarnation to be the instrument of redemption.  Constitutionally it was humanity as God intended and created it, consisting of a real body of flesh and blood, a true soul and intellect, all of which were unmarred by sin.^[1]  ‘He was clearly void (from sin), both in His flesh, and in His Spirit.’  This distinction between sin in the flesh and in the spirit comes from 2 Cor. 7:1.  The disordered state of the instincts and appetites which belong to the flesh and blood of our humanity, what in Article II is called ‘original guilt’, had no place in the physical side of our Lord’s incarnate nature; with Him biological urge was subject to his complete obedience to the will of God.^[2]  But the absence of any innate proneness to sin does not imply that Jesus had no experience of temptation, and that obedience was easy.  Temptation in itself is not a bad thing; rather it is the condition of moral and spiritual achievement; where there is no chance of going wrong, there is no virtue in doing the right.  The trouble with temptation lies in yielding to it, for that results in a seared conscience and a weakened will.  The source of temptation is too readily identified with bodily demands which belong to our present mode of existence, and are in themselves quite legitimate; what has really happened is that instead of functioning under the control of the good will for right purposes, they have gone off on their own in pursuit of unworthy ends.  To use Plato’s illustration, our evil affections and passions are like the horses that have got out of the charioteer’s control and are pulling in different directions.

In our Lord’s case physical needs cannot have been the most serious form of temptation. He never faltered in resolution; His will remained intact.  Nevertheless temptation in His case, too, was real; He was ‘in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin’.^[3]  (Failure was with Him a theoretical possibility, but not a practical one because He always lived according to the law of our humanity which is obedience to God.)  It was in the region of His deepest spiritual experience that temptation usually took shape for Jesus.  He Himself said later in His Ministry that the mark of an evil generation was its demand for a sign.^[4]  The fact that His own strongest temptation was to look for a sign is one of the essential points in the account of the Temptation.^[5]

By the time that He was about to begin His Ministry at the age of thirty, Jesus must have reflected long on Himself and His mission, and had come to realize that He was in some special sense the Agent of God.  The voice at the Baptism confirmed this conviction; He was indeed the Beloved Son.^[6]  The essence of the Temptation is not in Satan’s invitation to satisfy His hunger after the fast in the wilderness, or to accept world power at his hands; it is in the hypothetical clause, ‘If thou art the Son of God’.  Was there any question in Jesus’ mind concerning the truth of the heavenly declaration at the Baptism that He was God’s Son?  Did He also require a sign, the evidence of a miracle, to assure Him that His consciousness of God was not deceiving Him?  Temptation for Jesus may have assumed the form of misgiving about His trust in God.

His consciousness of His relationship to God included the belief that He was the Messiah or Christ, and for a convenient description of the role of the Messiah, the Benedictus (St. Luke 1:68‑79) may be read.  He was to be the restorer of the throne of David, who in the power of the Lord would deliver and avenge His people, and establish a reign of bliss.  It was in this hope of Israel that Jesus was nurtured.