Continuing from The Comfort of Knowing II, Stephen E. Robinson wrote:
A remarkable doctrine is taught here. The same Jesus who is God and Son is also one of us. He was human in every respect (“in all things”)—right down to being tempted like other human beings. And because he personally has been tempted, Christ can understand what temptation is. From his own personal experience of the human condition he understands what we are dealing with here, and he can empathize with us and help us overcome temptation just as he overcame it.
But can Jesus Christ, the divine Son of God, really have been tempted? Let me put the question more pointedly: Did Jesus Christ have a carnal nature and suffer carnal urges? Did he ever feel his flesh say “yes!” and have to say “no!” to it? Did he ever experience the enticement, the carnal appeal of sin?
Many Christians want to answer, “No, Christ was too holy to experience real temptations,” but I believe the correct answer, the scriptural answer, is yes. Jesus was human like the rest of us. Part of what the Book of Mormon calls the great condescension of God was Christ’s willingness to come into a mortal body that would subject him to physical temptations. (See 1 Nephi 11:13-32.) Jesus’ holiness and perfect obedience were the result of consistently ignoring, rather never encountering, the enticements of a carnal nature. The righteousness of Jesus is that he experienced the same temptations but gave no heed to them.” (Doctrine & Covenants 20:22)
Think about it. If Christ were not like us in being subject to temptation, if he were some different kind of being with qualitatively different experiences, how could he possibly set an example that we could follow? How could his person or his performance then be relevant to human beings? It doesn’t matter how patiently a bird might show me how to fly, or a fish might show me how to breathe under water. I don’t have wings and I don’t have gills. These cannot teach me by example because we are not the same kind of being. Similarly, if Jesus Christ was not genuinely human, or if his righteousness and obedience were due to some special gift that I do not share with him, then he cannot teach me by example to be like he is. ~Stephen E. Robinson, Believing Christ (Deseret Book, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019) 197-99, Dwarsligger edition. . . . . for the first post of this series click . . . . The Comfort of Knowing.
