Daily Devotional | Jesus Understands Our Struggle

When nineteenth-century preacher Charles Spurgeon considered that “Jesus was tempted as I am,” he said it was “nectar to the weary heart”: “It is a dark room which you are going through, but Jesus went through it before. It is a sharp fight which you are waging, but Jesus has stood foot to foot with the same enemy. Let us be of good cheer, Christ has borne the load before us, and the blood- stained footsteps of the King of glory may be seen along the road which we traverse.”

It should be a great comfort to us that Jesus understands our struggle against temptation. Not only does He provide an example for us to imitate, He also fights with us and for us. He became a flesh-and-blood human to break the power of sin, death, and the devil (v. 14; see also John 1:14). How? “By his death.” Ever since the Fall, every human being has owed the penalty of death. Only another human being, One who had never sinned, could pay it and set us free (v. 15). For this reason, He became “fully human in every way” (v. 17).

Jesus redeemed us. He became our once-for-all, atoning sacrifice as well as our “merciful and faithful high priest” (v. 17; see also Heb. 7:26–27). He set us free in a positional sense (we call that “justification”), that is, we stand righteous before God. He’s setting us free day by day (“sanctification”), that is, we’re being made more and more righteous, a perfecting process that will one day be completed (“glorification”). While we’re in process, evil tempts us and tries to derail us. Jesus understands this because He, too, was tempted. He resisted as we do, except that He never yielded. Therefore, “he is able to help those who are being tempted” (v. 18). That’s good news!