By Clement Harrold

September 25, 2025

All three synoptic Gospels recall Jesus going into the desert immediately after His baptism. There, we are told, Jesus fasted for forty days, after which the devil came to tempt Him (see Matt 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13). Three times the devil tries to induce Jesus to fall; three times the devil is thwarted.

We know that Jesus commits no sin in the episode. And yet, the evangelists clearly speak of Him being “tempted” by the devil. This is further corroborated in the epistle to the Hebrews:

For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted. (Heb 2:18)

 

For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning. (Heb 4:15)

According to these texts, the fact that Jesus experienced temptation means He is better able to relate to and help us in our own temptations. But this raises an important question: In what sense could Jesus actually be tempted?

It seems obvious that Jesus did not experience temptation in the exact same way that we do. After all, when we are tempted, there is a real prospect, informed by long experience, that we will succumb to the temptation and fall into sin. Yet Jesus is God, and therefore metaphysically incapable of sinning.

This leads to a difficulty: Could Jesus really be tempted if there was zero prospect of Him ever succumbing to the temptation? And if there was no prospect of Him ever succumbing, then is it really that impressive when He successfully resists the devil?

The Structure of Temptation

In reflecting on these questions, we might be tempted (pun intended!) to think there is something anticlimactic and perhaps even slightly lame about Jesus’s face-off with the devil, since it seems there was never any real chance of Jesus losing. Faced with this conundrum, we need to make some distinctions.

First off, although Jesus didn’t experience temptation in the exact same way that we do, He was still tempted by the devil. To understand how this works, we can draw on the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Gregory the Great, who helpfully distinguish three different stages of temptation: suggestion, delight, and consent.

Suggestion takes place when a sinful thought or action presents itself to us, either through our bodily senses or through our memory. For example, I might be walking through an airport terminal when I see a billboard depicting a scantily clad woman. Although I didn’t choose to see this image, it is now in my mind’s eye whether I like it or not. And immediately the image suggests to me—a male in my mid-20s—the possibility of sinning.

At this point, one of two things will happen: either I will dismiss the image from my mind and move on, or I will start to derive pleasure from the image. If I take the former course, then I successfully crush the temptation in its first stage, and I commit no sin. But if I take the latter course, then the temptation begins to develop into its second stage, namely, delight.

This second stage is mysterious, since it can involve a combination of voluntary and involuntary reactions on the part of the person being tempted. For example, the immodest billboard might cause a burst of dopamine in my brain before I even have a chance to decide how to react. In this case, it seems that I have begun to delight in the temptation without actually committing any sin.

For these reasons, the sinfulness of the second stage of temptation is somewhat murky. Nevertheless, it seems it frequently involves at least some kind of venial sin; and even if it involves no sin, it still speaks to—and flows from—our concupiscent condition. While the alcoholic may not commit any new sin when he involuntarily finds himself delighting in the sight of the bottle of bourbon, still the source of his delight is his disordered desire for physical pleasure.

In any event, what is clear is that the delight stage of temptation advances us further along the path to sin. By beginning to delight in a temptation, we move beyond mere suggestion, and we are on the threshold of the third stage of temptation, which is consent.

Consent is the moment at which we give ourselves over to temptation. When this happens, our moral guilt is firmly established. St. Gregory helps explain the interplay between the three stages of temptation:

For, when the evil spirit suggests sin in the soul, if no delight in sin should follow, no sin is in any wise committed. But, when the flesh has begun to take delight, then sin has its commencement. But, if it sinks to deliberate consent, then sin is known to be completed. In suggestion therefore is the seed of sin, in delight its nutriment, in consent its completion. (Registrum Epistolarum, Bk XI, Letter 64)

We should notice how Gregory describes consent as the “completion” of sin. St. Augustine also offers a helpful analysis in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount:

And if it gives us pleasure to enjoy this, this pleasure, if illicit, must be restrained. Just as when we are fasting, and on seeing food the appetite of the palate is stirred up, this does not happen without pleasure; but we do not consent to this liking, and we repress it by the right of reason, which has the supremacy. But if consent shall take place, the sin will be complete, known to God in our heart, although it may not become known to men by deed. (On the Sermon on the Mount, Bk I, Ch 12, 34)

Here Augustine emphasizes that sin originates in the heart. Whereas the suggestion stage of temptation is typically imposed on us by some exterior force (i.e. the world, the flesh, and the devil), the consent stage arises from within our wills; it is an interior and volitional response for which we are culpable.

How Jesus Experienced Temptation

With this background in place, we can now address the question of how it is that Jesus could be tempted.

Drawing on the work of St. Augustine and St. Gregory, St. Thomas Aquinas answers this question by explaining that while Jesus could and did experience the first stage of temptation (suggestion), He never experienced the second and third stages of temptation (delight and consent).

From this it follows that temptations suggested themselves to Jesus in the same way they suggest themselves to you or me. Since suggestion is imposed by something outside of us, Jesus could experience this without committing any sin. Thus, for example, an immodestly dressed woman could pass Jesus on the street, and the image of that woman might enter His consciousness for a moment.

Where Jesus differs from you and me, however, is in His response to this kind of situation. Since Our Lord’s will and affections were perfectly ordered, He never once in His life delighted in, or consented to, a single temptation to sin. As St. Gregory observes, “He could then be tempted by suggestion; but the delight of sin never gnawed His soul, and therefore all that temptation of the Devil was without not within Him.”

Like us, Jesus experienced temptations which were externally imposed on Him by the world, the flesh, and the devil. But unlike us, He never internally cooperated with those temptations in any way.

A Dramatic Spiritual Combat

Let’s return to a question we raised above: Does Christ’s perfect sinlessness make His victory in the desert less impressive?

Not at all, and for one very good reason: although Jesus could not sin in the desert, He could and did suffer. Indeed, when Jesus faces off against the devil, He does so as One crippled by hunger who has reached the absolute limits of human endurance. Here is a divine champion who understands what it is to feel weak.

The Catechism reminds us, “Jesus’ victory over the tempter in the desert anticipates victory at the Passion, the supreme act of obedience of his filial love for the Father” (CCC 539). It is in the desert that we first discover the merciful face of the Savior who chooses to immerse Himself in our suffering and transform it from within.

“Christ came to destroy the works of the devil,” wrote St. Thomas Aquinas, “not by powerful deeds, but rather by suffering from him and his members, so as to conquer the devil by righteousness, not by power” (ST III.41.1.ad2; cf. 1 John 3:8). Both in the desert and on the Cross, the way that Jesus reveals Himself is the same: not in power and strength, but in humility and love.

And it is this astonishing display of divine condescension which renders the temptations episode so breathtakingly beautiful. For when the harmony of creation was shattered by man’s sin, our God did not remain distant or removed. Instead, He took on into our human condition; He entered into the desert of suffering; He embraced His Cross. And so when we tell ourselves we don’t find Christ’s victory in the desert very impressive, we miss the point entirely.

What is impressive about the temptations is not that the God-man successfully resists the devil; no, what is impressive is that the God-man allows Himself to be tempted in the first place.

What is impressive is that the God-man humbles Himself to the point of becoming a mere human being who allows Himself to be tormented by one of His creatures.

What is impressive is that the God-man freely chooses the way of the Cross, even when He could have saved the world in some easier, less painful way.

What is impressive, finally, is that in the arid wilderness of the Judean desert, the almighty God of the universe fights in the place of sinners—and He is victorious on our behalf.

Further Reading

Fr. Vincent Lampert, Exorcism: The Battle Against Satan and His Demons (Emmaus Road Publishing, 2020)

Dom Lorenzo Scupoli, The Spiritual Combat

About Clement Harrold

Clement Harrold earned his master’s degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame in 2024, and his bachelor’s from Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2021. His writings have appeared in First Things, Church Life Journal, Crisis Magazine, and the Washington Examiner.