Christ Succouring Tempted Ones¹

John Owen

Hebrews 2:18. For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted.

He suffered in His temptations. Temptation comprises any thing, state, or condition, whereby a man may be tried, exercised, or tempted. This will give us light on the temptations of Christ, for although they were all external and by impressions from without, yet they were not confined to the assaults of Satan. We may briefly recount some of His temptations:

1. His state and condition in the world. He was poor, despised, persecuted, reproached, especially from the beginning to the end of His public ministry. Herein lay one continued temptation – that is, a trial of obedience by all manner of hardships. He says to His disciples: “Ye have continued with Me in My temptations”, or in the work that He carried on in a constant course of temptation, arising from His outward state and condition. In this temptation He suffered hunger, poverty, weariness, sorrow, reproach, shame, contempt, wherewith His holy soul was deeply affected.

2. Temptations from His relations in the flesh, being disregarded and disbelieved by them; from His followers, being forsaken by them when He preached the mysteries of the gospel; from His chosen disciples, all of whom left Him, but one denied Him and another betrayed Him; from the anguish of His mother when a sword pierced through her soul in His sufferings; from His enemies of all sorts. All of them are related in the gospel; from all of them His sufferings were inexpressible.

3. Satan had a principal hand in the temptations from which He suffered. He set upon Him at the entrance of His ministry, immediately in his own person, and followed Him in the whole course of it by the instruments he set on work. He had also a season – an hour of darkness – allowed unto him, when he was to try his utmost strength and policy against Him. Christ suffered under this assault from Satan, as was foretold from the foundation of the world – the bruising of his heel – that is, the temporal ruin of all his interests.

4. God’s desertion of Him was another temptation from which He suffered. As this was most mysterious, so His sufferings under it were His greatest perplexity. These are some of the springs of those various and innumerable temptations that the Lord Christ suffered in and under. They for whose sakes He underwent this condition of suffering are those whom He reconciled to God, by His sacrifice as a High Priest. Notwithstanding their reconciliation

¹Taken with editing from “An Abridgement”, by M J Tryon, of Owen’s Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

to God by the death of Christ, they have a course of obedience prescribed to them. In this course they meet with many difficulties, dangers and sorrows, all proceeding from the temptations that they are exercised with. Hence is this description of them: “them that are tempted” – the tempted ones. It is reconciled persons who emphatically are the tempted ones; they are the mark of Satan and the world, and besides this they maintain a continual warfare within them against temptations in the remainder of their own corruptions. This is the proper name of believers. As Satan is called the tempter from what he does, so they are called the tempted ones from what they endure.

The High Priest having suffered the like things with them, they have an assured ground of consolation in all their temptations and sufferings, which the Apostle declares when he says that the High Priest “is able to succour them that are tempted”. His ability to succour is not an executive power – a power of working, a power of the hand – but a power of the heart and will, an ability in readiness of mind, that is here assigned unto Him. Observe then:

1. He had particular experience of the weakness, sorrows and miseries of human nature under temptations. He tried it, felt it, and will never forget it.

2. His heart is thereby inclined unto compassion, and is acquainted with what it is that will afford relief. In His throne of eternal peace and glory He sees His poor brethren labouring in that storm which, with so much travail of soul, He Himself passed through, and He is intimately affected by their condition.

3. This compassion moves and excites Him unto their relief and succour. This is the ability ascribed unto our High Priest: compassion and mercy arising from an experience of the sufferings and dangers of human nature under temptations.

4. From this arises a great advantage unto all the brethren in the succour He is able to afford unto them. They need strength to withstand temptations so that they do not prevail against them; consolation to support their spirits under temptations; seasonable deliverance out of their temptations. And their High Priest ministers succour to them by His Word and promises, by His Spirit, by communicating to them supplies of grace and strength, by giving them strong consolation, by rebuking their tempters and temptations, and by His providence disposing of all things to their good and advantage in the issue.

5. The principal work of the Lord Christ as our High Priest, from which all His other acting in that office do flow, was to make reconciliation, or atonement, for sin. “We have an Advocate with the Father . . . and He is the propitiation for our sins.” What He does in heaven as our Advocate depends on what He did on earth when He was the propitiation. They who weaken, oppose, or take away this reconciliation are enemies to the salvation of men,

the honour of Christ, and the glory of God. From men they take away their hope and happiness, from Christ His honour and office, from God His grace and glory. I know they allow of a reconciliation in words, but it is of men to God, not of God to men. They would have us reconcile ourselves by faith and obedience, but they deny the reconciliation of God to us by sacrifice, satisfaction and atonement. But reconciliation by blood is the only relief of a guilty soul.

1. The Lord Christ suffered under all His temptations, but sinned in none. He suffered being tempted, but He sinned not being tempted. He had the heart of a man, the affections of a man – and had them in the highest degree of sense and tenderness. No sorrows, no sufferings were like His; He made bare His breast to their strokes, and laid open His soul that they might soak into the inmost parts of it. He left nothing in the whole nature of sorrow or suffering that He did not taste and did not experience.

2. The great duty of tempted souls is to cry unto the Lord Christ for help and relief. He is every way “able to succour them that are tempted”. He has a sufficiency of care, wisdom and faithfulness to observe and know the seasons when succour is necessary; a sufficiency of tenderness, mercy, and compassion to excite Him to it; a sufficiency of power to afford succour that shall be effectual; a sufficiency of acceptance at the throne of grace to prevail with God for suitable supplies and succour.