What kind of a Savior do we have?

Well, that’s surely a strange question for your pastor to raise. After all, that question has been answered definitively, and if you did not know the answer you would not be a Christian nor part of our Church family! As we look back to our Lord’s life, and as we also reflect upon what Scripture has declared to be true about Him, His identity is not the least uncertain as far as we are concerned!

But as Luke tells us in his Gospel, the question concerning the kind of a Savior Jesus would be was the very first challenge our Lord faced as He commenced His earthly ministry. In Luke 4:3-13, the inspired record of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness, the devil twice raises the issue with the mocking challenge, “If you are the Son of God . . .” (vv. 3, 9).

The three temptations the devil hurled at Jesus were strategically and diabolically designed to seduce Him into becoming a different kind of Savior than He came to this lost world to be. Would Jesus establish His Kingdom by some other means than following the will of His Father, which would be by the way of vicarious suffering and agony on our behalf? Would He avoid the shame, pain, and ignominy of the cross and take the way of earthly power and glory instead? Just what kind of King and Savior would Jesus be?

This Sunday, we will consider our Lord’s experience of temptation as told by Luke. And when we are finished, there will be no doubt about it! We have, as that beautiful song exclaims, a “Wonderful, merciful Savior, precious Redeemer and Friend”!