Luke Chapter Four
Joyce Voysey

Chapter 4 brings us to Jesus forty days in the wilderness where he fasted and was “tempted of the devil.”  The authority of Science and Health tells us, “Since Jesus must have been tempted in all points, he, the immaculate, met and conquered sin in every form” (p. 584:14-16).   Here we have a prime example and authority on how we meet and defeat the temptations that beset us in our human experience. 

Right here I became somewhat bogged down with trying to find out what authority there is for calling Jesus the Exemplar. 
The only thing of interest I found was that in the late 14^th century a definition of Exemplar was, “Original model of the universe in the mind of God.”

Verse 14 has me puzzled.  It seems that all Jesus had done was to have a “miraculous” birth, convened with wise men, been baptised, and won a battle with the devil.  Yet when he returned to Galilee he was famous “through all the region round about”.   Is this some sort of proof of the effectiveness of John the Baptist’s PR work or lobbying?

How well Jesus knew the Scriptures – he quoted them to dispel the devil’s arguments and now he quotes Isaiah to announce his mission:  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Isa. 61:1).

This is still the mission of the Christ working through Christian Science.  As in Jesus day, so to-day, the Christ is not always welcomed where it is very much needed.

An unclean devil is cast out of a man by Jesus.  Here let us consult the Glossary to Science and Health for a definition of devil.  “Devil.  Evil; a lie; error; neither corporeality nor mind; the opposite of Truth; a belief in sin, sickness, and death; animal magnetism or hypnotism; the lust of the flesh, which saith: ‘I am life and intelligence in matter.  There is more than one mind, for I am mind, –  a wicked mind, self-made or created by a tribal god and put into the opposite of mind, termed matter, thence to reproduce a mortal universe, including man, not after the image and likeness of Spirit, but after its own image’ ” (p. 584).

 

Galilee was a fruitful field for Jesus.  Dummelow tells us that “Jesus had probably intended to make Jerusalem and Judea the chief scene of his ministry, but changed His policy owing to the hostility of the Pharisees.  In many respects Galilee was better suited to his purpose than Judea.  The Galileans were more tolerant, less conservative, and less under the power of the priests and Pharisees than the Judeans. There was a large Gentile population in Galilee, and much of the trade between Egypt and Damascus passed through the country.  The people were more industrious, prosperous, and enterprising than the Judeans, who were jealous of them, and affected to despise them.”