You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin

[Robert]

Hebrews 12:3 For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. 4 You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin. 

 

Ellen White states, “The temptation that Christ experienced can never be fully understood by men"...

 

Why?  BTW, Ellen White is referring to the cross.

[Robert]

When Christ became a man in the incarnation He had to give up not His divinity, but His divine prerogatives, in other words, the independent use of His divinity. Even His God-consciousness had to be given up. Jesus discovered He was God only by revelation. He was not God-conscious as a baby. He had to grow up in knowledge. He had to grow up in everything because He had given up the independent use of His divinity and was made in all things like unto us (Heb. 2:17).

 

Therefore, He was totally God-dependent all through His earthly ministry. John 5:30 says, “I can do nothing of myself.” John 6:57 says, “I live by the Father.” See also John 8:28 and John 14:10. All these texts state very clearly that Christ was totally God-dependent.

 

Then read Rom 6:4; Acts 2:24, 32; Eph. 1:20. All of these texts clearly tell us that it was the Father who raised Christ from the dead. Keep these two things in mind: Christ was God-dependent, and He was dependent on the Father for the resurrection.

 

At the cross God abandoned Christ.  Since Christ was depending on His Father for the resurrection that hope was now gone.  Christ was now facing the 2nd death - the eternal grave, which is goodbye to life forever!!!!  

 

Now the devil comes in to tempt:

 

In Luke 23:35-39, at least three times the devil approached Christ—once through the Roman soldiers, once through the priests, and once through the thief on the left-hand side. Then, in Matt. 27:35-46, the people also added to that temptation. The temptation was the same, “Come down from the cross and save yourself.” Can you imagine what that temptation was like? 

 

 Christ was tempted to come down from the cross and save Himself. He was tempted by our self-love (iniquity)! Can you understand the temptation? The issue He faced was not to screw up His will power and say, “I’ll hold on for a few hours or for three days.” That is no sacrifice for a God who lives in eternity. The issue was good-bye to life forever, never again to see His Father, never again to go back to heaven. It meant to give up His glory, to give up His life. That was the issue. That is the curse of God.