“The tempter came to him and said, if you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”                                                         ~Matthew 4:3

If you study the temptation of Jesus Christ well, you would notice something very significant there. The first statement the devil presented before Jesus was this; “If you are the son of God, turn these stones into bread.” Now, “If”, is a conditional word. In other words, when the devil said to Jesus, “if you are,” he was trying to sow a seed of doubt in the mind of Jesus regarding who He was. The devil’s aim was to undermine Jesus’ confidence in who He was. Essentially, he tried to get Jesus to question His own identity.

The devil’s target was Jesus' mind; Jesus’ consciousness. He attacked Jesus in a very subtle way. His motive was to try to alter Jesus’ self-image. If he could get Jesus to doubt His Sonship, Satan would then replace that self-image with a distorted version that would allow him to sabotage the mission of Christ.

He would have accomplished his goal of redefining Jesus, and would have probably said to Him, “Well, you see, you’re not really the son of God. If you were, you wouldn’t be hungry and lacking food.” But thankfully, Jesus Christ did not let that happen.

Jesus never allowed his self image to be eroded into. He retained His identity. He knew who He was, and He did not allow the devil’s insinuations to alter how He saw Himself. He refused to let the devil’s suggestions modify His image. He did not allow his immediate and temporary circumstances to affect how He saw Himself.

It is very important that you get this and guard yourself accordingly.