Emphasis Preaching Journal

In the wilderness, Jesus was tempted to sin. Perhaps that "in depth" temptation was needed to may Jesus aware of the power of sin. About awareness of sin, British author Monica Furlong writes, "Sin strikes me as ... not the rather fiddling obsession with envy and anger and small untruths that we often make it out to be, but something much more terrible -- a determined obstinate choice of unreality and self-deception which has become a whole lifestyle. For the most part, we are as unaware of it as we are unaware of our own appearance seen from the back view, too unaware to confess it.