According to Ellen White, there are two sources of temptation: Satan and the evil of our own hearts. If Christ didn't have any evil in His heart, it stands to reason that He could only be tempted by Satan.

He can only know our experience by going through what we go through. He took on Himself our fallen nature.

He can only know our experience by going through what we go through. He took on Himself our fallen nature.

I don't believe this. I don't understand this to be what Mrs. White said, either.

God knows us better than we know ourselves. How? He knows our thoughts. He knows how many hairs are on our heads. He knows what we will do ten years from now, or if we'll still be around at that time. He knows everything about us. Why would He have to experience anything directly as one of us to understand us? Does God not experience everything, absolutely everything, vicariously already?

Jesus lived here, not to understand us, but to show us that He could understand. We are too dense to realize that God understands if He is never living with us as one of us, "walking in our shoes."

What does He know about the power of an addiction?

God knows everything that can be known.

And God knew it before Jesus became a human, right? Which proves my point. Jesus did not need to come and suffer as one of us to understand us. He already did.

But He needed to show us that He understood. The cross was also partly to show us His love, ...

...but it was much more than that. It was necessary to fulfill the law, and to accept our punishment as our perfect Substitute. This has nothing to do with merely a "nice moral influence."

The sins of the people were transferred in figure to the officiating priest, who was a mediator for the people. The priest could not himself become an offering for sin, and make an atonement with his life, for he was also a sinner. Therefore, instead of suffering death himself, he killed a lamb without blemish; the penalty of sin was transferred to the innocent beast, which thus became his immediate substitute, and typified the perfect offering of Jesus Christ. Through the blood of this victim, man looked forward by faith to the blood of Christ which would atone for the sins of the world. {1SM 230.2}

Voluntarily our divine Substitute bared His soul to the sword of justice, that we might not perish but have everlasting life. ... {1SM 322.1}

I would call on all who would win heaven, to take warning. Do not devote your precious probationary time to sewing together fig leaves to cover the nakedness which is the result of sin. As you look into the Lord's great moral looking glass, His holy law, His standard of character, do not for a moment suppose that it can cleanse you. There are no saving properties in the law. It cannot pardon the transgressor. The penalty must be exacted. The Lord does not save sinners by abolishing His law, the foundation of His government in heaven and in earth. The punishment has been endured by the sinner's substitute. Not that God is cruel and merciless, and Christ so merciful that He died on Calvary's cross to abolish a law so arbitrary that it needed to be extinguished, crucified between two thieves. The throne of God must not bear one stain of crime, one taint of sin. In the councils of heaven, before the world was created, the Father and the Son covenanted together that if man proved disloyal to God, Christ, one with the Father, would take the place of the transgressor, and suffer the penalty of justice that must fall upon him (MS 145, 1897). {6BC 1070.4}