The tempter approaches Jesus in the desert (Mt 4), “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” Jesus’s response is immediate, based on the Word of God, and definitive, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.’” And the temptation is over. Jesus responds in a similar immediate and decisive fashion to the subsequent temptations, and the tempter is vanquished and departs from him.
