Matthew 4:4

4. He answered Our Lord, like Eve, though with more constancy and better success, quotes God hath said. Our Saviour may not have known to whom he quoted Scripture; but as the devil dared not reveal his wicked character, Jesus won the argument. Man shall not live by bread alone Man’s whole life and nature are not sustained solely by material food. Bodily food may imperfectly sustain the body. But man has something nobler than stomach. He has a spirit, noble, God-given, immortal. Hence, though feeding my body with bread made from stones may gratify my hunger, it may irreparably ruin my higher nature. By every word… of God As the bread feeds the body, so the word feeds the soul. The word is the manna by which God sustains our spiritual nature. Whether it be his instructive, consoling, or preceptive word, it is by that every word proceeding from the mouth of God that man’s soul liveth. The soul of the man Jesus, as here intimated, lived by a perfect obedience to every preceptive word proceeding from God, which preceptive word now forbade him to create that bread by which the body might live, but the soul perish. But what wrong would there have been in transforming the stones and eating the bread? We answer, he would have transgressed the divine order specified in our comment on Matthew 4:2. He was still under the rule of the Spirit; and the period of his inductive probation was unexpired. Had he complied with the tempter, he would have fallen by just the same sin as the first Adam. His probation lasted until the moment that angels came and ministered unto him. Adam chose to live by the corporeal food; Christ chose to live by the word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.