1 Jesus,
full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in
the wilderness, 2 where
for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those
days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son
of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One
does not live by bread alone.’” (Luke 4:1-4, New Revised Standard Version).
Jesus has just
been baptized by John. He is about to start his brief but singular public
ministry.
To prepare him
for this, the Spirit leads him into the
wilderness (v. 1). The wilderness is a place where we are completely on our
own. There is no one there to help when danger confronts us.
Worse, the
Spirit leads Jesus into this place of complete vulnerability to be tempted by the devil (v. 1). The devil
is Christ’s worst enemy and ours. If Jesus goes down here, the devil gets to
control him, us, and all creation forever. At the same time, if Jesus resists
these temptations—beginning now and through the moment of his death—then he
decisively defeats the devil, frees us from his control, and brings about a
whole new creation. The stakes are as high as they can be.
Jesus has gone without food for 40 days (v. 2). Jesus is
radically tested by meeting his worst enemy in the most exposed of all places
at his most vulnerable time. We will never face a greater temptation or more
severe vulnerability than that faced by Jesus in our place and on our behalf.
Moreover, in these three temptations Jesus faced the
three most basic forms of all temptations that he would encounter in his life.
These are the same three we face each day.
The devil, that greatest of all deceivers, tempts Jesus to
prove he is the one true god’s beloved son by turning a stone into bread (v. 3). The
temptation? What matters more: Discerning and affirming a word from God or
having enough to eat? More deeply, what matters more: truth or reality? The
qualitative or the quantitative?
The devil believes that eating matters more. This has
different implications. Personally, it means that if one is hungry, one may
ignore the eighth commandment and steal. Societally, it means that the purpose
of the economy is to raise the standard of living. It means that hearing and
doing God’s word has no meaning before personal and societal needs are met.
From the devil’s point of view, truth has no significance so long as reality
remains unpleasant. The devil would always have us choose happiness over truth.
Unwittingly, Abraham Maslow’s influential hierarchy of needs
agrees with the devil’s assessment. It identifies the satisfaction of
physiological needs as primary. It places self-actualization fifth and last on
the needs which we humans are motivated to satisfy. That’s as close as he gets
to speaking of affirming God’s words as a need. Our intensely Olympian culture
continues to agree with him.
Jesus reveals this to be a temptation by rejecting it. We
otherwise wouldn’t discern it as one. He shows us that affirming our
relationship with God through hearing and doing his words matters most. Truth
trumps happiness. He affirms this again later by telling us that the greatest commandment
is to love God wholly.
To avoid misunderstanding, we need to apply the
paradoxical logic of the Chalcedonian Formula to this temptation. Accordingly,
we want to both affirm God’s words and maintain physical vitality by eating
rightly. We shouldn’t separate the two by thinking that we live solely by
either God’s words or food. We shouldn’t confuse the two by thinking, for
example, that raising the standard of living is the same as witnessing to God.
Finally, we should keep both in the right order: God’s words come first in
priority. God’s kingdom and his righteousness matter more than anything in and
of this world which is passing away.
(Today we have been following the discussion by Jacques
Ellul in his book The Ethics of Freedom [translated
by Geoffrey Bromiley, Eerdmans, 1976, pp. 52-55]).
Copyright © by
Steven Farsaci.
All rights reserved. Fair use encouraged.
All rights reserved. Fair use encouraged.
