4 And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” 4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’ ” 5 And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’ ”9 And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written, “ ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,’ 11 and “ ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’ ” 12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” 13 And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. (Luke 4:1-13, ESV)
Temptation. What a popular topic.
It has certainly invited a lot of amusing observations. Mae West famously noted, “I generally avoid temptation unless I can resist it.” And it has prompted some really bad advice. Oscar Wilde famously urged his readers, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” (That explains a lot about Wilde.)
But here’s the truth about temptation. It is impossible to avoid, and – if we encounter it unprepared – or take Wilde’s advice – it will not only separate us from God, but it will alienate us from the good gifts that God has given us. Because once you surrender to temptation, more often not – if that surrender goes unchecked – it becomes an addiction. And the definition of addiction is enslavement to that which is more important than anything else in our lives.
Over the years I have seen that path rob more than one person of their lives: The talented young man who was admitted to three engineering programs and flunked out of all three, thanks to the sexual temptations that led to his addiction to online pornography. The young lawyer burned through three marriages who thanks to the temptation to alcohol. Countless young adults who have wondered through the tone-setting years of their life thanks to drugs.
But addictions are rooted in temptations that there are countless other kinds of addiction that we don’t include in the typical list of temptations. And that list of addictions are usually imbedded in other kinds of temptation that we don’t usually fold into the list of temptations. The temptation to indulge hopelessness and cynicism, pride and arrogance, jealousy and bitterness, selfishness and avarice, fear and timidity. The list goes on. And each of us probably know better than anyone else, the temptation that whispers to us.
But, you might wonder, what does the temptation of Jesus have to do with us. After all, as Son of God there was no way that he could give in. His temptations were of a completely different kind than the ones that we experience. And, after all, that was a long time ago, in a very different world, so they clearly don’t have anything to do with us.
I would like to take a bit of time to address those three assumptions, because they go to the heart of what Luke describes as God’s great work of mercy on our behalf that he does through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And this description of the temptation that Jesus experienced describes the way that we are invited to follow as we encounter our own temptations.
First, let’s talk about the assumption that Jesus could not have given into temptation.
This is an old debate and I don’t want to hide the fact that it exists. In the early centuries of the church’s history theologians and bishops debated what it meant to say that Jesus was both God and man and they also struggled with the idea – as the letter to the Hebrews puts it – that he was tempted as we are, but without sin (4:15).
Some flatly concluded that if Jesus was divine, then he couldn’t sin. Their logic basically ran like this: God can’t give into temptation and sin. Jesus is God. Therefore, Jesus can’t sin.
The problem, of course, is that it is hard to know what Scripture means by describing Jesus as having been tempted as we are – since the essence of temptation is the ability to give in. So, I am inclined to side with some other early theologians of the church who argue that in his humanity, Jesus did – indeed – experience temptations to which he could have surrendered, but in the battle between God and the devil, it was the divine nature of Jesus that aided his human nature to submit to God, the Father.
By enduring this experience, Jesus not only restored the image-of-God-bearing capacity that we have been given by as our birthright, but he also illustrates or models how to resist temptation. You have heard me describe Jesus as the ultimate first responder. One who not only enters the burning houses that are the lives of every human being, but also exposes himself to all of the dangers involved (including injury and death), and then, through the power of the Resurrection, emerges, creating a path for us out of our own burning houses.
And it is the same with temptation.
The second assumption that might lead us to believe this story has nothing to do with us is the impression that his temptations were completely different from ours.
On the face of it, of course, this seems to be plainly true. With the devil facing off with Jesus in the desert, how could it be anything else? And when you read through the list of temptations it certainly sounds like it. After all, Jesus faces three temptations that sound pretty much like the kind of thing that only the Son of God would encounter:
- the temptation to assert god-like control
- the temptation to worship that which is not God
- and the temptation to test God
But if you think about it, whenever we make something other than God our god, we surrender to all three temptations: We assert god-like control by deciding that we know what is best for us. We end up worshiping and serving the thing that we make our god. And, of course, by giving in, we put God to the test – because, after all, we knew that it wasn’t what God wanted for us in the first place.
Think what happened, for example, to the young man I described at the outset who blew through three engineering programs thanks to his addiction to pornography. He made a choice. He asserted control over his life. At some level he told himself, God doesn’t know what he is talking about. My mother does’t know what she is talking about. I’m in charge here. Maybe he didn’t intend to spend all of his time looking at pornography. He probably thought he could control it. But he certainly decided he knew what was best for him. Temptation number one.
But, of course, he couldn’t control it. So minutes with pornography became hours. Hours became days. Days became weeks. Weeks became years. And, finally, all there was to his life was endless hours in front of a computer screen serving his new God – giving it his attention, his time, his energy, his imagination, his ability to think, his capacity for emotional attachment to real human beings, his ability to care about and love others. Temptation number two.
Inevitably, he carved out for himself a life that defied (read tested) the will of God. And he suffered the consequences of the first two choices. Inspite of his ability, he applied to ever weaker programs in engineering. He flunked out of all three. And he ended up living in a double-wide with his unemployed and unemployable father who – by the way – is also addicted to pornography. Temptation number three.
It’s no surprise, then, to discover that the temptations Jesus experiences are also the temptations experienced by Adam and Eve that are described in Genesis 3 and the temptations to which the children of Israel succumb in the desert described in the Book of Exodus.
They aren’t the stuff of divine existence. They are the stuff of human existence and that is why Jesus takes them on in the desert.
Then there is the third assumption: This was all a long time ago in a very different world, so it clearly doesn’t have anything to do with us.
This is probably the most difficult assumption to deal with, because it is both the most naïve of all the struggles we have with this story from Luke’s Gospel, and the most deeply felt. One could even argue that this assumption is, itself, a temptation.
A temptation to believe that we are gods, because we have cell phones, computers, air conditioned houses, and electric cars. A temptation worship the world we have made, because we think that it can save us. That our salvation is just another bit of information or technology around the corner. And, not a few of us are even tempted to test god by trying to make that approach stick. It is stunning to read about the number of hi-tech gurus who believe that they can download their minds into a computer and live forever or freeze their bodies and resurrect them at some point in the future when we have conquered disease.
It is even more stunning when you look at just the history of the last 22 years or – come to that – the last 2 or 3 years. We found ourselves powerless before a global pandemic. We (meaning a certain number of well-placed human beings) probably manufactured it. We crashed our economy. We thought we could conquer it within weeks or at least modulate its impact on the world. It is still with us. And, now we find ourselves wandering around the precipice of a third world war, while we watch a tyrant, not unlike the tyrants who brought us the second world war, carve up and ravage a country that posed no real threat to anyone.
It seems to me that the most dangerous assumption that we can make is that the wisdom of God has somehow grown old in a world that is only superficially different from the first century. This may be the age of information. It is not the age of wisdom.
So, in this Lenten season, I invite you to pray with me:
Gracious and loving God, in your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, you confronted the temptations to which we are all vulnerable. Too often we choose to be our own gods, choosing things we know are not good for us. Too often we succumb to their control over our lives, we serve them with our time, our energy, our attention. Too often we test you, willfully choosing a path that we know will lead to waste and destruction. Use this season to turn our hearts toward you. Help us to choose the way that you have established and to resist the temptation to trust our own wisdom. For apart from you there is no wisdom worthy of the word. All this we ask in the name of Jesus, the Christ, your Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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