The Temptation of Jesus

And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days; and when they were ended, he was hungry.

The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”

And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’”

And the devil took him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 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. If you, then, will worship me, it shall all be yours.”

And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’”

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; for it is written, ‘He will give his angels charge of you, to guard you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’”

And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.

~Luke 4:1-13

This past Sunday was the First Sunday in Lent for the Western Church and we were called to meditate upon the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. There are several key themes that emerge from this text, including affirming Jesus' humanity, his ability to understand temptation, and his knowledge of "being in the wilderness." Each of those are important but there is a deeper mystery being revealed in this passage, that reaches back far in time and returns us to the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve were placed by God in the Garden of Eden - lush, beautiful and in it they communed with God and lacked nothing. They experienced Paradise. God placed on them one injunction: do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The evil one came and tempted - at its root the temptation was to reject the rule of God and to be a god unto oneself, to reject Divine authority and take life into one's own hands, to operate outside of the God ordained parameters. Adam and Eve were ensnared by the temptation - they gave into it, they disobeyed, they ate and the result was death because their disobedience severed them from the source of Life, God himself. They were cast out of the garden into the wilderness and humanity has been in a wilderness place ever since: grasping, struggling, diseased and dying.

Enter Jesus.

Jesus was placed into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit (Mark's Gospel actually uses the phrase "was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness"). Jesus entered into the reality of humanity - he went to the place where the sick and dying were in order that he might provide the remedy. Just verses before Luke records the baptism of Jesus - the affirmation both of Jesus' divine Sonship and also of his full participation in human life, his standing with fallen humanity. In the wilderness Jesus experiences an aspect of our humanity we are all to familiar with: temptation.

The temptations that Jesus faced were an attempt by the evil one to get Jesus to trip up in the same way that Adam and Eve had - to grasp at power and authority in a way that was not God pleasing, to operate outside of the parameters ordained by God. At the root of the temptation of Jesus was an attempt to subvert the role of the Messiah, to tempt Jesus to be a different kind of Messiah than he had come to be.

Jesus' time in the battle was truly a time of doing battle with the evil one, the devil. It was a time of undoing the defeat that Adam and Eve experienced in Eden.

Ambrose of Milan comments on this reality when he says:

“It is fitting that it be recorded that the first Adam was cast out of Paradise into the desert, that you may observe how the second Adam [Jesus] returned from the desert to Paradise…Adam brought death through the tree. Christ brought life through the cross... Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, is led into the desert for a purpose, in order to challenge the devil. If he had not fought, he would not have conquered him for me.”

Praise be to God that Jesus, in his battle, was victorious. Jesus did not succumb to the temptations laid before him and this led ultimately to an even greater battle with the evil one, which appeared to end when Jesus was killed on the cross, yet ultimately God was shown to be victorious when he raised Jesus from the dead, defeating the power of sin and death and making victory and new and unending life a reality that is possible for you and for me.

Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan; Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Grace & Peace to You,

Micah+