The Devil

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Abba, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Abba, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  Matthew 4:1–11 (NIV) Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you,     and they will lift you up in their hands,     so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. CONSIDER THIS The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 3, has already described the baptism of Jesus in the following way: “As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment, heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased’” (vv. 16–17). In the following chapter, our current text, readers learn that this very same Spirit who had descended upon Jesus like a dove at his baptism now led him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. So quickly comes the transition from a time of glory and revelation to a time of temptation and testing. Though the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, notice it is the devil who will actually tempt him. As the epistle of James points out: “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone” (1:13). To be sure, God would never tempt a man or woman with evil because the very nature of the Almighty is good, purely good, without any hint of evil at all. Put another way, precisely because of who God is, the Most High only wills the good for all creatures: “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” (Ezek. 18:23). Accordingly, the agent of the temptation in this setting was the devil, the accuser, the one who is described in this gospel as “the tempter” in verse 3 and as Satan, the adversary, in verse 10. The devil is a fallen creature, a filthy, perverted spirit who is ever in opposition to God. This scene in the desert, then, will be dramatic. The cast of characters, so to speak, could hardly be more weighty. Some commentators on this passage, however, immediately empty out the drama of this narrative by claiming that Jesus was not really tempted at all.1 It’s all a show. Though the Greek word used in our text, peirazō (vv. 1, 3), can mean either “temptation” (as in 1 Cor. 7:5; James 1:13–14) or “testing,” many interpreters much prefer the latter term. In other words, this was not a contest of sorts but merely a demonstration. The wilderness scene with its forty days of fasting was simply the occasion, a wonderful opportunity, for Jesus of Nazareth to reveal who he was as a person in proper relation to God. Put another way, the devious schemes of the devil in this barren land were not actually temptations—no, not at all. Instead, they became for Jesus merely suitable occasions in which he could demonstrate his character in three different ways. Though such an interpretation of our text is popular among commentators, we believe it is theologically problematic for two key reasons. First of all, the entirety of the New Testament reveals Jesus of Nazareth to be the God/Human, that is, as a person who has not one but two natures, both divine and human. Granted, we all know that the divine nature of Jesus cannot be tempted with evil. That’s a given once we reflect on the very nature and being of God as we have just briefly done. However, though Jesus is fully divine, he is not only divine. He is also a real flesh-and-blood human being, and human nature can be tempted, after all, to break faith with God, to go contrary to the divine will. If one contends that such a temptation is not a possibility at all for Jesus—in other words, this option is excluded immediately by definition—then that’s just another way of affirming that the divine nature of Jesus overshadows or, better yet, overpowers the human nature. The question could then be raised: Is Jesus really a human being like us, with the one exception that he was and remains without sin? Second, such a troubled interpretation detracts from the incarnation in terms of its extent—that the Word became flesh and descended to the very depths of human existence, where the possibility of temptation was real, not fiction. Again, if the divinity of Jesus prevented him from experiencing the anguish and the pain of temptation, then how could he comfort those who face on a daily basis the challenge and threat of genuine, annoying temptation? Opportunities for demonstrations of character hardly entail suffering. In contrast, however, the author of the book of Hebrews has understood the two natures of Jesus properly, each in its place, and each fully, not partially, acknowledged. He understood that the extent of the incarnation (the Word becoming human) was so thorough that Jesus can commiserate, that is, be compassionate in terms of the suffering of all humanity as it is tempted with evil: “Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Heb. 2:18, emphasis added). In fact, the author of the book of Hebrews is so insistent that this basic truth of proper teaching about Jesus be affirmed that he maintained that Jesus had been tempted just like we are with but one exception—he was and remained without sin: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (4:15). The first temptation comes in the form of truth mingled with an appeal to doubt: “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Earlier in Matthew 3:17, a voice from heaven had declared: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” The devil picked up that basic truth but tried to get Jesus to question that reality by beginning with the little word if. Such a word choice is reflected in most modern translations of this passage, though the Common English Bible employs the word since.2 This last word has the devil not casting doubt upon, but actually affirming, the sonship of Jesus. However, this is not a helpful interpretation of the larger truths being articulated here, especially when we remember how Jesus described the devil: “When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44b). Furthermore, the transition from “if ” to “since” empties out the deceitfulness of the devil’s ruse, props him up to make him a truth teller, and is unable to explain the larger dynamics in play. Indeed, the treachery of the devil in this setting is reminiscent of the serpent’s temptation of Eve in which this liar mingled truth with falsity in order to get the woman to doubt: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Gen. 3:1b, emphasis added). The parallels here are instructive, but whereas the woman, along with the man, had failed the test put before them, Jesus succeeded. He would neither doubt his sonship nor would he attempt to prove it by making bread. Wisely, he took up “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17b) and quoted Deuteronomy 8:3b: “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” Any temptation can be strengthened by repetition, and so, not surprisingly, the devil was at it again: “If you are the Son of God . . .” This time the father of lies had Jesus stand on the highest point of the temple, perhaps in a vision, and he suggested that Jesus throw himself down in a spectacular, awe-inspiring display: “For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Yes, Satan can quote Scripture (are we surprised?), and much, though not all, of Psalm 91:11–12 is cited here, though such quoting is always done with an evil design or purpose. In effect, this evil spirit had invited Jesus, as a true man, who has ever submitted his own will to that of the Father, to disrupt that holy relationship by testing God, by calling the Most High into account. Put another way, the command of the devil to Jesus to “throw yourself down” was an invitation to engage in reckless and foolish behavior that attempted to force the very hand of God. Jesus would have none of this, and so he rebuked Satan once more by citing Scripture: “Do not put the LORD your God to the test as you did at Massah” (Deut. 6:16). Interestingly enough, this reference was to the wilderness wanderings of the ancient Hebrews, who broke faith with the Holy One of Israel by their ongoing complaining and stubborn unbelief. Whereas the people had failed the test of their forty years of wilderness wanderings (remember only Caleb and Joshua of the original generation entered the promised land), Jesus passed his test of forty days by leaning on the Word of God in his time of trial. In the third and last temptation of Jesus, the devil mixed it up a bit and abandoned the ploy of “If you are the Son of God.” Instead, he took Jesus to a very high mountain, once again perhaps in a vision, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. All of this would be given to Jesus (can this promise, however, even be trusted?) but with one stipulation. This condition, tucked away at the end of a string of temptations, was remarkable but not in the way that we might initially expect. The artfulness of the devil—and the devil is indeed artful and cunning—most often consists in mixing truths and lies, in deception and deceit, in pretense and trickery, and yet here the evil one has come out into the open, into the light of day, to reveal his true design, what this period of trial, these manifold temptations, had been about all along. What is this singular condition? It is none other than “if you will bow down and worship me.” There it is in full view. Satan, now out in the open, wanted that very thing that can belong to God alone, and so Jesus picked up the sword of the Spirit once more, in this case Deuteronomy 6:13a, and commanded: “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Neither power nor riches, neither kingdoms nor splendor, can ever take the place of the enormous good, beyond imagining, that is God. Jesus, in another context, said it well: “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Matt. 16:26). THE PRAYER Holy One of Israel, you who resisted the temptations of the devil by depending wholly on the Word of God and the presence of the Spirit, strengthen me so that I may also remain steadfast in you. I abide in you so that neither power nor riches, neither kingdoms nor splendor, will ever take your place in my heart.