REFLECTIONS ON CHRIST'S TEMPTATION

I was recently thinking about the temptation of Jesus Christ. What an epic battle between cosmic forces—the incarnate Son of God in one corner and Satan the prince of darkness on the other. The three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) include the account of Jesus Christ’s temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11; Mk. 1:12-13; Lk. 4:1-13). What is the significance of this event? Why was Jesus tempted?

All three Synoptic Gospels indicate the Holy Spirit led Jesus Christ out into the wilderness, and there the Lord fasted for forty days, being tempted by Satan, i.e. the tempter and the Devil (Matt. 4:1-2; Mk. 1:12-13; Lk. 4:1-2). Craig Keener notes that “it was commonly believed that demons were especially attracted to places like bathhouses, graveyards and deserts. Readers would thus sense the suspense as Jesus battled with Satan on Satan’s own turf” [1].  Still, it was on account of the Spirit’s leading that the Lord would go into the wilderness for a season of fasting and to face off against the Devil.

Matthew and Mark place the temptation account directly after Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan River; however, Luke separates the telling of the baptism and temptations with his genealogy.

Mark offers the most concise telling of the Devil’s temptation of the Christ, leaving out Satan’s three offers. Matthew and Luke tell of the three offers but they arranged them in different orders. Matthew orders Satan’s temptations this way: turning stone to bread, jumping off the pinnacle of the temple, and the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worshipping the Devil. Luke reverses the second two, placing the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worshipping the Devil before the jumping off the pinnacle of the temple. He likely “rearranged the order because he wants to highlight the temple confrontation, given the way he highlights Jerusalem as the place of the key conflict in 9:51 to the end of his Gospel.” It can also be said that “Luke places the account after Adam is named as “son of God” in the genealogy to highlight Jesus’ representational role. This Luke’s use of the title carries an additional nuance that it lacks in Matthew” [2]. 

There is a cosmic battle taking place, mind-to-mind communication is taking place between the Son of God and Satan, and the Devil is challenging Jesus own identity as the Son of God and His relationship with God.

It is also hard to miss the parallels between Jesus’ forty days of fasting in the wilderness and the ensuing temptations with Israel’s forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Christ and the Israelites were both tempted to break covenant with Yahweh. This becomes clear in the Lord’s references to Deuteronomy (Matt. 4:4, Luke. 4:4, cf. Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:7, Luke 4:12, cf. Deut 6:16; Matt. 4:10, Luke 4:8, cf. Deut. 6:13). The difference in the two is that where Israel fails Christ succeeds. The Lord then represents all that God intended Israel to become and God’s promise to Abraham—to be blessed and a blessing to all nations—is fully realized in Christ.

The repetition of the title “Son of God” also plays a significant role in Matthew and Luke’s telling of the temptation of Jesus Christ (Matt. 4:3, 6; Luke 4:3, 9). Darrell Bock explains,

Sonship is important here because the cosmic battle indicates that more than Jesus’ messianic status is under challenge. Satan seeks to undermine the intimate connection between Jesus as Son and the Father. Jesus will not do it, because for him the Father functions as “the Lord God.” Two of the replies use this title for God. In showing how God is seen, Jesus underscores than an appreciation of God’s unique position and the loyalty that position demands are the grounds for resisting temptation. Jesus shows himself fully qualified to represent humanity and exemplify the way to victory. His faithfulness is the model held up to disciples under pressure for their choice to walk in God’s way [3].

The temptation in Matthew and Luke moreover offer us the essence of Jesus’ ministry, which was a kind of messianic ministry far different than what others, particularly His Jewish kin, had expected. N.T. Wright writes,

The struggle is precisely about the nature of Jesus’ vocation and ministry. The pull of hunger, the lure of cheap and quick “success,” the desire to change the vocation to be the light of the world into the vocation to bring all nations under his powerful rule by other means—all of these would easily combine into the temptation to doubt the nature of the vocation of which he had been sure at the time of John’s baptism. If you are the Son of God…There are many different styles of career, ministry, and agendas that Jesus might have adopted. Messiahs came in many shapes and sizes. It was by no means clear from anything in the culture of the time exactly how someone who believed himself to be the eschatological prophet, let alone YHWH’s anointed, ought to behave, what his programme should be, or how he should set about implementing it. Finding the way forward was bound to be a battle, involving all the uncertainty and doubt inherent in going out into unknown territory assumed to be under enemy occupation…

…Jesus was not engaged in (what we might call) self-aggrandizement. He was not working remarkable signs to impress the public; when people asked him to do so he regarded it as a snare and a delusion, evidence of their hardness of heart. He was not engaged in subversion against Rome, with world domination in view. He was announcing and inaugurating the reign of Israel’s god in a new way, not reducible to terms of any of these, and indeed explicitly opposed to them all. The victory portrayed in Matthew 4.1-11 is more or less exactly the victory that was acted out in Jesus’ career [4].

The temptation of Jesus Christ was then something that occurred under the leading of the Holy Spirit. It was a cosmic battle between the Christ and Satan in the enemy’s territory. Christ emerged victorious over Satan’s attacks against the vocation God sought for the Son and the very relationship between the Father and the Son. Christ’s victory also serves as an example for His disciples who must also undergo temptations that would question their relationship to God and their vocation to follow after their Messiah.

~ WGN 

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1. Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 136.
2. Darrell Bock, Jesus According to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 90.
3. Ibid., 90.
4. N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1996), 458-459.