‘For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin’ (Hebrews 4:15).
After Jesus is baptised by John, after the Holy Spirit has descended upon him and the voice from heaven has spoken, ‘You are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased’, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested or tempted (the Greek work has both senses) by the devil.
Luke inserts a genealogy of Christ between the baptism and the wilderness testing which links Christ back to Adam, making it clear that Jesus is the second Adam, the new human being, who, unlike Adam, is going to resist the tempter, is not going to break faith with God.
If Jesus is going to redeem humanity it is necessary that he undergo this testing, this battle with Satan, about what being the Son of God is going to mean. ‘If you are the Son of God…’, the devil whispers three times before suggesting a course of action. And in those words we hear the whisper to the first Adam, ‘did God really say’. The contest, the battle, is one fought around what God has said and the outworkings of this. Fo Adam, the tempter whispers that he would not really die, rather that he would become like God, his eyes opened, knowing good and evil. For Christ, the temptation concerns how he will perform his mission to redeem Adam, fallen humanity. How will Christ live out his identity as the Son of God?
The temptations he faces concern three foundational areas of human formation.
The first is in the area of physical needs, primarily for food. Jesus is very hungry after fasting for 40 days, so he must have been very tempted to turn those stones into bread, to use his power to meet his physical needs, but he refuses. For the second Adam, what will nourish and feed him is not primarily physical bread but God’s word to him. Throughout the gospels Jesus refers to this secret form of nourishment, of strength. Jesus is re-claiming humanity as a creature formed primarily through a relationship to the creator, a relationship of dynamic communication, of speaking, listening and responding. Some might say that Jesus’ ministry would have been more effective if he had solved world hunger by making stones into bread, but there is something even more fundamental that Jesus is addressing here. Where do humans receive their core identity, to whom do they listen to tell them who they are, which voices are determining their actions and responses? To whom are we listening is the most fundamental question, and since the days of the first Adam this is a contested area for every human being: Who am I? Can I trust that what God says is true? Every one of us faces this struggle in our lives; there are contesting voices within us telling us different things, we experience it every day, this question of trust. Whose voice are we going to live by?
The second testing is that of means and end. Jesus has come to establish a new rule, a new kingdom, a new government on earth. He is the anointed one, the ultimate Lord of the earth, how is his rule going to be worked out? We see in our world today all too clearly the way rulers operate in terms of ‘how many cards a person has’, how much power they have, the cut-and-thrust world of the deal, the rule of the bully, the exercise of brute force, the gaining of huge wealth by strong men. We see all too clearly the chilling reality of what lies behind this ‘realpolitik’: ‘to you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been given to me, and I give it to anyone I please’. The price of this power, the cost of this deal, is the question of worship, of whom you are serving, to whom you are really bowing down. Along with the question of whose voice we trust is the question of who we are worshipping and really serving in our lives.
The final temptation in Luke’s version is perhaps the more subtle one. It involves the temple in Jerusalem, which is going to be Jesus’ final destination; during his ministry he will set his face towards Jerusalem. The devil invites him to some spectacular religious display of God’s loving protection. Throw yourself off the pinnacle of the temple and God will surely send the angels to catch you. ‘Jesus, you of all people can avoid suffering, you of all people do not need to undergo a painful death. God does not wish to inflict any pain on you as his beloved son, not even to stub your toe against a rock.’ Christ rejects this path; he rejects a path of religious spiritual privilege. He instead choses to identify with us, with broken, suffering, sinful humanity. Jesus will be exalted and enter his glory, not by forcing God’s hand now, but by conforming to God’s will. He will go the way of the cross.
So, Jesus is tested, yet, unlike the first Adam, he stays true to God, his allegiance is not broken, and his ministry will be worked out through his deep trusting and obedience to God. None of us, thank God, will face quite this level of testing, because we are not the Son of God come to redeem the human race. But each of us does face an inner battle of trust, of whom we listen to, of our relationship to worldly power and wealth. Each of us faces the question of whether we are willing to take up our cross and follow Christ.
We pray, in the prayer Jesus taught us, ‘do not lead us into temptation’, by which we mean testing or trial, and I think we pray that knowing our weakness and fallibility, we resist any bravado about this kind of temptation, we do not seek it out. Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth, ‘No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape, so that you will be able to endure it’ (1 Cor. 10:13).
To be a human being means for all of us that we will be tested. Our God-given humanity is contested in the question of our identity as God’s children, in whom we worship and serve, and in our willingness to take the path of suffering for Christ in this age, of being a witness to Christ. We are not offered a path of worldly power and prestige, we are not offered the path of religious showmanship, we are offered the hidden path of salvation, the secret of Christ hidden from the rulers of this world, none of whom understand it, for if they had they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.
