temptation of Jesus

The Temptation of Israel’s Messiah

on February 7, 2022

Timothy W. Whitaker is a Retired United Methodist Church bishop who served the Florida Area.

The Gospel according to St. Luke contains a story of the temptation of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness following his baptism by John the Baptist (Luke 4:1-13), another version of the same story in the Gospel according to St. Matthew (4:1-11). This story occupies first place in the attention of the church in the West on the First Sunday in Lent.

While lessons may be drawn from this story about our own temptations, this story primarily concerns the unique temptations of Jesus who, during his baptism, had been anointed by the Holy Spirit for his vocation as the Messiah of Israel, the Son of God.

Because this story was handed on to the earliest Christians in the form of folklore, I think its true meaning can be hard to discern. We may become so distracted by the images of turning stones into loaves of bread, being taken up in an instant to see all the kingdoms of the world, and throwing oneself from the pinnacle of the temple, that we cannot figure what is really going on in this story. However, if we keep in mind that this is a story that indicates the realistic temptations which Jesus faced as the long-awaited Messiah of Israel, then we shall be better able to identify what is at stake in this time of temptation at the beginning of Jesus’ public career. Discerning what these temptations are about does require some reflection which is evoked by the images in the story in light of Israel’s past and Jesus’ aims in his public career.

Casting off the spell of the deceiver

In each of the Synoptic Gospels, the first thing that happens to Jesus after he is baptized is that he must confront the tempter during his sojourn of solitude in the wilderness. Why must Jesus deal with diabolos, the devil?

The devil is the tempter because he works continually to cast a spell of deception over the world. In the Gospel according to St. John, he is described as “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). The anointed Messiah must confront him because he had cast his spell over Israel, the people of God. The people could claim Abraham as their father, the covenants which God made with them and no other people, and the good law of Moses as their light to guide them. So then, why were they too much like all other peoples of the world? Was it because they were under the control of a pagan empire? Was it because their cities and culture had become Hellenized? While these were, and had been for a long time, genuine concerns of the people of Israel, there was a deeper malady in their life. The sudden appearance of diabolos before the new Messiah meant that the people were not fully living as the people of God because they had fallen under the spell of the deceiver. Jesus’ task was to exorcize the devil from the life of Israel and its members, but first he himself had to demonstrate his ability to resist the devil’s temptations. He would begin his public career as the anointed Messiah by casting off the diabolical spell of the tempter because of his purity of heart in the presence of God his Father and the power of the Holy Spirit who reposed upon him.

Jesus’ defeat of diabolos was the first sign that God was inaugurating a new age in the history of Israel. John the Baptist had prepared the way which Jesus would now walk. This new age would not be a complete rejection of Israel’s past, but it would be a revolution of its identity and mission. While this revolution would be startling in its newness, it had been long promised in the scriptures, especially in the prophets (such as Isaiah 11:1-9, 49:1-6, 52:13-53:12; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 11:14-21). Jesus’ aim was to restore Israel as the people of God by teaching them the truth of God which would break the spell of deception, to gather around himself disciples to be the nucleus of a restored Israel, and to be enthroned as the Messiah in power, which, as it would happen, would take place through his redemptive death on the cross and his glorious resurrection from the dead. The dimensions of the coming revolution of Israel are expressed in the three particular temptations by which the devil attempts to deceive the newly anointed Messiah.

The first temptation

One of the marks of Israel was its land, and the first temptation pertains to the promised land. God had promised his people a land because they needed it for their sustenance. On the way to the promised land, God had provided manna (Exodus 16), but when the people entered the promised land, it was a place “flowing with milk and honey” (Deuteronomy 26:9). When the anointed Messiah confronts the deceiver of Israel in the wilderness, he is tempted to turn stones into loaves of bread (Luke 4:2b-3). Jesus casts off this temptation by declaring the truth of God, “One does not live by bread alone” (Luke 4:4). By asserting that Israel’s true need is greater than that which the land can provide, Jesus begins to unveil the divine purpose for a restored Israel in a new age. The bread God would now provide would be what is called in the Gospel according to St. John “the bread of life” (John 6:35)–the spiritual sustenance which only God can provide through the Son by the Holy Spirit. Since this is the kind of sustenance God will provide, the people of God would no longer be confined to the land, but they could take possession of the whole world, which is why the apostle Paul dares to describe God’s promise of a land to Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 17:8) as a promise to “inherit the world” (Romans 4:13).

The second temptation

The second temptation pertains to the kingdom which God promised to Israel. In the beginning, God had created Israel to be a particular people among all of the nations of the world–“a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). But during the course of its history, Israel constantly felt the temptation to be “like other nations” (1 Samuel 8:20). God allowed Israel to exist as one of the political powers in the world with its own king (1 Samuel 8:4-9, 21-22), but this long experiment was coming to an end. 

In the second temptation, the anointed Messiah was taken on high to see all the kingdoms of the world and to be promised dominion over them if he would play along with diabolos (Luke 4:5-7). Jesus began to reveal God’s new plan for his restored people when he refused the devil’s temptation, saying, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him” (Luke 4:8). In the new age of the restored Israel, the people of God would indeed “inherit the world,” not by being a political entity among all the nations and playing by the devil’s games of domination, but by being a distinctive community with an alternative way of living within all the nations and giving their highest allegiance only to the Lord their God. For a long time Israel had hoped that a Messiah would come to deliver them from political captivity, and many hoped that a Messiah would lead them in throwing off the rule of pagan Rome. The true Messiah had arrived, and he would indeed liberate the people of God from Roman oppression by reconstituting their life, not as a state triumphing over other states, but as a distinctive worshiping and witnessing community within the Roman Empire and within all other kingdoms and empires in the world. Their liberation from Rome entailed embracing a different kind of identity consistent with God’s original purposes for Israel. That is why the new messianic people of God would call themselves the ekklesia, the church, the “assembly” of Israel around the Messiah which exists always and everywhere as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” in order to proclaim to everyone the mighty acts of God who called them out of darkness into God’s marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9).

The third temptation

In the old dispensation of God according to the Old Testament, Israel’s very being was bound to the land, the kingdom, and the temple. The third temptation of the anointed Messiah concerns the temple.

The third temptation shows that the devil was out of his depth in dealing with Jesus. The devil knew that Jesus was the anointed Messiah, but he still assumed that the Messiah was a politician. The devil knows from vast experience that politicians love to win over the people by offering them bread and circuses. Even though the devil had not yet succeeded in persuading Jesus to offer them bread, he thought that he could prevail by seducing Jesus into offering them a circus. And what could be a more spectacular circus act than throwing oneself down from the pinnacle of the temple, one of the acclaimed wonders of the world, and surviving without injury (Luke 4:9-11)? Jesus easily dispelled the devil’s deranged proposal by citing from the scriptures the clear truth that only a fool would deny, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test” (Luke 4:12). 

The devil’s antics were not very impressive because the devil apparently assumed that he could distract the Messiah from the real purpose of the temple by proposing a stunt to wow the masses. God had given the temple to God’s people to be a house of prayer and a place where to meet their Lord. In the coming new age, the temple would still be a central part of God’s plan, but the temple would no longer be a building of stone located in Jerusalem. Instead, the true temple where the people could meet God was the body of Jesus himself (John 2:21-22), and the new people of God who were joined with the Messiah would themselves be “like living stones,” being “built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:4-5). Since in the new age the restored Israel centered around Jesus the Messiah would exist everywhere in all nations, the people of God would be the new temple of God where anyone could meet the Lord without having to make a journey to a building in the city of Jerusalem. No stunt could distract the Messiah from God’s plan to reconstitute the temple as a people who live as his body by faith.

Defeating the deceiver

Luke concludes the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness saying, “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). The temptation in the wilderness was only the beginning of the deceiver’s effort to test and to overcome the Messiah, but Jesus’ victory of the devil then would be repeated over and over again until he accomplished all his work by being obedient to God his Father by the power of the Holy Spirit who rested upon him. Having accomplished his feat of obedience, even to the point of death, Jesus who had been conceived and born to be the Messiah and anointed by the Holy Spirit was enthroned in power as the Messiah and Son of God in his resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:3-4). As the victor over the evil one, the living Messiah and Son of God can enable the members of his church to share in his victory by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Why pay attention to this story?

The story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness does contain lessons for Christians in dealing with temptations. Just as Jesus went into the wilderness to be tested as one “full of the Holy Spirit” (Luke 4:1), so we may participate in his victory over the deceiver by relying on the Holy Spirit. Just as Jesus was armed for battle with the devil with the Word of God in the scriptures, so we may equip ourselves for battle with evil by cherishing and meditating on the scriptures. Just as Jesus proved to be obedient by his purity of heart, his single minded obedience to God his Father, so we can hope to escape the snares of the devil only by praying in the Spirit for a greater purity of heart. Yet, since this story primarily concerns the unique temptations of the Messiah, it invites us to occupy our hearts and minds with two great truths during Lent.

The first truth is the truth of confessing that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, the Son of God. We may be accustomed to thinking of Jesus’ messiahship as a mere honorific because he was never a political leader. It is true that Jesus is a different kind of Messiah than many expected, but he is exactly the kind of Messiah whom God the Father intended and who alone can rule over a newly constituted Israel as the people of God that God wants. His enthronement as Messiah is something far greater than the coronation or inauguration of a leader of an earthly regime. The enthronement of the anointed Messiah was his resurrection from the dead and exaltation to the right hand of God so that he may now be the Lord of any and all in every time and place who believe with their hearts and confess with their mouths that God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9-13). This alone is God’s true Messiah.

The second truth is the truth that the church is the reconstituted Israel as God’s own people which now includes peoples from all nations who confess Jesus as their Messiah and Lord. This does not mean that God has revoked all the promises God made to genealogical, observant Israel, for “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:28-29). Nonetheless, the church has as much a claim to the inheritance of Israel as the Jews because of the mysterious mercy of God. As such, the church comes to understand that its way of life in the world should be shaped by the story of Israel in the Old Testament although the church now includes all the nations as well as Jews. This way is one of being in the world, but not of it; of being a distinctive people from all other peoples; of living in a way that is an alternative not only to obvious wickedness but also to other socially acceptable ways of living that may seem reasonable and capable of accommodation. And, of course, it is a way of refusing all the deceptions of diabolos that become embedded in human cultures by being God’s people who say, “We refuse to believe your lies, for we trust and will obey only the truth of God.”

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