We need not touch on the questions as to whether our Lord's body was
really transported to the temple, and, if so, to what part of it. But we
may point out that there is nothing in the narrative to warrant the
usual interpretation of this temptation, as being addressed to the
desire of recognition, and as equivalent to the suggestion that our Lord
should show Himself, by a stupendous miracle before the multitude, as
the Messiah. There is nothing about spectators, and no sign that the
dread solitude wrapping these two was broken by others. We must seek
for the point of the second temptation in another direction.
The very locality chosen for it helps us to the right understanding of
it. There were plenty of cliffs in the desert, down which a fall would
have been fatal. Why not choose one of them? The temple was God's house,
the fitting scene for an attempt to work disaster by the abuse of
religious ideas. The former temptation underlies this. That had sought
to move Jesus to cast off His filial confidence; this seeks to pervert
that confidence, and through it to lead Him to cast off filial
obedience. Therefore 'the Devil quotes Scripture for his purpose.' What
could be more religious than an act of daring based upon faith, which
again was based on a word which proceeded 'out of the mouth of God'? It
is not in the suppression of certain words in the quotation that Satan's
error lies. The omitted words are not material. What did he hope to
accomplish by this suggestion? If Jesus was, in bodily reality, standing
on the summit of the temple, the tempter, profoundly disbelieving the
promise, may have thought that the leap would end his anxieties by the
death of his rival. But, at any rate, he sought to lead His faith into
wrong paths, and to incite to what was really sinful self-will under the
guise of absolute trust.
Our Lord's answer, again drawn from Deuteronomy, strips off the disguise
from the action which seemed so trustful. He changes the plural verb of
the original passage into the singular, thus at once taking as His own
personal obligation the general command, and pointing a sharp arrow at
His foe, who was now knowingly or unknowingly so flagrantly breaking
that law. If God had bidden Jesus cast Himself down, to do it would have
been right. As He had not, to do it was not faith, but self-will. To
cast Himself into dangers needlessly, and then to trust God (whom He had
not consulted about going into them) to get Him out, was to 'tempt God.'
True faith is ever accompanied with true docility. He had come to do His
Father's will. A divine 'must' ruled His life. Was He to begin His
career by throwing off His allegiance on pretext of trust? If the
Captain of our Salvation commences the campaign by rebellion, how can He
lead the rank and file to that surrender of their own wills which is
victory?
The lessons for us from the second temptation are weighty. Faith may be
perverted. It may even lead to abandoning filial submission. God's
promised protection is available, not in paths of our own choosing, but
only where He has sent us. If we take the leap without His command, we
shall fall mangled on the very temple pavement. It is when we are 'in
the way' which He has prescribed that 'the angels of God' whom He has
promised 'meet' us. How many scandals in the falls of good men would
have been avoided, and how many mad enterprises would have been
unattempted, and how much more clearly would the relations of filial
faith and filial obedience have been understood, if the teaching of this
second temptation had been laid to heart!