_THE TEMPTATION._
The waters of the Jordan do not more effectually divide the Holy Land
than they bisect the Holy Life. The thirty years of Nazareth were quiet
enough, amid the seclusions of nature and the attractions of home; but
the double baptism by the Jordan now remits that sweet idyll to the
past. The I AM of the New Testament moves forward from the passive to
the active voice; the long peace is exchanged for the conflict whose
consummation will be the Divine Passion.
The subject of our Lord's temptation is mysterious, and therefore
difficult. Lying in part within the domain of human consciousness and
experience, it stretches far beyond our sight, throwing its dark
projections into the realm of spirit, that realm, "dusk with horrid
shade," which Reason may not traverse, and which Revelation itself has
not illumined, save by occasional lines of light, thrown into, rather
than across it. We cannot, perhaps, hope to have a perfect understanding
of it, for in a subject so wide and deep there is room for the play of
many hypotheses; but inspiration would not have recorded the event so
minutely had it not a direct bearing upon the whole of the Divine Life,
and were it not full of pregnant lessons for all times. To Him who
suffered within it, it was a wilderness indeed; but to us "the
wilderness and the solitary place" have become "glad, and the desert ...
blossoms as the rose." Let us, then, seek the wilderness reverently yet
hopefully, and in doing so let us carry in our minds these two guiding
thoughts--they will prove a silken thread for the labyrinth--first, that
Jesus was tempted as man; and second, that Jesus was tempted as the Son
of man.
Jesus was tempted as man. It is true that in His Person the human and
the Divine natures were in some mysterious way united; that in His flesh
was the great mystery, the manifestation of God; but now we must regard
Him as divested of these dignities and Divinities. They are laid aside,
with all other pre-mundane glories; and whatever His miraculous power,
for the present it is as if it were not. Jesus takes with Him into the
wilderness our manhood, a perfect humanity of flesh and blood, of bone
and nerve; no Docetic shadow, but a real body, "made in all things like
unto His brethren;" and He goes into the wilderness, to be tempted, not
in some unearthly way, as one spirit might be tempted of another, but to
be "tempted in all points like as we are," in a fashion perfectly human.
Then, too, Jesus was tempted as the Son of man, not only as the perfect
Man, but as the representative Man. As the first Adam, by disobedience,
fell, and fallen, was driven forth into the wilderness, so the second
Adam comes to take the place of the first. Tracking the steps of the
first Adam, He too goes out into the wilderness, that He may spoil the
spoiler, and that by His perfect obedience He may lead a fallen but
redeemed humanity back again to Paradise, reversing the whole drift of
the Fall, and turning it into a "rising again for many." And so Jesus
goes, as the Representative Man, to do battle for humanity, and to
receive in His own Person, not one form of temptation, as the first
Adam did, but every form that malignant Evil can devise, or that
humanity can know. Bearing these two facts in mind, we will
consider--(1) the circumstances of the Temptation, and (2) the nature of
the temptation.
1. The circumstances of the Temptation. "And Jesus, full of the Holy
Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the
wilderness." The Temptation, then, occurred immediately after the
twofold baptism; or, as St. Mark expresses it, using his characteristic
word, "And straightway the Spirit driveth Him forth into the wilderness"
(Mark i. 12). Evidently there is some connection between the Jordan and
the wilderness, and there were Divine reasons why the test should be
placed directly after the baptism. Those Jordan waters were the
inauguration for His mission--a kind of Beautiful Gate, leading up to
the different courts and courses of His public ministry, and then up to
the altar of sacrifice. The baptism of the Spirit was His anointing for
that ministry, and borrowing our light from the after Pentecostal days,
His enduement of power for that ministry. The Divine purpose, which had
been gradually shaping itself to His mind, now opens in one vivid
revelation. The veil of mist in which that purpose had been enwrapped is
swept away by the Spirit's breath, disclosing to His view the path
redeeming Love must take, even the way of the cross. It is probable,
too, that He received at the same time, if not the enduement, at least
the consciousness of miraculous power; for St. John, with one stroke of
his pen, brushes away those glossy webs that later tradition has spun,
the miracles of the Childhood. The Scriptures do not represent Jesus as
any prodigy. His childhood, youth, and manhood were like the
corresponding phases of other lives; and the Gospels certainly put no
aureole about His head--that was the afterglow of traditional fancy.
Now, however, as He leaves the wilderness, He goes to open His mission
at Cana, where He works His first miracle, turning, by a look, the water
into wine. The whole Temptation, as we shall see, was one prolonged
attack upon His miraculous power, seeking to divert it into unlawful
channels; which makes it more than probable that this power was first
consciously received at the baptism--the second baptism of fire; it was
a part of the anointing of the Lord He then experienced.
We read that Jesus now was "full of the Holy Spirit." It is an
expression not infrequent in the pages of the New Testament, for we have
already met with it in connection with Zacharias and Elisabeth; and St.
Luke makes use of it several times in his later treatise on the "Acts."
In these cases, however, it generally marked some special and sudden
illumination or inspiration, which was more or less temporary, the
inspiration passing away when its purpose was served. But whether this
"filling of the Spirit" was temporary, or permanent, as in the case of
Stephen and Barnabas, the expression always marked the highest elevation
of human life, when the human spirit was in entire subordination to the
Divine. To Jesus, now, the Holy Spirit is given without measure; and we,
who in our far-off experiences can recall moments of Divine baptisms,
when our spirits seemed for the time to be caught up into Paradise,
hearing voices and beholding visions we might not utter, even we may
understand in part--though but in part--what must have been the emotions
and ecstasies of that memorable hour by the Jordan. How much the opened
heavens would mean to Him, to whom they had been so long and strangely
closed! How the Voice that declared His heavenly Sonship, "This is My
beloved Son," must have sent its vibrations quivering through soul and
spirit, almost causing the tabernacle of His flesh to tremble with the
new excitements! Mysterious though it may seem to us, who ask
impotently, How can these things be? yet unless we strip the heavenly
baptism of all reality, reducing it to a mere play of words, we must
suppose that Jesus, who now becomes Jesus Christ, was henceforth more
directly and completely than before under the conscious inspiration of
the Holy Spirit. What was an atmosphere enswathing the young life,
bringing to that life its treasures of grace, beauty, and strength, now
becomes a breath, or rather a rushing wind, of God, carrying that life
forward upon its mission and upward to its goal. And so we read, He "was
led by the Spirit in the wilderness." The verb generally implies
pressure, constraint; it is the enforced leading of the weaker by the
stronger. In this case, however, the pressure was not upon a resisting,
but a yielding medium. The will of Jesus swung round instantly and
easily, moving like a vane only in the direction of the Higher Will. The
narrative would imply that His own thought and purpose had been to
return to Galilee; but the Divine Spirit moves upon Him with such
clearness and force--"driveth" is St. Mark's expressive word--that He
yields Himself up to the higher impulse, and allows Himself to be
carried, not exactly as the heath is swept before the wind, but in a
passive-active way, into the wilderness. The wilderness was thus a
Divine interjection, thrown across the path of the Son of God and Son of
man.
Where it was is a point of no great moment. That it was in the Desert
of Sinai, as some suppose, is most unlikely. Jesus did not so venerate
places; nor was it like Him to make distant excursions to put Himself in
the track of Moses or Elijah. He beckons them to Him. He does not go to
them, not even to make historical repetitions. There is no reason why we
may not accept the traditional site of the Quarantania, the wild,
mountainous region, intersected by deep, dark gorges, that sweeps
westward from Jericho. It is enough to know that it was a wilderness
indeed, a wildness, unsoftened by the touch of human strength or skill;
a still, vacant solitude, where only the "wild beasts," preying upon
each other, or prowling outward to the fringe of civilization, could
survive.
In the narrative of the Transfiguration we read that Moses and Elias
appeared on the holy mount "talking with Jesus;" and that these two
only, of all departed saints, should be allowed that privilege--the one
representing the Law, and the other the Prophets--shows that there was
some intimate connection between their several missions. At any rate, we
know that the emancipator and the regenerator of Israel were specially
commissioned to bear Heaven's salutation to the Redeemer. It would be an
interesting study, did it lie within the scope of our subject, to trace
out the many resemblances between the three. We may, however, notice how
in the three lives the same prolonged fast occurs, in each case covering
the same period of forty days; for though the expression of St. Matthew
would not of necessity imply a total abstention from food, the more
concise statement of St. Luke removes all doubt, for we read, "He did
eat nothing in those days." Why there should be this fast is more
difficult to answer, and our so-called reasons can be only guesses. We
know, however, that the flesh and the spirit, though closely associated,
have but few things in common. Like the centripetal and the centrifugal
forces in nature, their tendencies and propulsions are in different and
opposite directions. The one looks earthward, the other heavenward. Let
the flesh prevail, and the life gravitates downwards, the sensual takes
the place of the spiritual. Let the flesh be placed under restraint and
control, taught its subordinate position, and there is a general uplift
to the life, the untrammelled spirit moving upwards toward heaven and
God. And so in the Scriptures we find the duty of fasting prescribed;
and though the Rabbis have treated it in an _ad absurdum_ fashion,
bringing it into disrepute, still the duty has not ceased, though the
practice may be well-nigh obsolete. And so we find in Apostolic days
that prayer was often joined to fasting, especially when a question of
importance was under consideration. The hours of fasting, too, as we may
learn from the cases of the centurion and of Peter, were the perihelion
of the Christian life, when it swung up in its nearest approaches to
heaven, getting amid the circles of the angels and of celestial visions.
Possibly in the case before us there was such an absorption of spirit,
such rapture (using the word in its etymological, rather than in its
derived meaning), that the claims of the body were utterly forgotten,
and its ordinary functions were temporarily suspended; for to the spirit
caught up into Paradise it matters little whether in the body or out of
it.
Then, too, the fast was closely related to the temptation; it was the
preparation for it. If Jesus is tempted as the Son of man, it must be
our humanity, not at its strongest, but at its weakest. It must be
under conditions so hard, no other man could have them harder. As an
athlete, before the contest, trains up his body, bringing each muscle
and nerve to its very best, so Jesus, before meeting the great adversary
in single combat, trains _down_ His body, reducing its physical
strength, until it touches the lowest point of human weakness. And so,
fighting the battle of humanity, He gives the adversary every advantage.
He allows him choice of place, of time, of weapons and conditions, so
that His victory may be more complete. Alone in the wild, dreary
solitude, cut off from all human sympathies, weak and emaciated with the
long fast, the Second Adam waits the attack of the tempter, who found
the first Adam too easy a prey.
2. The nature of the Temptation. In what form the tempter came to Him,
or whether he came in any form at all, we cannot tell. Scripture
observes a prudent silence, a silence which has been made the occasion
of much speculative and random speech on the part of its would-be
interpreters. It will serve no good purpose even to enumerate the
different forms the tempter is said to have assumed; for what need can
there be for any incarnation of the evil spirit? and why clamour for the
supernatural when the natural will suffice? If Jesus was tempted "as we
are," will not our experiences throw the truest light on His? We see no
shape. The evil one confronts us; he presents thoughts to our minds; he
injects some proud or evil imagination; but he himself is masked,
unseen, even when we are distinctly conscious of his presence. Just so
we may suppose the tempter came to Him. Recalling the declaration made
at the baptism, the announcement of His Divine Sonship, the devil says,
"If" (or rather "Since," for the tempter is too wary to suggest a doubt
as to His relationship with God) "Thou art the Son of God, command this
stone that it become bread." It is as if he said, "You are a-hungered,
exhausted, Your strength worn away by Your long fast. This desert, as
You see, is wild and sterile; it can offer You nothing with which to
supply Your physical wants; but You have the remedy in Your own hands.
The heavenly Voice proclaimed You as God's Son--nay, His beloved Son.
You were invested, too, not simply with Divine dignities, but with
Divine powers, with authority, supreme and absolute, over all creatures.
Make use now of this newly given power. Speak in these newly learned
tones of Divine authority, and command this stone that it become bread."
Such was the thought suddenly suggested to the mind of Jesus, and which
would have found a ready response from the shrinking flesh, had it been
allowed to speak. And was not the thought fair and reasonable, to our
thinking, all innocent of wrong? Suppose Jesus should command the stone
into bread, is it any more marvellous than commanding the water into
wine? Is not all bread stone, dead earth transformed by the touch of
life? If Jesus can make use of His miraculous power for the benefit of
others, why should He not use it in the emergencies of His own life? The
thought seemed reasonable and specious enough; and at first glance we do
not see how the wings of this dove are tipped, not with silver, but with
soot from the "pots." But stop. What does this thought of Satan mean? Is
it as guileless and guiltless as it seems? Not quite; for it means that
Jesus shall be no longer the Son of man. Hitherto His life has been a
purely human life. "Made in all things like unto His brethren," from His
helpless infancy, through the gleefulness of childhood, the discipline
of youth, and the toil of manhood, His life has been nourished from
purely human sources. His "brooks in the way" have been no secret
springs, flowing for Himself alone; they have been the common brooks,
open and free to all, and where any other child of man might drink. But
now Satan tempts Him to break with the past, to throw up His
Son-of-manhood, and to fall back upon His miraculous power in this, and
so in every other emergency of life. Had Satan succeeded, and had Jesus
wrought this miracle for Himself, putting around His human nature the
shield of His Divinity, then Jesus would have ceased to be man. He would
have forsaken the plane of human life for celestial altitudes, with a
wide gulf--and oh, how wide!--between Himself and those He had come to
redeem. And let the perfect humanity go, and the redemption goes with
it; for if Jesus, just by an appeal to His miraculous power, can
surmount every difficulty, escape any danger, then you leave no room for
the Passion, and no ground on which the cross may rest.
Again, the suggestion of Satan was a temptation to distrust. The
emphasis lay upon the title, "Son of God." "The Voice proclaimed You, in
a peculiar sense, the beloved Son of God; but where have been the marks
of that special love? Where are the honours, the heritage of joy, the
Son should have? Instead of that, He gives You a wilderness of solitude
and privation; and He who rained manna upon Israel, and who sent an
angel to prepare a cake for Elias, leaves You to pine and hunger. Why
wait longer for help which has already tarried too long? Act now for
Yourself. Your resources are ample; use them in commanding this stone
into bread." Such was the drift of the tempter's words; it was to make
Jesus doubt the Father's love and care, to lead Him to act, not in
opposition to, but independently of, the Father's will. It was an artful
endeavour to throw the will of Jesus out of gear with the Higher Will,
and to set it revolving around its own self-centre. It was, in reality,
the same temptation, in a slightly altered form, which had been only too
successful with the first Adam.
The thought, however, was no sooner suggested than it was rejected; for
Jesus had a wonderful power of reading thought, of looking into its very
heart; and He meets the evil suggestion, not with an answer of His own,
but with a singularly apt quotation from the Old Testament: "It is
written, Man shall not live by bread alone." The reference is to a
parallel experience in the history of Israel, a narrative from which
doubtless Jesus had drawn both strength and solace during His prolonged
desert fast. Had not the Divine Voice adopted Israel to a special
relationship and privilege, announcing within the palace of Pharaoh,
"Israel is My Son, My firstborn"? (Exod. iv. 22). And yet had not God
led Israel for forty years through the desert, suffering him to hunger,
that He might humble and prove him, and show him that men are
"Better than sheep and goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain;"
that man has a nature, a life, that cannot live on bread, but--as St.
Matthew completes the quotation--"by every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of God"? Some have supposed that by "bread alone" Jesus refers
to the manifold provision God has made for man's physical sustenance;
that He is not limited to one course, but that He can just as easily
supply flesh, or manna, or a thousand things besides. But evidently
such is not the meaning of Jesus. It was not His wont to speak in such
literal, commonplace ways. His thought moved in higher circles than His
speech, and we must look upward through the letter to find the higher
spirit. "I have meat to eat that ye know not of," said Jesus to His
disciples; and when He caught the undertone of their literalistic
questions He explained His meaning in words that will interpret His
answer to the tempter: "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me."
So now it is as if He said, "The Will of God is My meat. That Will
brought Me hither; that Will detains Me here. Nay, that Will commands Me
to fast and hunger, and so abstinence from food is itself My food. I do
not fear. This wilderness is but the stone-paved court of My Father's
house, whose many chambers are filled with treasures, 'bread enough and
to spare,' and can I perish with hunger? I wait His time; I accept His
will; nor will I taste of bread that is not of His sending."
The tempter was foiled. The specious temptation fell upon the mind of
Jesus like a spark in the sea, to be quenched, instantly and utterly;
and though Satan found a powerful lever in the pinch of the terrible
hunger--one of the sorest pains our human nature can feel--yet even then
he could not wrench the will of Jesus from the will of God. The first
Adam doubted, and then disobeyed; the Second Adam rests in God's will
and word; and like the limpet on the rocks, washed by angry waves, the
pressure of the outward storm only unites His will more firmly to the
Father's; nor does it for one moment break in upon that rest of soul.
And Jesus never did make use of His miraculous power solely for His own
benefit. He would live as a man among men, feeling--probably more
intensely than we do--all the weaknesses and pains of humanity, that He
might be more truly the Son of man, the sympathizing High Priest, the
perfect Saviour. He became in all points--sin excepted--one with us, so
that we might become one with Him, sharing with Him the Father's love on
earth, and then sharing His heavenly joys.
Baffled, but not confessing himself beaten, the tempter returns to the
charge. St. Luke here inverts the order of St. Matthew, giving as the
second temptation what St. Matthew places last. We prefer the order of
St. Luke, not only because in general he is more observant of
chronology, but because there is in the three temptations what we might
call a certain seriality, which demands the second place for the
mountain temptation. It is not necessary that we put a literal stress
upon the narrative, supposing that Jesus was transported bodily to the
"exceeding high mountain." Not only has such a supposition an air of the
incredulous about it, but it is set aside by the terms of the narrative
itself; for the expression he "showed Him all the kingdoms of the world
in a moment of time" cannot be forced into a literalistic mould. It is
easier and more natural to suppose that this and the succeeding
temptation were presented only to the spirit of Jesus, without any
physical accessories; for after all, it is not the eye that sees, but
the soul. The bodily eye had not seen the "great sheet let down from
heaven," but it was a real vision, nevertheless, leading to very
practical results--the readjustment of Peter's views of duty, and the
opening of the door of grace and privilege to the Gentiles. It was but a
mental picture, as the "man of Macedonia" appeared to Paul, but the
vision was intensely real--more real, if that were possible, than the
leagues of intervening sea; and louder to him than all the voices of
the deep--of winds, and waves, and storm--was the voice, "Come over and
help us," the cry which only the ear of the soul had heard. It was in a
similar manner, probably, that the second temptation was presented to
Jesus.
He finds Himself upon a lofty eminence, when suddenly, "in a moment of
time," as St. Luke expresses it, the world lies unveiled at His feet.
Here are fields white with ripened harvests, vineyards red with
clustering grapes, groves of olives shimmering in the sunlight like
frosted silver, rivers threading their way through a sea of green; here
are cities on cities innumerable, quivering with the tread of uncounted
millions, streets set with statues, and adorned with temples, palaces,
and parks; here are the flagged Roman roads, all pointing to the world's
great centre, thronged with chariots and horsemen, the legions of war,
and the caravans of trade. Beyond are seas where a thousand ships are
skimming over the blue; while still beyond, all environed with temples,
is the palace of the Cæsars, the marble pivot around which the world
revolves.
Such was the splendid scene set before the mind of Jesus. "All this is
mine," said Satan, speaking a half-truth which is often but a whole lie;
for he was indeed the "prince of the power of the air," ruling, however,
not in absolute kingship, but as a pretender, a usurper; "and I give it
to whom I will. Only worship me (or rather, 'do homage to me as Your
superior'), and all shall be thine." Amplified, the temptation was this:
"You are the Son of God, the Messiah-King, but a King without a retinue,
without a throne. I know well all the devious, somewhat slippery ways to
royalty; and if You will but assent to my plan, and work on my lines, I
can assure You of a throne that is higher, and of a realm that is
vaster, than that of Cæsar. To begin with: You have powers not given to
other mortals, miraculous powers. You can command nature as easily as
You can obey her. Trade with these at first, freely. Startle men with
prodigies, and so create a name and gain a following. Then when that is
sufficiently large set up the standard of revolt. The priesthood and the
people will flock to it; Pharisees and Sadducees, giving up their
paper-chases after phantoms, shadows, will forget their strife in the
peace of a common war, and before a united people. Rome's legions must
retire. Then, pushing out Your borders, and avoiding reverse and
disaster by a continual appeal to Your miraculous powers, one after
another You will make the neighbouring nations dependent and tributary.
So, little by little, You will hem in the might of Rome, until by one
desperate struggle You will vanquish the Empire. The lines of history
will then be all reversed. Jerusalem will become the mistress, the
capital of the world; along all these roads swift messengers shall carry
Your decrees; Your word shall be law, and Your will over all human wills
shall be supreme."
Such was the meaning of the second temptation. It was the chord of
ambition Satan sought to strike, a chord whose vibrations are so
powerful in the human heart, often drowning or deafening other and
sweeter voices. He put before Jesus the highest possible goal, that of
universal empire, and showed how that goal was comparatively easy of
attainment, if Jesus would only follow his directions and work on his
plans. The objective point at which the tempter aimed was, as in the
first temptation, to shift Jesus from the Divine purpose, to detach His
will from the Father's will, and to induce Him to set up a sort of
independence. The life of Jesus, instead of moving on steadily around
its Divine centre, striking in with absolute precision to the beat of
the Divine purpose, should revolve only around the centre of its
narrower self, exchanging its grander, heavenlier sweep for certain
intermittent, eccentric motions of its own. If Satan could not prevent
the founding of "the kingdom," he would, if it were possible, change its
character. It should not be the kingdom of heaven, but a kingdom of
earth, pure and simple, under earthly conditions and earthly laws. Might
should take the place of right, and force the place of love. He would
set Jesus after gaining the whole world, that so He might forget that
His mission was to save it. Instead of a Saviour, they should have a
Sovereign, decked with this world's glory and the pomps of earthly
empire.
It is easy to see that if Jesus had been merely man the temptation would
have been most subtle and most powerful; for how many of the sons of
men, alas, have been led astray from the Divine purpose with a far less
bait than a whole world! A momentary pleasure, a handful of glittering
dust the more, some dream of place or fame--these are more than enough
to tempt men to break with God. But while Jesus was man, the Perfect
Man, He was more. The Holy Spirit was now given to Him without measure.
From the beginning His will had been subordinate to the Father's,
growing up within it and configuring itself to it, even as the ductile
metal receives the shape of the mould. The Divine purpose, too, had now
been revealed to Him in the vivid enlightenment of the Baptism; for the
shadow of the cross was thrown back over His life, at any rate as far as
the Jordan. And so the second temptation fell harmless as the first.
The chord of ambition Satan sought to strike was not found in the pure
soul of Jesus, and all these visions of victory and empire awoke no
response in His heart, any more than the flower-wreaths laid upon the
breast of the dead can quicken the beat of the now silent heart.
The answer of Jesus was prompt and decisive. Not deigning to use any
words of His own, or to hold any parley, even the shortest, He meets the
word of the tempter with a Divine word: "It is written, Thou shalt
worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." The tempting
thought is something foreign to the mind of Jesus, something unwelcome,
repulsive, and it is rejected instantly. Instead of allowing Himself to
be diverted from the Divine purpose, His will detached from the Father's
will, He turns to that will and word at once. It is His refuge, His
home. The thought of Jesus cannot pass beyond the circle of that will,
any more than a dove can pass beyond the over-arching sky. He sees the
Throne that is above all thrones, and gazing upon that, worshipping only
the Great King, who is over all and in all, the thrones and crowns of
earthly dominion are but as motes of the air. The victory was complete.
Quickly as it came, the splendid vision conjured up by the tempter
disappeared, and Jesus turned away from the path of earthly glory, where
power without measure and honours without number awaited Him, to tread
the solitary, lowly path of submission and of sacrifice, the path that
had a crucifixion, and not a coronation, as its goal.
Twice baffled, the enemy comes once again to the charge, completing the
series with the pinnacle temptation, to which St. Luke naturally, and as
we think rightly, gives the third place. It follows the other two in
orderly sequence, and it cannot well be placed second, as in St.
Matthew, without a certain overlapping of thought. If we must adhere to
the literalistic interpretation, and suppose Jesus led up to Jerusalem
bodily, then, perhaps, St. Matthew's order would be more natural, as
that would not necessitate a return to the wilderness. But that is an
interpretation to which we are not bound. Neither the words of the
narrative nor the conditions of the temptation require it; and when art
represents Jesus as flying with the tempter through the air it is a
representation both grotesque and gratuitous. Thus far, in his
temptations, Satan has been foiled by the faith of Jesus, the implicit
trust He reposed in the Father; but if he cannot break in upon that
trust, causing it to doubt or disobey, may he not push the virtue too
far, goading Him "to sin in loving virtue"? If the mind and heart of
Jesus are so grooved in with the lines of the Divine will that he cannot
throw them off the metals, or make them reverse their wheels, perhaps he
may push them forward so fast and so far as to bring about the collision
he seeks--the clash of the two wills. It is the only chance left him, a
forlorn hope, it is true, but still a hope, and Satan moves forward, if
perchance he may realize it.
As in the second temptation, the wilderness fades out of sight. Suddenly
Jesus finds Himself standing on the pinnacle of the Temple, probably the
eastern corner of the royal portico. On the one side, deep below, were
the Temple courts, crowded with throngs of worshippers; on the other lay
the gorge of the Kedron, a giddy depth, which made the eye of the down
looker to swim, and the brain to reel. "If (or rather 'Since') said
Satan, Thou art the Son of God, cast Thyself down from hence; for it is
written, He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee, to guard Thee;
on their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest haply Thou dash Thy foot
against a stone." It is as if he said, "You are the Son of God, in a
special, favoured sense. You are set in title and authority above the
angels; they are Your ministering servants; and You reciprocate the
trust Heaven reposes in You. The will of God is more to You than life
itself; the word of God outweighs with You thrones and empires. And You
do well. Continue thus, and no harm can overtake You. And just to show
how absolute is Your faith in God, cast Yourself down from this height.
You need not fear, for You will but throw Yourself upon the word of God;
and You have only to speak, and unseen angels will crowd the air,
bearing You up in their hands. Cast Yourself down, and so test and
attest Your faith in God; and doing so You will give to these multitudes
indubitable proof of Your Sonship and Messiahship." Such was the
argument, specious, but fallacious, of the tempter. Misquoting Scripture
by omitting its qualifying clause, distorting the truth into a dangerous
error, he sought to impale his Victim on the horn of a dilemma. But
Jesus was on the alert. He recognized at once the seductive thought,
though, Jacob-like, it had come robed in the assumed dress of Scripture.
Is not obedience as sacred as trust? Is not obedience the life, the soul
of trust, without which the trust itself is but a semblance, a decaying,
corrupt thing? But Satan asks Him to disobey, to set Himself above the
laws by which the world is governed. Instead of His will being entirely
subordinate, conforming itself in all things to the Divine will, if He
should cast Himself down from this pinnacle it would be putting
pressure upon that Divine will, forcing it to repeal its own physical
laws, or at any rate to suspend their action for a time. And what would
that be but insubordination, no longer faith, due presumption, a
tempting, and not a trusting God? The Divine promises are not cheques
made payable to "bearer," regardless of character, place, or time, and
to be realized by any one who may happen to possess himself of them,
anywhere. They are cheques drawn out to "order," crossed cheques, too,
negotiated only as the conditions of character and time are fulfilled.
The Divine protection and guardianship are indeed assured to every child
of God, but only as he "dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High,
as he abides under the shadow of the Almighty;" in other words, so long
as "thy ways" are "His ways." Step out from that pavilion of the Most
High, and you step from under the bright bow of promise. Put yourself
above, or put yourself out of, the Divine order of things, and the very
promise becomes a threatening, and the cloud that else would protect and
guide becomes a cloud full of suppressed thunders, and flashing in vivid
lightnings its thousand swords of flame. Faith and fidelity are thus
inseparable. The one is the calyx, the other the involved corolla; and
as they open outwards into the perfect flower they turn towards the
Divine will, configuring themselves in all things to that will.
A third time Jesus replied to the tempter in words of Old Testament
Scripture, and a third time, too, from the same book of Deuteronomy. It
will be observed, however, that the terms of His reply are slightly
altered. He no longer uses the "It is written," since Satan himself has
borrowed that word, but substitutes another: "It is said, Thou shalt
not tempt the Lord thy God." It has been thought by some that Jesus used
the quotation in an accommodated sense, referring the "Thou" to the
tempter himself, and so making "the Lord thy God" an attestation of His
own Divinity. But such an interpretation is forced and unnatural. Jesus
would not be likely to hide the deep secret from His own disciples, and
announce it for the first time to the ears of the seducer. It is an
impossible supposition. Besides, too, it was as man that Jesus was
tempted. Only on the side of His humanity could the enemy approach Him,
and for Jesus now to take refuge in His Divinity would strip the
temptation of all its meaning, making it a mere acting. But Jesus does
not so throw up humanity, or which is the same thing, take Himself out
of it, and when He says, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God" He
includes Himself in the "thou." Son though He is, He must put Himself
under the law that prescribes the relations of man towards God. He must
learn obedience as other sons of men. He must submit, that He may serve,
not seeking to impose His will upon the Father's will, even by way of
suggestion, much less by way of demand, but waiting upon that will in an
absolute self-surrender and instant acquiescence. Moses must not command
the cloud; all that he is permitted to do is to observe it and follow.
To go before God is to go without God, and to go without Him is to go
against Him; and as to the angels bearing Him up in their hands, that
depends altogether upon the path and the errand. Let it be the Divinely
ordered path, and the unseen convoys of heaven will attend, a sleepless,
invincible guard; but let it be some self-chosen path, some forbidden
way, and the angel's sword will flash its warning, and send the foot of
the unfaithful servant crushing against the wall.
And so the third temptation failed, as did the other two. With but a
little tension, Satan had made the will of the first Adam to strike a
discordant note, throwing it out of all harmony with the Higher Will;
but by no pressure, no enticements, can he influence the Second Adam.
His will vibrates in a perfect consonance with the Father's, even under
the terrible pressure of hunger, and the more terrible pressure, the
fearful impact of evil.
So Satan completed, and so Jesus resisted, "every temptation"--that is,
every form of temptation. In the first, Jesus was tempted on the side of
His physical nature; in the second the attack was on the side of His
intellectual nature, looking out on His political life; while in the
third the assault was on the side of His spiritual life. In the first He
is tempted as the Man, in the second as the Messiah, and in the third as
the Divine Son. In the first temptation He is asked to make use of His
newly received miraculous power over nature--passive, unthinking nature;
in the second He is asked to throw it over the "world", which in this
case is a synonym for humankind; while in the third He is asked to widen
the realm of His authority, and to command the angels, nay, God Himself.
So the three temptations are really one, though the fields of battle lie
in three several planes. And the aim was one. It was to create a
divergence between the two wills, and to set the Son in a sort of
antagonism to the Father, which would have been another Absalom revolt,
a Divine mutiny it is impossible for us even to conceive.
St. Luke omits in his narrative the ministry of angels mentioned by the
other two Synoptists, a sweet postlude we should have missed much, had
it been wanting; but he gives us instead the retreat of the adversary:
"He departed from Him for a season." How long a season it was we do not
know, but a brief one it must have been, for again and again in the
story of the Gospels we see the dark shadow of the evil one; while in
Gethsemane the "prince of this world" cometh, but to find "nothing in
Me." And what was the horror of great darkness, that strange eclipse of
soul Jesus suffered upon Calvary, but the same fearful presence,
intercepting for a time even the Father's smile, and throwing upon the
pure and patient Sufferer a strip of the outer darkness itself?
The test was over. Tried in the fires of a persistent assault, the faith
and obedience of Jesus were found perfect. The shafts of the tempter had
recoiled upon himself, leaving all stainless and scatheless the pure
soul of Jesus. The Son of man had conquered, that all other sons of men
may learn the secret of constant and complete victory; how faith
overcomes, putting to flight "the armies of the aliens," and making even
the weakest child of God "more than conqueror." And from the wilderness,
where innocence has ripened into virtue, Jesus passes up, like another
Moses, "in the power of the Spirit," to challenge the world's magicians,
to baffle their sleight of hand and skill of speech, and to proclaim to
redeemed humanity a new Exodus, a life-long Jubilee.