Matthew 4:1-11: The Temptations of Jesus

Testing and Tempting

So Jesus the Royal Son, Servant, and Sacrifice through whom God will fulfill his “righteousness,” his intention to set all things right, has been identified and equipped for his ministry by God in his baptism. As Israel, God’s “son” (Ex.4:22), came through the waters of the Reed Sea into the wilderness to be tested by God as to genuineness of their faith, so to the Royal Son, Jesus, is lead into the wilderness by the Spirit, the same Spirit just given to him, to be tested. In this Jesus recapitulates Israel’s experience. That’s a big word for “do-over.” He “does over” what Israel did, and did wrong, doing it right this time. Remember, God never gave up on his plan to use Israel as the people through whom he would bless the world (Gen.12:1-3). Thus Jesus walks the path his people did so God can fulfill that promise to and through his people.

This scene too is, in the words of one scholar, “utterly drenched in OT theological themes, imagery and dialogue.”[1]  Jesus’ “do-over” of Israel’s failure both unveils the devil’s strategies and defeats them. The enemy attempts to undo Jesus’ do-over and thus derail his messianic mission to reclaim and restore God’s people and God’s world for their divinely intended ends.

The Greek word Matthew uses can mean either “tempt” or “test.” Both meanings play into what’s happening here. “A temptation is an enticement to get a person to go contrary to the will of God, as Satan will try to do to Jesus.” God tempts no one (Ja.1:13; 1 Cor.7:5; Heb.4:15). “A test tries to get a person to prove oneself faithful to God’s will, with the good intention that the person pass the test.”[2] God does test his people’s faithfulness (1 Cor.10:13; Gal.4:14; 1 Thess.2:4) Thus. Satan tempts Jesus; God tests Jesus. And both are going on whenever we face testing/temptation.

Recapitulation

I introduced this word above and paraphrased it as “do-over.” The idea the Jesus was a “do-over” for Israel, that he re-walked the path it did as God’s Son succeeding where Israel failed to fulfill God promises and purposes was first articulated by the great 2^nd century theologian Irenaeus.

“He has therefore, in His work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy, and crushing him who had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam, and trampled upon his head, as you can perceive in Genesis that God said to the serpent, ‘And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall be on the watch for your head, and you on the watch for His heel.’ For from that time, He who should be born of a woman, [namely] from the Virgin, after the likeness of Adam, was preached as keeping watch for the head of the serpent. This is the seed of which the apostle says in the Epistle to the Galatians, ‘that the law of works was established until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.’ This fact is exhibited in a still clearer light in the same Epistle, where he thus speaks: ‘But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman.’ For indeed the enemy would not have been fairly vanquished, unless it had been a man [born] of a woman who conquered him. For it was by means of a woman that he got the advantage over man at first, setting himself up as man’s opponent. And therefore does the Lord profess Himself to be the Son of man, comprising in Himself that original man out of whom the woman was fashioned, in order that, as our species went down to death through a vanquished man, so we may ascend to life again through a victorious one; and as through a man death received the palm [of victory] against us, so again by a man we may receive the palm against death.”[3]

Clearly recapitulation rests on a typological sort of reading of the Old Testament. Overtly Jesus is the New Israel as Matthew goes on to lay out paralleling the 40 years of Israel’s wandering with Jesus’ 40 days in the desert. Implicitly, though, Jesus serves also as a New Adam who undoes the primal sin of the first Adam (as Irenaeus indicates).

So as Israel is led into the wilderness by God and his its faithfulness tested/tempted after the exodus so Jesus is led into the wilderness by the Spirit to have his faithfulness tempted/tested after his baptism. Times of testing/tempting often follow times of victory or “mountain-top” experiences of God. When things are going well we tend to be at our most vulnerable to pride, self-satisfaction, indulging our own agendas, imagining that we have done great things. At these moments God often does us the great grace of a season of sifting and testing to keep us grounded or reveal where we have fallen that we might repent and be restored. “This is how our Father brings us to maturity, by placing devils and satans and accusers and dangers in our way. He is not seducing us to evil. He intends it to strengthen our hands for war, so that we grow in faith and hope in God. He tests us so that we will be prepared for greater tests, more intense battles, later on.”[4] Adam and Eve failed their testing in the garden of Eden. Israel failed its testing in the wilderness. Jesus now faces his crucible.

The Temptations

Satan does not question Jesus’ identity as God’s Son. In fact, the Greek conditional sentence here, “If you are the Son of God,” might best to put in English as “Since you are the Son of God.” Satan’s aim is to get Jesus to be Messiah in an unGodlike way. And as these temptations progress, the increasing height of each setting – wilderness, pinnacle of the temple, very high mountain – suggests the increasing pride and self-aggrandizing flavor of each temptation. And the final setting in Matthew’s order (Luke’s order reverses Matthew’s second and third temptations), the high mountain where Satan offers Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory,” contrasts powerfully with that mountain at the end of Matthew where the obedient Son and Suffering Servant who sacrificed himself for the world is granted “all authority in heaven and on earth” (28:18)! 

“Jesus is the true Israel, and He is faced with the same series of temptations that Israel faced when they were in the wilderness,” notes Leithart.[5] And his responses to the devil are drawn from Deuteronomy (8:3, 6:16,13), the great Old Testament exposition of the gospel. God’s word to Israel concerning how to be his faithful people Jesus uses to give expression to his intent and determination to be God’s type of Messiah.

Bread: Ungodlike Way of Messiahship #1

Jesus’ temptation here cuts deeper than merely his hunger. That, and the other particular items Satan focuses on, are occasions for the temptation but not the thing itself. The temptation, remembering its goal is getting the one tempted to act in disobedience to God, takes Jesus’ hunger as a springboard for an attack on his obedience to his father. Remember too that hiding behind the temptation aspect of this moment lurks a test in which God offers resources for Jesus’ dealing with this attack.

The first way of messiahship Satan proposes to Jesus is the populist option.[6] Providing food is a perennially popular way to build a reputation and rally a following. Every reformer or revolutionary funds their movement by providing food or other scarce or withheld necessity. Jesus could have been no different. In fact, he could have been great at it given all he needed was big pile of rocks to supply his people with.

Populism, though, didn’t (and doesn’t) cut as deep as God called Jesus to go in his messiahship. In fact, these false trails the devil tempts Jesus with finally yield only a nihilism (meaninglessness).[7] Nihilism is all the devil can muster. He can’t create but only be parasitic on God’s good creation. And he wants to turn the threat Jesus posed into a parasitic parody of what God intended. Here the form of nihilism is food without faith. Fill people’s hands and stomachs but not their hearts. Create a non-sacramental universe where the sky is literally the limit. No heaven, no deity, no meaning deeper than where the next meal is coming from. In fact, in each of these temptations Satan tries to whittle reality down to the here and now.

“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Dt.8:3). This is Jesus’ rebuttal to and rebuff of Satan’s temptation. He will not allow the demonic whittling down of reality to what’s below the sun. Bread is necessary but not sufficient. Only the “word “ of the Lord keeps us alive and open to the mystery and depth of this world and our existence as creatures. That we are called and answerable to God for our lives. Being Messiah God’s way, Jesus opens us to a larger reality than what the devil wants us to know and experience.

Jumping Off the Temple: Ungodlike Way of Being Messiah #2

The devil ratchets “up” the pressure with the next temptation. Literally, as he takes Jesus atop the temple. There, surveying the holy city from that height, Satan proposes that Jesus take a flying leap off the “pinnacle” of the temple trusting that God will keep him safe a lá Psa.91:11-12. This temptation is a very attractive one too – “the way of the wonder worker.”[8] You can imagine, I expect, the sensation such a spectacle would create, the buzz it would generate. The opportunities to do fresh and exciting things for God!

This way of being messiah would evoke faith, filling people’s hearts but not with a hope for something genuinely new but with an expectation that God’s work is about securing the way things are. And faith without hope for something genuinely new, something subversive of the way things are in anticipation of the way things can or will be, is the mark of religion rather than genuine faith. Religion strives to make us amenable to the conditions of life as we know it rather than stirring our imaginations to dream of a different and better world, one more closely aligned with God’s designs for human life. The wonder worker, in truth, creates amazement but does not call forth genuine wonder, which is the source and energy of engaging the world in hope.

Religion tamps down such hope in the interest of investing this world with a faux veneer of sanctity that resists real change. More nihilism!

Jesus again turns to Deuteronomy: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” If a “test” is a way God discovers our faithfulness (or not), for us to so “test” God is to demand he be faithful to his promises without recognizing the inappropriateness of this action. It is a way to try and hold God hostage to our agendas and priorities. A way of violating the third commandment not to take the Lord’s name in vain.

Therefore Jesus relies on God’s own word not to put him to the test (Dt.6:16) as Israel had at Massah (Ex.17:7) demanding water in the wilderness to flatly reject the devil’s offer. To put God to the test suits our desire for relevance, our desire to make a difference in our world. But by it we reject God’s promise to make us different and live differently in our world, in ways that genuinely reflect his way and will for his creation.

Power: Ungodlike Way of Being Messiah #3

Finally the devil plays his trump card. This one hits closest to the core of Jesus’ identity and calling. On “a very high mountain” from which Jesus could take in a panoramic look at all the
world’s kingdoms, the tempter offers Jesus unlimited power and rule over them, if Jesus will but worship him. This offer, since Jesus does not contest Satan’s right to offer it, appears to the world’s kind of rule – authoritarian, hierarchical, self-aggrandizing, militaristic, in short, all the distortions of rule the prophet Samuel said Israel would be inviting when it demanded a human king (1 Sam.8).

Here the devil tempts Jesus to take charge of the world, to commit himself to making things come out right within the immanent horizons the devil enforces. Within such an ultimately nihilistic framework the exercise of power almost inevitably devolves into what we are all too familiar with from our own experience. This is to fill people with hope – “Yes, we can!” – only without holiness.  Thirdly, he tempts Jesus to Rule the World: fill people with hope but without holiness. A politics of power changes the world within immanent horizons. But it cannot do so without resort to violence, coercion, deceit, and manipulation that is the practice of power in our world. As Stanley Hauerwas notes: “Jesus was offered the means to feed the hungry, the authority to end war between peoples, and even the defeat of death itself. But he refused these goods. He did so because Jesus knows God’s kingdom cannot be forced into existence using the means of the devil.”[9]

In Dostoevsky’ story “The Grand Inquisitor”

“. . . the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus that for a long time—eight centuries—'the church has not been with you but with  him,’ that is, with the devil. It has been eight centuries since the  church accepted what Jesus rejected, namely, ‘We took Rome and  the sword of Caesar from him [the devil], and proclaimed ourselves sole rulers of the earth, the only rulers, though we have not  yet succeeded in bringing our cause to its full conclusion” (Dostoevsky 2001, 49). But that is Jesus’s fault for rejecting the last gift.  Had Jesus accepted the third counsel of that mighty spirit, he could have furnished what all people seek on earth, that is: Someone to bow down to, someone to take over his conscience,  and a means for uniting everyone at last into a common, concordant, and incontestable anthill—for the need for universal union  is the third and last torment of men. . . . Great conquerors, Tamerlanes and Genghis Khans, swept over the earth like a whirlwind, yearning to conquer the cosmos, but they, too, expressed, albeit unconsciously, the same great need of mankind for universal and general union. Had you accepted the world and  Caesar’s purple, you would have founded a universal kingdom  and granted universal peace. For who shall possess mankind if not those who possess their conscience and give them their bread? And so we took Caesar’s sword, and in taking it, of course, we rejected you and followed him. (Dostoevsky 2001, 49).”[10]

Conclusion

Faux-materialism, that non-sacramental universe devoid of divine presence; religion without the power of genuine subversive faith; and power within the imaginable creates just the world the devil wants. One in which he has free reign to whittle the parameters of life down to the here and now whose only hope is the pragmatic of politics or revolution and whose anesthetic is enervating entertainment.

Jesus, of course, refused the devil’s offer. Instead he brought a presence which filled the world with Spirit, a faith which subverted the parameters of the here and now with living hope of the then and there, and a kingdom in which God’s rule broke the world open to new possibilities.

The devil’s nihilism of a meaningless present and hopeless future Jesus replaces with a future of inexhaustible possibilities whose meaning derives from a genuine past whose potential is never exhausted by its achievements and which in conjunction with that future creates a combustible present that leaves no room for parasitic nihilism.

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[1] Andrew Schmutzer, “Jesus’ Temptation: A Reflection on Matthew’s Use of Old Testament Theology and Imagery,” Ashland Theological Journal 2008, 15.

[2]Michael J. Wilkins, Matthew (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary). Zondervan. Kindle Edition: 1539.

[3] Against Heresies (V.21.1).

[4] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 1256.

[5] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew:1259.

[6] Schmutzer, “Jesus’ Temptation,” 23.

[7] Lee Wyatt, “Temptations to Nihilism,” Facebook 9.18.19.

[8] Schmutzer, “Jesus’ Temptation,” 23.

[9] “What’s Love Got to Do With It? The Politics of the Cross.”

[10] Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Grand Inquisitor.” In Remembering the End: Dostoevsky as Prophet to Modernity by P. Travis  Kroeken and Bruce K Ward. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001.