Williams
Arlonzo Williams
Professor Hylen
RLST 109- Themes of NT
October 1, 2007
Provision, Protection, Position: Satan vs. Jesus
The story of Jesus’s temptation is depicted in both Matthew and Luke in great detail. Both Matthew and Luke use similar language to describe the devil’s attempt to persuade Jesus to betray God and serve him. In Matthew 1:21, an angel tells Joseph in a dream that the reason Jesus has come to Earth ‘[because] he will save his people from their sins’. In order to save humanity from sin, Jesus needed to show us how to handle problems that we will face in our life; the best way to do that is to go through them himself and show how to use scripture to keep from sinning. Matthew writes the temptation story to show Jesus as an interpreter of the scripture; he does this because Jesus came to save humanity via living a holy and perfect life while going through human problems like temptation from the Devil and, as such, must be able to use biblical scripture correctly to refute sin. This is shown through 3 different forms of sin: physical, mental, and spiritual.
The first attempt of the Devil to tempt Jesus is physically. At this point, Jesus has not eaten for 40 days in the wilderness. (Matt 4:1-2) The online concordance says that ‘wilderness’ comes from the Greek word ‘eremos’ meaning solitary or lonely (Crosswalk). I think the fact that Jesus fasted for 40 days is related to the Israelites; Israelites, God's chosen people who were to rule in God's Kingdom, were tested by God as they wandered alone in the wilderness for 40 years and inevitably failed to enter the land because of disobedience (Harper Study Bible, Footnote). Jesus, having to go through human trials, in turn goes through a similar trial to show that it could be done in the name of the Lord; using the number 40 for significance to the people he is trying to save. The Devil tries to use Jesus’s bodily weakness of hunger against him by telling him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread”. (vv. 3) The Devil acknowledges that Jesus is the ‘Son of God’. The online concordance says that ‘Son of God’ comes from the Greek ‘huios theos’ (Crosswalk) One of the definitions for ‘son’ is “term used preeminently of Jesus Christ, as enjoying the supreme love of God…obedient to the Father's will in all his acts” (Crosswalk) I think that the devil knew he was going up to have a tough time dissuading Jesus from God but thought he could do it anyway, despite Jesus’s predisposition to obey God. Jesus was certainly tempted to follow the devilish proposals since he was hungry, but he was not tempted by devil-worship, since he found no attraction in evildoing itself since he is ‘obedient to the Father’s will in all his actions’. Therefore, the devil had to conceal his wickedness under the disguise of the goodness of creation: bread and water. The temptation was not only about eating or not eating, not about performing or not performing a miracle but also about pursuing a self-serving mentality, focused on all that we have not been given by God. (Crosswalk) Furthermore, instead of giving a ‘physical’ answer like ‘Oh, I’m not hungry’ or ‘I can wait a little longer’, Jesus responds with scripture to defeat the Devil. Jesus replies with a verse from Deuteronomy 8:3: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”. (vv. 4) This is another reference to the Israelites in the wilderness; God gives them manna to eat when they were hungry but not only did it nourish them physically but spiritually. I think that Jesus is relaying a very clear point to the Devil: work that Christians do for themselves will get them into heaven; only the faithful belief and practice of the Word can do that. In addition, Jesus teaches that to defeat evil, Christians must go to the Word to get strength even when physical strength fails; the only way to do this is through understanding and correctly interpreting the Word of God, a task Jesus does for us in the book of Matthew.
