The Letter of James says that
temptation does not come from God.1 So we might gather from James,
and from the passage before us today, that it is not God who tempts us. We are
being tested, to be sure, and God’s Spirit is leading us into whatever form our
“examination room” might take, but temptation does not come from God.
Temptation isn’t everywhere, so to
speak; it happens in a special place called “the wilderness” — the place where
God is not — and it is the property of the “devil”: the one who has set himself
utterly against God and God’s will. In Matthew’s treatment of this “Temptation
of Jesus in the Wilderness,” Jesus is led by the Spirit into the place where
God is not, to be tempted by the one who has set himself utterly against God
and God’s will.
So who is Jesus? This might seem
like a silly question, but really:
who is Jesus in this story? Whom does he serve? Whom does he represent? Jesus,
we have already been told, is the Messiah. Elsewhere, we are told he is the Son
of God. He will come to refer to himself as the Son of Man, the Child of
Humanity, the Human One. So, in this story, Jesus is us; Jesus is the Human Being perfectly at one with God — so much so
that we can truthfully and honestly say that he was “God-with-us,” and that to
look at Jesus is to see God.
Jesus is us
Jesus is tempted. Jesus is us — or
what we would be, were we perfectly at one with God. This story is about us. This story is about temptation. This story tells us what
temptation is, and who we are in relation to it, how it comes to us, and where,
and why. This story
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