Luke 4:1-12
4:1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tested by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over he was famished. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’ ”
5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And the devil said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered him, “It is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ ”
9 Then the devil led him to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’
11 and
‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”
12 Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” 13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
Let’s talk about the devil. Just who is this character? How should we imagine him (or her, if we wish to be inclusive)? He clearly appears in Scripture, but his role is actually quite minor. We sang a Mighty Fortress earlier, which is a great hymn in many respects, but one which I hesitate to sing because of the prominence it places on Satan, the devil, and how it portrays human life as cosmic struggle between good and evil. That irredeemably evil things happen there can be no doubt. But what actually is evil? Where does it come from? Here I’m going to attempt to explain a simple but challenging philosophical concept which I am convinced is both true and essential.
Consider the relationship between light and darkness, which is a common Scriptural metaphor for the relationship between good and evil. Darkness has no independent existence, no being, no substance, it cannot me manifested or projected. Darkness is simply the absence of light. Light, by contrast, does exist, can be manifested and projected and so on. There is no contest between light and darkness. Light always overcomes, and overcomes absolutely.
The same is true of good and evil. The God who is goodness as such created the world out of nothing and called it good. Evil does not actually exist but rather is only the absence of, or the perversion of, the good. Putting it this way does nothing to mitigate the horror of what happens in the world, but it does change how we imagine its origin and its destiny. We believe that sin entered creation in the Garden, when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, but they did do because they were deceived into thinking that, despite what God had said, the fruit was good to eat. They thought they were pursuing what was good for them.
No one actually desires evil as evil; rather people always desire the good, though the crucial problem is that we all suffer under a distorted view of what the good is. So for instance, the person who does something evil - say, someone abuses another - does so under the illusion that this is the “good” for them, that they will somehow benefit. It might be difficult to imagine how anyone could think abuse is good, but then it’s also hard to imagine why anyone would abuse another. Even self-destructive behavior arises from the illusion that the suffering is somehow deserved, or fitting, and thus good. Suicide happens when a person becomes convinced that the suffering they experience makes non-existence better than existence. At every moment, we pursue the good as we see it, but our vision is always defective to some extent - sometimes catastrophically so. The suffering we inflict upon one another always fundamentally flows from our selfish desires.
In the same way that light is incomparable to darkness, it is wrong to regard the devil as an agent of evil in the same way that God is an agent of the good. I hope it will not scandalize you to hear me say that I very much doubt that there is a individual malevolent spiritual being. Rather, in Scripture I take Satan to be the personification of evil. Satan names not so much a presence of an evil force, but an absence of the good. Absence is difficult to speak about, so Satan gives us a language with which to speak about the very real evil in the world.
When we speak of temptation, particularly the devil tempting us, we imply that the temptation, the desire for that which we should not desire, stands outside of us acting upon us. Evil is external, out there, thus we must wall ourselves off from all that might harm or corrupt us. Of course there are plenty of forces that act upon us, tempting us away from the good. If you want to describe advertising as Satanic I will not stop you. However, the thing we need to understand is that the fundamental problem is not temptation, but the nature of our desires. The absence of good - even the presence of evil - is not external to us, but internal. You might recall when Peter rebuked Jesus for predicting his death, to which Jesus responded, “Get behind me Satan”, which I take not to be a statement of Satan using Peter like a puppet but rather that rejecting Jesus’ path - possibly even tempting him away from it - Peter was Satan, he was Jesus’ adversary, for he misunderstood the good.
The three temptations that Jesus faces in the wilderness each center on the potential desire to use his power, not primarily to be faithful to the Father, but for his own satisfaction and exaltation. Rather than trusting that the Father will provide for him, he will take matters into his own hands. Rather than submitting to the way of the cross he will blaze different trail. You can imagine how, if you were in Jesus’ position, these might be appealing options. He’s the Son of God. He actually deserves to be exalted; who could blame him for using his power in a self-serving way? Are you hungry? Just turn the stones into bread. It would be so easy. Want to be the king of this world? Just take it. Why not? - it’s your’s anyway. Want people to worship and adore you? Create a spectacular revelation where everyone is watching.
In all three instances Jesus responds by quoting Scripture. And we might well conclude that Jesus is talking to himself as much as the devil. Whenever we might want to take the easy way out, or rationalize deviating from the course laid out for us, Scripture reminds us of what we should desire, it names the truth to which we orient our lives.
A couple of days ago I noticed something about this passage I never had before: Jesus goes into the wilderness, not to fast, but to be tested, led there by the Spirit. It’s almost as if these temptations needed to be dealt with before Jesus could begin his ministry. Jesus fasts as a means of overcoming the temptations that he faces. In the same way that at the end of his ministry he prayed in the Garden that this cup would pass, that the cross might be averted, here he also struggles against beginning to walk the path that leads there. Here as then he answers, “Not my will by your be done”.
Fasting, in the Christian tradition - like real fasting where you go considerable time without eating like Jesus does here - is considered a mortification of the flesh - putting to death our human desires. It is a way not only of abstaining from what we might desire too much, but of stripping ourselves down to the point that we gain clarity as to what our real needs are. We live in such a way that we rarely deny ourselves anything; all our desires are gratified immediately. We give expression to our appetites without questioning if what we desire is worth desiring and thus cannot discern if we are on the path which leads to death or which leads to life.
One way to describe the Christian life is as a reordering of our desires. This may sound odd, but it is just another way of stating what we’re familiar with in other terms, like when Paul says, “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” or when John says “He must increase but I must decrease”. We are to put our desires to death so that might truly live. We are tempted to desire the wrong things not so much because we consciously rebel against or reject God but simply because it is our nature to worship ourselves and thus to misapprehend what is the good for us. For the one who truly knows the good and whose life is perfectly oriented toward it - someone like Jesus - there is finally no temptation at all. The goal, ultimately, is not just to be those with the willpower to resist temptation, but to become those whose desires have been formed in such a way that we are not tempted at all, that we see clearly the path we must walk.
Fasting is a practice that can help transform our desires. That we find fasting so unappealing might just indicate precisely why we should fast. In this season of Lent I encourage you, if you haven’t already, to fast, and even to fast in such a way that is uncomfortable, which even entails suffering, which cause just a little bit of you to die to yourself. And then we might discover that what tempted us before no longer does, that what we thought gave us life provides nothing we truly need. So may we deal with the temptation we face by going into the wildness and fasting together these forty days.
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