The Temptation of Christ

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This is Day 32 of my 40 day Lenten Blog.

When He was 30 years old Jesus began His public ministry. His cousin John, the son of Elizabeth, had a following and was baptizing people in the Jordan River. John the Baptist was a humble man. He did not seek for people to follow him, as he only wanted to point the way toward Christ.

John told the people that, "I baptize you with water, but there is one coming that is greater than I who will baptize you with fire and the Holy Spirit. I am not worthy to even stoop down and untie his sandals." He was, of course, referring to his cousin Jesus.

But Jesus was also extremely humble and though He was without sin, He asked that John Baptize Him. John protested saying, "You should be the one who baptizes me!" But Jesus was doing the will of His Father, God, who wanted Him to be baptized. This is so opposite of the nature of most humans. We think, oh I don't need to do this or that, because I am so awesome. Or that would be beneath me. Or this is for the little people, but not me. Jesus, the king of all creation was not like that. He humbled Himself by coming to Earth as a human, a tiny baby no less, and then when he grew into a man He retained that humility up until His death as we shall see.

So John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the river and when Jesus came out of the water the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove and God the Father spoke saying, "This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased."

Following His baptism, the Holy Spirit led Jesus out into the desert where He fasted for 40 days. And He was tempted by the devil. The devil does his best to tempt us away from God and away from our calling. And many times he succeeds. He was especially eager to tempt Jesus away from His calling.

The devil attacks us where we are weakest. And the first place he attacked Jesus was His hunger. The devil appeared to Jesus and challenged Him that if He really was the Son of God that He could command the stones and they would become bread. But Jesus refused to give in to the temptation. Instead, He responded that "man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." This is important. Fasting teaches us that we need more than food. We need God. When we focus all of our energy on meeting our material needs and neglect our spiritual needs we risk alienating ourselves from God and turning away from Him forever. Yes, we have material needs and God expects us to meet them, but our primary needs are our spiritual needs. As God tells us, if we seek His kingdom first, He will supply us with all of our other needs.

Next the devil challenged Jesus to prove that He really was the Son of God by leaping from the top of the Temple to see the angels come and save Him. But Jesus once again refused stating that, "it is written that you shall not put the Lord to the test." This is something many of us go through. We are challenged by the world at large. I have heard some similar things: "Why do you wear a seatbelt if you believe in God?" It also speaks to those people that play with poisonous snakes to prove they are Christian. God can save us, in that we should have faith, but we shouldn't put Him to the test. As Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego told the king of Babylon: "Our God will save us but even if He doesn't we still will not worship that statue."

Finally, the devil offered Jesus what He really wanted, the entire point of His coming to Earth. The devil offered to give Jesus the world. He took Jesus up onto a high mountain so that they could see the entire world and he offered to give it to Jesus. That's why Jesus became flesh, why He came down from Heaven, to take the world back from the devil. As I explained at the beginning, this world belongs to the devil, and Christ came to take it back. But here the devil was offering to simply give it to Him, and He could have it without the pain and suffering of the cross. All Jesus had to do was bow down and worship the devil. But Jesus refused and the devil fled from Him.

The devil likes to offer us the easy way, the way without pain, the way without being ridiculed by our friends. But when we take any way other than the one God intended we are worshiping the devil. God did not intend for the retaking of the world to be painless. He could have taken the world back from the devil any time He wanted without any pain whatsoever. But God decided to suffer just as we suffer; to be tempted just as we are tempted. In His great goodness, God took on our humanity, and as we shall see, took the punishment we deserve upon Himself.

Next: Christ Makes All Things New.

R.C. VanLandingham is a Catholic homeschool dad just trying to make it through this life and into the next! He has written a Christian children's fantasy series about a boy named Peter Puckett!