13 January 2025

Trying to tempt Christ Jesus.

Mark 1.12-13.

I’ve lost count of the sermons and articles I’ve read about Jesus’s temptations by Satan in the wilderness… and how this was supposedly a cosmic struggle for the ages. And I find every single one of ’em ridiculous. Because seriously: Do any of you—does anyone—imagine there was any chance whatsoever of Jesus giving in to the devil’s temptations? Does anyone think Satan had a chance? Had the smallest of chances?

Okay granted, if you don’t know Jesus, or if you’ve never read about him in the gospels and Revelation, I could understand thinking his temptations might’ve been a threat. Popular culture has this idea in its collective head that Satan is a mighty demon, big as a kaiju, capable of all sorts of elder-god world-destroying activities. It’s all rubbish; Satan’s been padding its resume ever since humanity found out it exists. Unwitting Christians have been helping it along, ’cause if Satan’s a big deal, but Jesus can effortlessly defeat it, doesn’t that make Jesus an even bigger deal? As if our Lord creating the universe Jn 1.3 isn’t impressive enough.

Look, Jesus has the sort of iron willpower it took to suffer torture and crucifixion—even though at any instant he could’ve called upon more than 60,000 angels, Mt 26.53 put a stop to everything, and skipped forward to his second coming. He’s got a divine nature, and an unfallen human nature. Meaning it’s not in his nature, at all, to sin. When presented with a tricky situation, humans get tempted to sin, and no doubt Jesus did too—but Jesus immediately dismisses any such sins as ridiculous. Sin is simply not him. He doesn’t do sin. Has no hold on him. Never gonna happen.

So were Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness anything remotely like a cosmic battle? Nah. Satan pitched some ideas, and Jesus easily dismissed them. Like spitballs bouncing off the hull of a battleship.

Some preachers get annoyed when I say this. Partly because they’re big fans of the cosmic battle idea. Partly because we get tempted, and it’s kind of a cosmic battle to us!—and how in the world can we claim that Jesus understands what we’re going through, because he was tempted too, He 2.18 if those temptations barely tempted him at all?

Simple: If Jesus can easily dismiss the devil’s temptations as silly and irrelevant, so can we. We can learn to resist temptation like he did. He’s given us the ability—if we take advantage of it.

The idea Jesus’s temptations were a cosmic battle, gives us the false idea that resisting temptation is impossible, and the only reason Jesus could dismiss Satan so easily is because Jesus is almighty. Certainly we’re not almighty, so when Satan tempts us, we’re boned. But like I said, that’s a false idea. We don’t have to be almighty to resist the devil. We only have to follow the Holy Spirit. And resist the temptation to blame our weak wills on everything but our unwillingness to resist.

So let’s look at how Jesus resisted the devil, and then let us resist.

Mark’s short version.

The story of Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness generally comes from Matthew and Luke. The version of the story in the other synoptic gospel, Mark, is basically the extra-short version. Two verses. Thirty words. (Well, 30 words in Greek. Thirty-three in the KJV. Thirty in my translation.)

Mark 1.12-13 KWL
12Next, the Spirit throws Jesus into the wilderness.
13Jesus is spending 40 days in the wilderness,
getting tested by Satan, being with the wild animals.
Angels are ministering to him.

This version is really short on details. It’s just Jesus, the devil, and wild creatures, out in the middle of nowhere. Usually the movies and art depict them in the desert, ’cause there is an awful lot of desert in southern Israel, but it didn’t have to be in the desert; just anyplace away from civilization. In fact it’d be a stronger test of will if Jesus was just within sight of civilization. Look, there’s Jerusalem 10 kilometers away; you could be there within two hours, and they have food and baths and friendly people, and you don’t have to be all alone anymore. Out of sight, out of mind; but if it’s in sight, it’s gonna tempt you.

Mark brings up the wild animals. I don’t know that these were dangerous wild animals, although certainly they could be. Plenty of demonologists and End Times fanatics have all sorts of fun with the idea of what these animals might be, or what they might represent, or whether Satan was deliberately throwing snakes and scorpions at our Lord to pester him. Or, because Jesus was fasting and super hungry, Mt 4.2, Lk 4.2 maybe he saw some delicious animals, and was tempted to eat ’em. Look, there’s a chicken, all the way out here. You LOVE chicken. You could catch it so easily; wring its neck, then roast it. Doesn’t a nice roast chicken sound amazing right now? If you ever gave up meat for a fast, you know how enticing that sounds.

Mark doesn’t describe the temptations. If all we had was Mark to read, and not the other gospels, we wouldn’t know what sorts of temptations, and how many, Jesus experienced. We might assume Jesus was just getting bombarded with temptations. And maybe he was: Just because there’s stories about three of them in Matthew and Luke, doesn’t mean Jesus wasn’t tempted with other stuff—stuff which neither he nor the gospel-authors considered important enough to record. Tempted to go home; meh. Let’s talk instead about the real temptations—which we’ll get to in future articles.

Lastly the angels. Matthew mentions them too. We don’t know how they ministered to Jesus. We know angels once brought Elijah food and water when he was hungry, 1Ki 19.5-8 and maybe they did that once Jesus was finished with his fast. Or maybe they came to encourage him. Or help escort the devil out of there after Jesus said, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Mt 4.10, Lk 4.8 Whatever help his angels could eagerly offer, Jesus seems to have accepted. He wasn’t out there alone. And really, none of us are ever alone—when we don’t want to be.