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Listen to this post:
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Blessed is anyone who endures temptation. Such a one has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. No one, when tempted, should say, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. (James 1:12-13, NRSV)
God can’t be tempted; this makes sense, given that he is essentially omniscient and omnipotent. How could such a being ever view a morally wrong action as desirable? If you can’t suffer from that defect, then in principle, you can’t be tempted.
But Jesus, according to Matthew 4:1-11, was tempted. As he is our model, what were his temptations, and how are they relevant to us?
Jesus is tempted, by Satan in person, to (1) turn stones to bread, (2) cast himself off of the temple so that God will catch him somehow, and (3) submit to Satan, gaining the kingdoms of the world in return. I suggest that since he is “one who in every respect has been tested as we are” (Hebrews 4:15), we can consider these as examples of more abstract types:
(1) Sinfully, faithlessly, attempting to provide for your own needs.
(2) Presumptuously acting, so as to put God to the test (i.e. to manipulate him into acting on your behalf).
(3) Betraying God in order to align with the kingdoms of the world, to gain the benefits they promise.
How did Jesus win? How did he resist these temptations?
(1) By holding closely to God’s word, to his promises. Life depends on bread, yes, but real life depends also on God’s word – and he has that! So he won’t sin, won’t try an unauthorized miracle, to get the bread he needs. The bread will be sent in God’s time.
(2) He refuses to put God to the test, recognizing that the Devil is twisting scripture. He humbly submits to God, and doesn’t give in to that temptation. Scripture in fact never authorizes that the Messiah or anyone else should hurl himself off a building so that God can miraculously save him.
(3) And he holds fast to the main thing in all of Jewish scripture – loyalty to Yahweh, in opposition to the ruling forces of this world, forsaking all the power, wealth, and fame which they might dangle in front of him.
Note that the Devil was very cleverly trying to get a hold of Jesus by means of his special calling, which Jesus knew. He will do miracles, and will get his “bread;” God will provide for his needs. He will be dramatically rescued by God. And he will get all the kingdoms of the world. As Messiah, Jesus has been predestined to get all these things and more. (John 17:5) But he decides that he will only get these by the hand of God, by trusting in God and awaiting his timing. For the present, Jesus submits to suffering. And he is supernaturally sustained through it. (Matthew 4: 11)
What’s your special calling? Do you have the great blessing of knowing what it is? If so, great! But then, you’re not the only one who knows. Your enemies will seek to turn it around on you, to destroy you. How are you tempted to disobey or betray God in order to make those things happen? Are you going to try to make that stone a loaf? Are you going to foolishly leap off that cliff, telling yourself it is faith? If you want to know what faith/trust in God looks like, look at Jesus.
Do you embrace the suffering, or do you seek, foolishly, to escape it? In truth, suffering can’t be escaped. Either you suffer in faith and thereby are molded into a true servant of God, or you suffer because of your own foolish flailings through life, trying to steer your own ship. Better to march right into the teeth of death, than to try to escape suffering by running from God, and trying to be your own god.
Which will it be? You know what Jesus did, and how it worked out for him. (Philippians 2:8-11) Is he your model, or have you found some better one?
Dale,
Love the new feature of being able to listen to the written blog posts! An amazing enhancement to the site, thank you. Is this AI automation or do you have someone else recording audio? One feature request would be to see a category of your all your written-only posts to comb through, separate from your Podcast section. God bless trinities.org
Hi Rasheed – thanks! Glad you’re liking it. It is an Amazon web service – a sophisticated text-to-speech program. It may eventually become expensive to keep up, but if I get more positive feedback, I’ll probably keep it going. I know some of my posts are long, so I thought I’d give this a try. Anything I repost, or any new post – I’m turning this feature on. For finding posts, let me suggest the search bar – it may be harder to access on mobile, but on a laptop it works really well – it’s a powerful search.
Bingo, Benji!
That should have been enough to make him a suspect “reformer” to anybody with a healthy mind.
Here is my more extensive article, at my blog Strict Monotheism: Martin Luther’s warped “gospel”.
I read the article. It’s clear that Luther lead a lot of people in the wrong direction. I can agree with his Sola Scriptura, but his understanding of the Bible is really twisted and disjointed. The voice comes from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.” Luther says that Jesus came to die so we wouldn’t have to listen to him. Whom should I trust? I think I’ll go with Jesus. Of course that’s difficult because Jesus had hard words to tell us. But I prefer difficult truths over easy lies. Yes, Jesus preached His own gospel. If someone can’t find the gospel in all four of the gospels then they have a problem, 2Jn. 9.
Ben,
I believe that the Catholic Church, since the earliest warnings of the impending “Lutheran crisis”, had been reluctant to take the bull by the horns, i.e. to examine (and possibly condemn) some of Augustine’s texts from which Luther’s thought was drawn. And I believe that this reluctance is based on the simple reason that the Church was perfectly aware that putting Augustine into question threatened to inevitably involve putting Paul into question. This would have been simply unthinkable, and in any case disallowed, given the inspired – and therefore canonical – character of Paul’s texts, which the Church could not put into question, even for a moment. Otherwise the consequences would have been even worse than those caused by Luther’s challenge.
I’m less familiar with what Augustine said which may have inspired those ideas in Luther? I’ve tended towards thinking that Luther was rather novel in his approach, whilst under the influence of the via moderna. I know that Augustine gave the RCC the original defense of their imperial kingdom of God on earth, which they needed to justify their existence. He was far too central a figure to their own theology to criticize him. In the East he was much more controversial.
It seems that a careful reading of Paul should have been something that they were able to do throughout history. I feel like the NP on Paul in some form or another is just rather transparently obvious in the Biblical text itself and I always thought it was Protestants more than Catholics who had a problem with what Paul seemed to be saying. Maybe I’m misinformed. I am admittedly not well versed in Catholic theology. Obviously the Pope had his treasury of merits, so somewhere in Catholic theology lurked the idea that merit could be transferred from one person to another. Maybe they wanted their cake and eat it too? It seems that if so, the split was inevitable.
Great post Dale. We don’t prefer to think of temptation in the way Jas. 1:12-13 urges us to. When tempted we feel like something is wrong, but if we can endure it then something is very right. That’s when we get past the ups and downs of failure and repentance and abide in repentance as repentance truly requires. Know Jesus is a trailblazer for us and that he’s sent us another helper to be with us forever, makes all the difference in the world. We can endure temptation just as he did.
“He _will_ be dramatically saved by God” ?
Saved from execution at the hands of the Romans perhaps?
One might suppose that, and countless Muslims do. But according to the NT, what Jesus got was incomparably better than rescue from the cross. Read Philippians 2 and Revelation 5.
James 1:13 Weymouth New Testament
“Let no one say when passing through trial, “My temptation is from God;” for God is in-capable of being tempted to do evil, and He Himself tempts no one.”
James 1:13 uses the word Gk., ( APEIRASTOS ) Strongs no: 551 literally meaning: “un-tempt-able” or: “in-capable of being tempted”.
It’s an alpha privative. When the Greeks wanted to negative a word, or give an opposite meaning, they would simply stick an Gk., ( A ) on the front https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_privative.
Gk., ( APEIRASTOS ) is made up of Gk., ( PEIRAZO ) meaning: “try” “tempt” “test” or: “susceptible to enticement/allurement” with such a Greek Alpha, Gk., ( A ) prefixed to the front.
It is saying that whoever God is, He is IN-CAPABLE of being “tempted”. UN-TEMPT-ABLE.
With all obvious implications for Tri{3}ntarian theory/doctrine.
There is one who completely misunderstood the Gospel. Here are two quotations regarding the Gospel from his early works.
– [The first function of the Gospel] is to interpret the ancient Law, as the Lord [Jesus] interprets that precept in Matthew 5, You shall not swear, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery’, so as to transfer us form a literal to a spiritual interpretation. […] This interpretation of the law according to the spirit, though, is even more lethal, because it makes the Law impossible to fulfil, and as a consequence it makes man desperate about his own capacity, and humiliated, because nobody is without wrath, nobody without concupiscence: in fact that is the way we are from birth.
– The improper task of the Gospel is to prepare for the Lord a perfect assembly, that is, to make manifest their sins, and convince of guilt all those, who thought they were just, when it says, that all are sinners and devoid of God’s grace. This, though, seems to be the worst news, whereby, it would be more proper to call it … bad and sad announcement.
Beautiful reward for whoever guesses right the author. 😉
(Hint: he could not stand James …)
Sounds like Martin Luther. I say that just based off your hint. I can’t agree with his quotes. He really misunderstands Jesus badly. Jesus said that those who followed his teachings were building their lives on the rock. Sadly, many throughout history have wanted to explain away the teachings of Jesus rather than to follow them. Seems a common trend with religious leaders. People prefer to worship them as gods rather than follow them as a men.
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