What Jesus Meant (the peirasmos) Part 9
Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others have done evil.
The encounter in the desert with Satan is what we would call "That defining moment" the summing up of a whole process-the spiritual quest during His adolescence and young manhood. The gospels present the "career tracts" Jesus was ask to consider - only to see that Jesus rejects them all. Jesus is arriving , by intense inner scrutiny and self experiment at His true calling. His own peirasmos (test) reflects the world-wrenching that the Essenes contemplated and anticipated in their apocalyptic theology. The three tests in the desert present in synecdoche (part for a whole) the drama behind the outer events of His ministry.
The subtlety of the tests is what makes them insidious, Each is an apparently slight - but fatal - distortion of the real mission of Jesus. If Satan can get Jesus to accept this diminished version of His calling, the Prince of this World will retain his hold upon history. Everything will depend on Jesusf getting the Fathersf will just right.
The First Test
Mat 4:3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. Bread is one way of looking at the reign of the kingdom of heaven that Jesus brings to mankind. All four Gospels show Jesus miraculously feeding bread to vast numbers of people (Mat 14:21) And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children. (Mar 6:44) And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men. (Mar 8: 8 ) So they did eat, and were filled: and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets. (Luk 9:14) For they were about five thousand men. And he said to sat down, in number about five thousand.
Jesus tells His followers to feed the poor and that failure to do that is a way of starving Him
( For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. (Mat 25:42-45).
If all these thing were true then why did Jesus reject Satanfs invitation to turn stones into life giving bread? Some will claim they are serving Jesus by doing just that. The political Left will think in terms of Christian Socialism. The political Right thinks in terms of a providential Invisible Hand (the market place) that feeds the poor. But Jesus did not come to bring mankind a higher political system. A religion that limits itself to assuaging earthly hunger seals itself off from the greater promise of Godfs reign, His justice (dikaiosyne) that is judgement. He says, instead, Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Mat 5:6).
Jesus is not a social reformer, John the Baptist was the reformer in the mold of the ancient prophets. John tells the religious leaders not to be proud, and the tax collectors not to take graft and the solders not to agitate for more pay (Luke 3:7-14).
He warns of a coming judgement, but his work is all preparatory, his baptism (washing) is simply an intensification of the ritual cleansing of the Law. Jesus will baptize with fire, not water (as we still try to do today in error) (Luke 3:16) It is fire from heaven, opening a whole new level of Life- a spiritual level a spiritual life!
Another way "religion" drugs man [ "religion is the opium of the masses" Karl Marx] and becomes an opiate-by satisfying earthly needs, making heavenly aspirations unnecessary, occluding broader horizons. Jesus will not be satisfied with anything that holds the Father to a lesser glory than He promises.
In reply to the first test then "And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. "(Luke 4:4 )
The second Test
Satan ratchets up his probing. If Jesus wants greatness of spirit as well as physical satiation, what exultation of the spirit does the wold promise? And leading Him up into a high mountain, the Devil showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the Devil said to Him, I will give all this authority and their glory to You, because it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Then if You worship before me, all will be Yours. (Luke 4:5-7 )
It is not temporal power along that Satan offers. When he says the realms with "all their glory" he is including rule over the spirit of mankind. In effect he is offering what will become the medieval papacy, with its all-encompassing authority over "the two swords" of temporal rule and spiritual rule. We now agree that the "church" should not rule over the state; but in the Middle Ages the two powers exercised together, the more insidious threat offering the most intense corruption was spiritual rule.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." Lord Acton
This led the Churchmen by the 10th century using a forged document called the Donation of Constantine ( Donatio Constantini Latin) in which Constantine states that the pope has the same rights as the Emperor and has primacy over the four Patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandra, Constantinople and Jerusalem. These men forgot that Jesus was harshest on His first followers when they aspired to authority over another to be the first when they should be last, to put on the airs of the Pharisees.
But do not you be called Rabbi, for One is your Leader, the Christ, and you are all brothers. And call no one your father on earth, for One is your Father, the One in Heaven. Nor be called leaders, for One is your Leader, the Christ. But the greater of you shall be your servant. And whoever will exalt himself shall be humbled, and whoever will humble himself shall be exalted. (Matthew 23:8-12)
There have been those who have appealed to :
"And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My assembly, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against her. And I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven. And whatever you bind on earth shall occur, having been bound in Heaven. And whatever you may loose on the earth shall be, having been loosed in Heaven." (Matthew 16:18-19)
Volumes have been written to prove that Peter was the first "pope" and this "church" has primacy over all others And as much as I would like to go down this rabbit trail (I am sure that I will not convince anyone to change their minds on this matter, we will have to leave it with this observation) Jesus acknowledged that God had revealed to Peter who He (Jesus) was and that upon this revelation Jesus Himself [the chief corner stone] would build His Family.
But now Gentle saint of God, you can begin to understand that passage of Scripture And Jesus entered into the temple of God and threw out all those selling and buying in the temple. And He overthrew the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling the doves. And He said to them, It has been written, "My house shall be called a house of prayer," but you have "made it a den of plunderers." (Matthew 21:12-13) quoting Isa.56:7 and Jer.7:11.
And in response to the second test "And answering, to him, Jesus said, Go behind Me, Satan! For it has been written: "You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve." quoting from Deut. 6:13 (Luke 4: 8 ).
The Third and definitive Test
"And he led Him to Jerusalem, and stood Him on the wing of the temple, and said to Him, If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here; for it has been written: "He will command His angels about You, even to protect You," "that on their hands they shall bear You, that you not strike Your foot against a stone." Satan quoting from LXX-Psa. 91:11, 12; (Luke 4:9-11)
Satan comprehends that the real challenge to his power in the universe is not any earthly rule that Jesus could aspire to, but His own special relationship to the Father. If he can get Jesus to presume upon that relationship or separate it from submissiveness to the father, he defeats the father, making Jesus repeat the presumption of Eve when she thought she become god-like in her own right. Satan will top the fall of man with the fall of MAN! The Jesus in Johnfs gospel recognizes this danger and obviates it. His own divinity is a divinity in the Father not apart from it. Jesus will not Test the father, because He is too closely identified with Him. It would be putting himself on trial. As He says in Johnfs gospel Then Jesus answered and said to them,
Truly, truly, I say to you, The Son is not able to do anything from Himself, except what He may see the Father doing; for whatever that One does, these things also the Son does likewise. (John 5:19) They charged him with blasphemy for calling God his Father, and making himself equal to him: and his answer is so far from denying the thing, or observing any mistake, or misrepresentation of his words, that he allows the whole, and vindicates himself in so saying:
verily verily, I say unto you; nothing is more certain; it may be depended on as truth; I who am truth itself, the "Amen", and faithful witness, aver it with the greatest assurance:
the Son can do nothing of himself; or he does do nothing of himself, nor will he do anything of himself; that is, he neither does, nor will, nor can do anything alone or separate from his Father, or in which he is not concerned; not anything without his knowledge and consent, or contrary to his will: he does everything in conjunction with him; with the same power, having the same will, being of the same nature, and equal to each other: for these words do not design any weakness in the Son, or want of power in him to do anything of himself; that is, by his own power: for he has by his word of power spoke all things out of nothing, and by the same upholds all things; he has himself bore the sins of his people, and by himself purged them away, and has raised himself from the dead; but they express his perfection; that he does nothing, and can do nothing of himself, in opposition to his Father, and in contradiction to his will: as Satan speaks of his own, and evil men alienated from God, act of themselves, and do that which is contrary to the nature and will of God; but the Son cannot do so, being of the same nature with God, and therefore never acts separate from him, or contrary to him, but always co-operates and acts with him, and therefore never to be blamed for what he does. The Syriac, Arabic, and Persic versions render it, "the Son cannot do anything of his own will"; so Nonnus; as separate from, or contrary to his Father's will, but always in agreement with it, they being one in nature, and so in will and work. He does nothing therefore.
In reply to this third test: "And answering, Jesus said to him, It has been said: "You shall not tempt the Lord your God." Deut. 6:16 And having finished every temptation, the Devil departed from Him until a time. (Luke 4:12-13)
What Jesus rejects, in arriving at His true vocation is any notion of what is called "Cheap Salvation"!
What the testings meant was that Jesus was entering into a deepening realization of what the Father asks of Him and what in His Name He must ask of others. Perhaps for some these testings are easy for most the decision to follow God is not. For Jesus the parallel is the trial of the 40 years in the wilderness for the Jewish people. And at the end is a spiritual formation in which He knew hunger and denial. The meaning of the hidden years.
To be continued...
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