07. The Third Temptation

The Third Temptation

’ ’ Again, the devil taketh him unto an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them: and he said unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. " Matthew 4:8-10

" And he led him up, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, To thee will I give all this authority, and the glory of them, for it hath been delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou there fore wilt worship before me, it shall all be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, It is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." Luke 4:5-8

WE have already seen with what subtlety Satan turned the victory our Lord had gained on him in the first temptation into the instrument of his attack in the second. Christ had conquered by trust in God, and forthwith Satan bids him reveal and test the greatness of His trust by a new and more heroic venture of faith: " If thou art the Son of God, cast Thyself down: for it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee; And on their hands they shall bear Thee up, Lest haply Thou dash Thy feet against a stone." The same infernal cunning is repeated in turning the victory of the second temptation into the assault of the third. Christ had defeated Satan’s challenge to His trust by refusing to admit that it was trust. To cast Himself down from the summit of the temple and to expect God to deliver Him from death was not trust, but presumption, for it was to break one of the laws of God, and then to appeal to God to save Him from the penalty of His disobedience. Such disobedience was " tempting " God. But no sooner had our Lord vanquished this second assault of Satan than His new victory is turned into a new temptation, the last and fiercest of the three which are recorded in Scripture. Let us, with deepest reverence, endeavour to imagine the third temptation as it may have been presented to the mind of Christ, and the objective counterpart of which is found in the narrative before us. ’ Not tempt the Lord thy God? Is it thus Thou speakest? But what art Thou doing now? Thou art about to begin Thy great work; to build the kingdom of God among men; to redeem a lost world from its sin and guilt, to proclaim Thyself the Prince and Saviour of men. And lo! Thine own people are ready to welcome Thee as the promised Messiah, heir to the throne and the glory of David, if Thou wilt only declare Thyself their king, coming to deliver them with "a strong hand and an outstretched arm " from the hateful dominion of the Gentiles. Thou hast but to declare Thyself the Hope of Israel, and Thy work is done. The kingdom, not of Israel alone, but of the world, is at Thy feet. But Thou wilt not! Thou rejectest the crown that Thine own nation are ready to lay at Thy feet, because Thou sayest, "Thy kingdom is not of this world," and Thou art not come to be a Christ after the flesh. Can it be so? Thou needest not to abandon Thy high mission; Thou mayest use the carnal to lead to the spiritual; Thou mayest accept the earthly crown, if but for a moment, to replace it with the heavenly; Thou mayest deliver Thy people from the accursed rule of the Gentiles only to deliver them afterwards from the more accursed slavery of sin. Do this, and Thy kingdom is secure. But no! Thou wilt not. Thou choosest Thine own way; Thou wilt set at naught the longings of Thy nation; Thou wilt refuse all earthly pomp and glory and power even though Thou knowest it will make Thee the "despised and rejected of men;" Thou wilt insure Thine own defeat when victory was within Thy grasp. And is not this tempting God? To cast away the only hope of success; to disappoint the multitudes who are eager and waiting for their King; to refuse the crown which they are ready to lay at Thy feet; to come to be a King and yet to disown the kingdom when it comes near to Thee; to reject the Hallelujahs the people are longing to offer Thee; to choose the lot of an out cast when the throne of a king might have been Thine; to bring down on Thyself the scorn and hatred and rejection of men, when they had offered Thee their loyalty and love; to be crucified when Thou mightest have been crowned what is all this but tempting the Lord Thy God? Better, far better, take the crown Thine own nation are waiting to bestow on Thee, even though it be the crown of worldly pomp and power, if by taking it " the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them " may be Thine! ’ In some such way we may imagine with all reverence the temptation to have presented itself to the mind of Christ. There have, indeed, been those who have thought that Satan literally took Christ into " an exceeding high mountain," and there literally "showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them," and then literally offered to give Christ " all these things " if he would " fall down and worship " him. But to say nothing of the physical difficulties and impossibilities of such an interpretation of the narrative, the spiritual difficulties which it involves are fatal to it. For Satan to have appeared as Satan to our Lord, and with bold and naked affrontery to have said to Him, " If Thou wilt worship me I will give Thee the world," would not have been tempting, but insulting Christ. Such an offer on such a condition would have been no temptation to our Lord. It would hardly be a temptation to the humblest Christian, much less to Him, to be offered a reward on condition of openly and avowedly apostatizing from God, and worshipping the devil; and we may be sure that attack with such a weapon would have made absolutely no impression on the armour of righteousness with which Christ was encompassed. But how different all this becomes, how real, how fearfully real, the temptation is, if instead of such a mechanical and literal interpretation of the narrative, we suppose, as we are sure must more than once have been the case during the earthly life of our Lord before His crucifixion, that he was tempted by doubts as to His own Divine plan, which seemed to promise so little and to entail so much; tempted to relinquish that plan in favour of another that seemed to promise so much and entail so little. And especially would such a temptation be likely to occur at the time in Christ’s life which He had now reached. He was standing, as we have seen, at the opening of His great work; nothing had yet been done, but everything had to be done; all the great and Divine purposes for which he had become incarnate had yet to be accomplished, and the kingdom of heaven, of which He was to be the King, had yet to be founded among men. It seemed to be a question, not of the end, but of the means to the end. The devil himself suggests no manner of doubt as to the end. He admits it; he offers to hasten it; he says, " All these things," that is, "the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them," " will I give Thee," provided only " Thou wilt fall down and worship me." The temptation is not to abandon the end, but to modify or to change the means which are to lead to it. And these means, as we have seen, divided themselves in the last resort into two opposite and contrasted paths: the one was Christ’s, the other was the devil’s, To refuse the acclamations of the people, even though they were ready to hail Him as their King; to disappoint every hope they had formed that when Messiah came He would deliver the people of God from the hated Roman rule, and crown their race again with more than its ancient glory and honour; to change the homage of the crowd into hatred hatred all the more bitter because of the dis appointment that had led to it; deliberately to reject the earthly glory, even though it should lead to another and a nobler glory than its own; to refuse to use aught but spiritual means in founding the kingdom of God among men; to care nothing for popular applause, but very much for personal faithfulness and purity and love; to know no distinction between rich and poor, learned and unlearned, save the supreme distinction of character; to go about rebuking and denouncing wickedness even when it was found in the high places of the land; to set Pharisee and Sadducee, chief priest and ruler, in implacable hostility against Himself; to have no friend, or hardly any, save among the poorest of the poor; to associate with, and be a friend of " publicans and sinners;" to be every where "a sign that was spoken against;" to seem, in a word, to lose the very kingdom which He had come to establish this was Christ’s way.

And, on the other hand, to accept the glory of this world; to take the tide of national hopes and national enthusiasm at its flood; to set Himself at the head of the nation; to accept the worldly power that was ready for His use; to receive in one hour "the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them " this was Satan’s way.

It was Satan’s third temptation. It was of all temptations which could have been presented to the pure and sinless soul of Christ the most awful and searching, for it touched not Himself alone, but the great work He had come to accomplish for man. It was comparatively easy to refuse to turn the stones into bread, for His hunger concerned Himself alone; and he had learnt how to endure suffering in His "Father’s business;" it was not so hard, even though it involved a dread struggle, to refuse to prove His own trust in God and His own Divine Sonship by casting Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple; but to conquer this temptation, which affected not Himself, nor His own ease and comfort, but the success and glory of the work for which He had become Incarnate, was terrible indeed. And Christ knew the cost of rejecting Satan’s offer. He knew that it meant disappointment, suffering, tears and blood, heart-breaking and death: He knew that it meant apparent failure of His work, the apparent loss of all He had come to save: He knew, above all, that it meant deep and deadly dishonour done to Himself as "the Son of God," and a new and tremendous guilt added to the already heavy sum of human transgression and sin. For, it will be observed, this temptation is the only one of the three temptations in which Satan suggests no doubt of the Divine Sonship and Divine glory of Christ. The doubt, " If Thou be the Son of God," is not so much as whispered here. The Divine Sonship is admitted, the full glory and dignity of Christ’s person and work, of His royal honour and office, is shining on Him, and in its light the black shadow of the temptation is cast. Could a Divine Son rightly refuse the honour and glory of a Son? Could it be anything but a sin to turn His back on the only way that seemed to lead straight up to His throne? Was not this a " tempting " of God?

Such was the temptation. If we put it into its simplest and shortest form, it was the old but ever new temptation to do evil that good may come; to justify the illegitimacy of the means by the greatness of the end.

And, as such, how solemn and heart-searching are the lessons it may teach all those who pro fess to be servants of God among men, lessons which, perhaps, were never more needed than in the present day. We live in an age of extra ordinary evangelistic zeal and effort. The type of religious life which was found in the Christian Church a hundred, or a hundred and fifty years ago, has completely changed. The edification and culture of the individual spiritual life, the " building up " of strong churches of intelligent and godly men and women, is no longer the’ supreme aim of Christian zeal and Christian preaching. The conversion to Christ of the unconverted, and the evangelisation of the masses, absorb the energies and efforts of the Church. But the intensity of this passion for saving men may itself become a peril to the Church. In its zeal to save souls it may become indifferent to the means by which they are saved. It is altogether untrue to say, as some enthusiastic and zealous Christians are saying, that so long as men are saved it matters little or nothing how they are saved. The end, however great, never justifies unworthiness in the means by which it is attained, for in the sight of the Lord of the Church the means by which we seek to promote the coming of His kingdom are hardly less important than the kingdom itself. Nay! they are part of the kingdom, and to fight for victory, even for Christ, with worldly weapons, is not merely to degrade the battle of the Lord, it is to imperil the character of the victory itself. Un worthiness in the means used to extend the kingdom of God is sure to react on the kingdom it self; and converts who are won to Christ by means that are " of the earth, earthy," are too apt to retain the taint, in their spiritual life, of the soil whence they sprang. Christ might have secured apparent success; He might have enlisted the sympathies and suffrages of His own nation; He might have avoided the shame and sorrow of the cross, if He had consented to adopt worldly means to secure spiritual ends: but He would not; He rejected the temptation, and in doing so warned His disciples in every age that not even for the sake of His kingdom are they to bow down to "the prince of this world " and worship him. But the peril of using illegitimate means for the spread of Christ’s kingdom is not the only lesson taught us by this temptation; it utters another and even more serious warning to all who are followers of Christ Satan offers Christ " all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them," provided only He will " fall down and worship " him. We have already seen that the inner meaning of the temptation was the at tempt of Satan to induce Christ to adopt the Jewish and carnal idea of the kingdom of God prevalent in His nation, and so to seek to secure the coming of His kingdom by worldly means, but is there no profound significance in the very words used by the tempter in laying this temptation before Christ. "All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me "! To resort, then, to worldly and carnal methods for the extension of Christ’s kingdom; to lose faith in the power of the Gospel of Christ to do its own work, and to win its own way in the world; to seek to add to the Gospel the adventitious and meretricious "glory" of this world; to attempt, in one word, to do Christ’s work with hands stained with the im purities of this world, is not to imperil merely the purity and preciousness of the work itself, it is treason to Christ and to God; it is the worship of the devil. Would that the Church of Christ ever remembered the solemnity of this warning! The establishment of the Church by Constantine, and the secularization and demoralization of the spiritual life and energies of the Church which followed, would never have taken place if the meaning of this third temptation had been understood by the Church. The control of the Church, and the support of the Church, by the State; the association of the splendour of worldly power with the simplicity and spirituality of Christ’s kingdom, may have been assented to, at first, with the simple desire to do what seemed best for the honour and glory of Christ, and for the success of His work among men; but none the less have its results in every age proved the fatal mistake that had been made, and warned the followers of Christ that even in His Church they may ignorantly mistake the worship of Satan for the worship of their Divine Lord and Master. Nor is it alone in the establishment and endowment of the Christian Church by the State, and the consequent secularization of the authority of the Church, that an illustration and exemplification of this grave error may be formed. A Church may be able to boast that it has never been "in bondage to any man," that it was " born free," but nevertheless may be guilty of the sin of using worldly means for spiritual ends, and so of worshipping the god of this world. When a Church is found trusting for its success or its permanence to the wealth or social position of its members rather than to what an old mystic called " the naked arm of God; " when men are entrusted with office or power in the Church, not because of their godliness and wisdom, but because of their wealth; when the ministry so far forgets its Divine vocation, and the Divine resources open to its use, as to con descend to the lowest tricks of advertizing out of the pulpit, and of sensationalism and manner ism within it, in order to attract popular notice; when the spiritual life of the members of the Church is sustained, or is attempted to be sustained, by sermons which may be full of intellectual glitter and brilliance, but are utterly destitute of the deeper and more serious elements of spiritual power, then that Church has fallen before the temptation here offered to our Lord, and is bowing down before the prince of this world and worshipping him. And now, before considering the victory which our Lord gained over this temptation of Satan, it may be worthwhile to consider for a few minutes what the result would have been if Christ yielded to this temptation of the devil and had fallen down and worshipped him. There can be little doubt, we imagine, that in one sense Satan would have fulfilled his promise and have given Christ "the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them." No cross would have stood at the end of His earthly life. There would have been louder Hosannas than Jerusalem ever offered Him as its King; there would have been vaster throngs of people proclaiming Him their Messiah and Lord; a more splendid homage from the rich and great, from rulers and Pharisees, would have been laid at His feet; in a word, Christ would have received the crown of worldly dominion and glory. But at what a cost! The great burden of human sin and guilt would have been left still resting on the world; the heart of man would have been still weary and heavy laden; the hope of immortal life would have been left a yearning and a longing, unsatisfied and unfulfilled; and the kingdom of God among men, the true and only kingdom of God in the heart, and conscience, and will of man, would have been unfounded and unknown. Christ would have lost the kingdom by appearing to gain it. The promise of the devil, like all his promises, would have turned out a black and terrible lie. He would have given the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them to our Lord, but only after Christ had given Himself to the devil. Satan would have lost nothing of his kingdom, for he would have been king of the world’s king. Appearing to resign his sovereignty for a moment he would have secured it forever. Nor is this a mere dream of unrealities and visionary absurdities. It was, at any rate, no dream to the devil. He knew the vast issues involved in the incarnation and work of Christ; knew that the Son of God had been manifested for no other purpose than to " destroy the works of the devil," and that the victory of Christ meant his own eternal shame and defeat. Twice over Satan had attempted to conquer Christ and had failed. Twice over his attack had ended in his own defeat, and now he gathers all his strength and subtlety together for one final effort; hoping that if hostility has failed to seduce Christ from His immovable loyalty to God, the offer of alliance and of friendship may succeed. " All these things will I give Thee," were his last and deadliest words to Christ, " if Thou wilt fall down and worship me." And now let us consider the victory our Lord gained over this temptation. It is not without the deepest meaning that Christ here first addresses the tempter by his own name " Satan." " Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan." It is at least possible that, up to this point, our Lord had not recognised the objective personality of the source whence the first two temptations had proceeded: they may have appeared to Him, as so many of our temptations appear to us, as mysterious suggestions rising from within the depths of His own personality; inducements to sin coming to Him, He knew not how nor whence; shadows crossing His pure mind like dark clouds floating in a clear sky. But this last temptation left no possible doubt as to the source whence these temptations had come. It revealed in lurid light the dark personality of the tempter. To do evil that good might come, or that good might apparently come; to use worldly power to secure spiritual ends; to gain the world for Himself, but to lose it for God this was enough. Such an infernal subversion of the eternal kingdom of righteousness and truth which He had come to found, could only have proceeded from that evil spirit whose original revolt against God had cast him down " as lightning from heaven," and whose kingdom of unrighteousness and evil and suffering Christ had expressly come to overturn. Instantly our Lord answers, in words which burn with fiery indignation and scorn, " Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."

Once again, and now for the last time, the tempter is foiled by an answer taken from the Book of Deuteronomy. " The words of all the three answers to the tempter," as Dr. Plumptre [New Testament Commentary for English Readers] well remarks, " come from two chapters of Deuteronomy, one of which (Deuteronomy 6:1-25) supplied one of the passages (Deuteronomy 6:4-9), for the phylacteries or frontlets worn by devout Jews. The fact is in every way suggestive. A prominence was thus given to that portion of the book, which made it an essential part of the education of every Israelite. The words which our Lord now uses had, we must believe, been familiar to Him from His childhood, and He had read their meaning rightly. With them He may have sustained the faith of others in the struggles of the Nazareth home with poverty and want. And now He finds in them a truth which belongs to His high calling as well as to His life of lowliness."

But, as in the two former cases in which Christ repelled the temptation of Satan by a quotation from the Old Testament Scriptures, there seems a special appropriateness in the answer here given to the tempter. The passage in Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 6:13) which our Lord quotes, is followed by the significant words, " Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people round about you" If we have rightly interpreted the meaning of this third temptation of our Lord as having been, in its inmost heart, a temptation to seize a present and a worldly dominion at the expense of an eternal and a spiritual kingdom, the choice of this quotation from the Book of Deuteronomy becomes profoundly significant. The one recurring peril of religion in every age is the temptation to lower its high standard of truth and of action in order to win the suffrages of the world; to seek to advance Christ’s spiritual. kingdom by worldly means, and what is this but a forsaking of the worship and service of the true God for the carnal idolatry of worldly success. It is the repetition of the ancient sin of Israel of old, who forsook the living God and turned to the gods of the people round about them. Christ, tempted to commit this sin, repels the temptation by quoting the very Scripture which bore the deepest analogy to the special peril in which He was now placed.

We shall see, when we come to consider the significant words with which St Luke closes his account of the temptation, how frequently this last and subtlest temptation recurred in the life of our Lord; but before we close our study of this third temptation, let us again remind our selves of its deepest and most solemn lesson. We may build, or attempt to build, on the one foundation, "wood, hay, stubble," but our building will never last. It will be " tried by fire," and the unworthy material which we have wrought into the eternal kingdom of truth and of righteousness will be utterly consumed in the flames. Nothing is really permanent in the spiritual kingdom but that which is spiritual. Worldly success is not true success: it is defeat calling itself a victory. Faithfulness to God may seem to delay for long ages the advent of His glorious kingdom; but it is better to wait a millennium for the coming of that kingdom than to stain its triumph, when it comes, by having fought for its King with the weapons of the god of this world. They, and only they, will be crowned at last by the King who have " contended lawfully," and even for the sake of the kingdom have refused to " bow down and worship " Satan.