The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

Jesus’ Inner Struggle:  Mt.4:1 – 11

^4:1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Do you ever wonder if God knows what it’s like to be human, and struggle with our weaknesses and sins?  He does!  Actually, he knows about it better than we do.  How’s that?

Like us, Jesus had a mouth prone to boast about himself and sneer at others, eyes prone to greed, fists prone to strike his enemies, and feet prone to walk by the principle of self-preservation.  Like us, he inhabited a body craving physical comfort and sexual satisfaction.  Like us, he had a human instinct that was prone to avoid people who were awkward, unpleasant, and threatening. 

But Jesus lived perfectly, right?  Yes.  Doesn’t that mean we understand moral weakness and sin far better than Jesus?  No.  The only way to know how selfish you are is to resist your own self-centeredness.  If you gossip all the time, you don’t ever know how to discipline your tongue.  If you just surround yourself with comfortable people, you don’t know how to care about difficult people.  If you just watch porn or read romance novels whenever you feel like it, you don’t know how to resist the selfish lure of the fantasy world.  The reason why Jesus understands sin, selfishness, and the corruption in human nature so well is because he struggled with it so deeply.  By comparison with Jesus, we have no idea how weak and sinful we are!

In fact, many of us wrestle with sin only in its downstream, final, outward form.  You wrestle with the temptation to punch or curse someone out when they piss you off.  But most of us do not wrestle with sin in its upstream, earlier, internal form, when they are emotions of bitterness and control raging in our minds.  We have an easier time restraining ourselves from the outward expressions of our sin.  After all, if we physically hurt someone, we could get in big trouble.  If our mouths let loose with some nasty words, there might be consequences for us.  If you send a flaming email to someone, it could backfire on you and be copied all around the Internet.  So, it’s relatively easy to restrain ourselves from outward sin.  But it’s a lot harder to restrain ourselves from internal sin.  The further upstream we wrestle with our own selfishness, the harder it gets.

Now think about this:  Jesus wrestled with sin at its source.  He wrestled with the temptation to think his own thoughts and live his own life apart from his Heavenly Father.  Jesus had to think using a mind that constantly tried to privately think its own self-centered thoughts by shutting God out.  But he forced his mind to be aware of his Father’s presence, love, and purpose at all times… even under hard conditions.  For example, Jesus lived as part of an oppressed people dominated by an occupying enemy; the emotional landscape of his life was one of painful trauma and simmering anger.  Yet Jesus said to the devil in the wilderness that he would not use his power or life for any purpose of his own, ever.  Instead, he gave his life to the Father at every moment.  Few people understand what it’s like to struggle against our own sinfulness at its very source.  No one knows what it’s like to consistently be victorious there, at the very root of our being – no one, that is, but Jesus.  It’s just a lot harder to struggle against sin that far upstream.  Jesus did for us what none of us could do for ourselves.  He was victorious against all temptations at the source, where we often don’t even know we’re failing.

When we read about Jesus being tempted, like here in the wilderness, it’s not just a show.  Jesus didn’t pretend to be tempted.  The temptations were real and awful for him.  For here we see that Jesus did not take on a ‘perfect human nature,’ a human nature that is different from ours.  He took on a sinful human nature, the same human nature we have.  Jesus began to redeem humanity by ‘inhabiting’ and ‘wearing’ the human nature that is common to us all.  He took it all onto himself.  Every time his own humanity tried to resist, rebel, and squirm away from God to be an independent thing, like at the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus redirected it – his own writhing humanity – into obedience to the love of God.  He did this as one of us, by the power of the Spirit. 

This is why he retold the story of his people, and why he will retell our life stories.  Like I covered earlier, Jesus retold Israel’s story, and when he comes into our lives, he retells our story.  Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness echoed Israel’s forty years.  Jesus even quoted exclusively from Deuteronomy, the word from God to Israel during the wilderness sojourn, showing us that Jesus was in fact reflecting on Israel’s wilderness wandering.  Hence, Jesus was undoing the sin of Israel; he was the embodiment of a new Israel, reliving Israel’s wandering, without giving in to sin.  Jesus’ three temptations also resembled Adam and Eve’s triple temptation in the garden.  In Genesis 3:6, Eve took the fruit because she thought it was ‘good for food’ (turn these stones to bread), it was ‘a delight to the eyes’ (see the nations of the world), and because it was ‘desirable to make one wise’ (be admired by others).  Hence, Jesus was undoing the sin of humanity, reliving the temptation by Satan, without giving in.[1] 

‘That’s why he had to enter into every detail of human life.  Then, when he came before God as high priest to get rid of the people’s sins, he would have already experienced it all himself—all the pain, all the testing—and would be able to help where help was needed.’ (Hebrews 2:17 – 18, The Message translation)  That’s why, when you need someone to understand how bad or broken you think you are, go to Jesus.  Don’t think that God doesn’t understand you.  Don’t pray to anyone else.  Don’t go to someone else first to seek their sympathy.  Seek Jesus’ voice.  Listen for his word.  Recognize his identity as fully God and fully human, and what that meant for him.  The truth is, despite how you may be experiencing yourself recently, you don’t even know how bad or broken you really are.  But Jesus knows.  He knows who you really are, and loves you anyway.  Despite how much you think you understand about fighting sin, you don’t know as much as Jesus.  And he has the power to cleanse you and to continue healing you.

Thank you, Jesus.