Main news for 24 October 2024

What stands out most in the account of the Savior’s temptation in the wilderness is Satan’s powerlessness. The temptations to which we so easily fall victim prove insignificant to Christ. The Savior rejects putting one’s own interests first—ultimately, the interests of one’s own stomach—by saying that the true source of life for a human being is the Word of God. He rejects the thirst for power that consumes people regardless of era or culture by pointing to God’s unassailable sovereignty over creation. When invited to use the Creator magically as an instrument, the Savior responds by showing reverence for the holiness of the Almighty.

The apostle Paul will say that Christ is the new Adam. The renewal of the human race in Christ consists above all in this: His faith and faithfulness to the Father prove stronger and more important than temptations, which appear petty and empty before Him. His victory over darkness begins from the very moment Christ refuses to yield to temptation.

What is the Savior's temptation in the wilderness? Why did it become possible? The simple and traditional answer is that He, while remaining Man in His divinity, could be subjected to temptation by the devil just like any person. But this is only part of the answer. Every temptation is a test; in Greek (and also in Hebrew), both concepts are denoted by one word. So what was the meaning of the test?

Jesus is the Messiah, and the test was, obviously, connected precisely with His messianic ministry. More exactly, with the possibility of distorting that ministry and thereby making it meaningless. Distorting it just as the devil had already managed to distort it in the minds of many believing Jews, those who expected a miracle-working Messiah, a Messiah who would provide His subjects with complete abundance - of course, on earth, in our world, still by no means transfigured and lying in evil. In fact, this is exactly what the devil proposes that the Savior do: turn stones into bread; demonstrate miracles connected with superhuman abilities hidden in human nature.

But the main temptation lies elsewhere: the devil offers Jesus a deal. He tries to assure the Savior that the world in fact belongs to him, the devil, and not to God. And that the Kingdom must be negotiated with him, with the devil, if Jesus, of course, wants His Kingdom to have any place in the world at all. The devil tempts the Savior with the very same thing with which he tempts every person doing God's work; that is why the description of this temptation is important for us. If He were tempted in some special way, invented only for the Messiah, the story of His temptations would be interesting to us only theoretically. And, of course, biographically, as a most important episode of Christ's earthly ministry.

But one way or another, in one form or another, all this awaits any of us if we are Christians and want to follow Christ on His path. To substitute something for the Kingdom and its life - whether the illusory possibility of universal earthly prosperity or the development of superhuman abilities. And if that does not work, then to offer a deal, a compromise that will shield us from problems and troubles on the Christian path in a world lying in evil. Each of us has to resist these temptations. Throughout our earthly journey. Provided, of course, that our earthly journey really is a continuation of His path. The path of the Kingdom, running through a world lying in evil.

Today's reading brings us back again to the temptations that Jesus experienced in the wilderness. Unlike Matthew (Matt. 4:1-11), Luke lists these temptations in this order: the proposal to turn stones into bread (vv. 3-4), the proposal of a bargain (recognition of authority in exchange for freedom of action) (vv. 5-8), and the proposal to perform a miracle obvious to everyone (vv. 9-12). It is not hard to notice that this order differs from the one given by Matthew, where the proposal to perform a miracle follows immediately after the proposal to turn stones into bread, and the proposal of a bargain concludes the sequence of temptations.

Why, then, do the evangelists' descriptions differ? And which order should be considered correct? The first question is not hard to answer. Clearly, none of the evangelists could have been a witness to the event they describe, for during the temptation Jesus was alone in the wilderness. Both Matthew and Luke tell about it from someone else's words. Matthew, who belonged to the twelve apostles, had the opportunity to hear from the Teacher Himself what had happened in the wilderness; Luke, evidently, had to use the testimony of those who could communicate directly with Jesus.

But each of the evangelists undoubtedly interpreted what he had heard in his own way, for the Gospels are not stenographic reports, but authored texts that imply, in each case, a quite definite understanding and presentation of everything seen and heard. Evidently this is why many of the evangelists' accounts differ in details and particulars, including the account of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. As in some other cases, Luke conveys this account differently from Matthew, placing the emphasis in his own way. For him, it appears, the main temptation is not the devil's direct proposal to make a bargain, but the temptation connected with the possibility of taking the path of performing miracles obvious to everyone, the kind that so attract people who want all their problems solved instantly.

Perhaps Luke, writing his Gospel at a time when quite a few different accounts and stories about Christ had already appeared (Luke 1:1), had to draw his readers' special attention to the fact that the essence of Christianity is by no means miracles. Many of the accounts he mentions were probably at times utterly fantastic in character, like the stories that fill some apocryphal texts. They are full of miracles, but miracles precisely of the sort that those around Jesus sometimes demanded from Him and that He never performed.

The apocrypha themselves, of course, did not yet exist, but legends and rumors about incredible events connected with the Savior's earthly life, later set down in them, may well have already been circulating in circles close to Christianity. And Luke has to remind his readers that Jesus came into the world not to demonstrate miracles that strike the imagination of an admiring crowd, but to give the world the Kingdom.