The Temptations of Jesus and Our Inner Demons

Jesus Is Tempted

Three of the four canonical gospels describe how Jesus was tempted by Satan. The first one written, that of Mark, offered few details. After Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit drove him into the wilderness. “He was in the wilderness forty days,” Mark wrote, “tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him” (Mark 1:11-13). Afterwards, he went off to start his ministry.

Matthew and Luke offer a richer version. In their gospels, Jesus fasted for forty days, becoming “famished.” At that point, the devil appeared and offered three temptations. The first was that Jesus should prove himself to be God’s Son, and fill his empty belly, by turning stone into bread.

Jesus refused. “One does not live by bread alone,” he said, “but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt 4:4).

So the devil took Jesus to the top of the temple in Jerusalem and told him to prove his authority by leaping to the ground, “for it is written,” the devil continued, “’He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone’” (Matt 4:6).

Again, Jesus refused, saying, “[I]t is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matt 4:7).

Finally, Satan showed him all the nations of the world. “If, then, you will worship me,” he promised, “it will all be yours” (Luke 4:7).

Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him’” (Luke 4:8).

Our Own Temptations

Having failed to tempt Jesus, Satan departed. In the book of Matthew, angels “waited on him” (Matt 4:11). Luke, on the other hand, ended his retelling without angels, but with a foreshadowing, for when Satan retreated, it was only for a while. Next we see him, he had convinced Judas to betray Jesus. Unlike the Son of God, Judas could not resist temptation.

Life holds so many temptations. We desire to be strong, important, good, beautiful, powerful, satiated, witty, rich. We long to live a life of ease, to get revenge, to win the race, to have and to hold and to own all that we see and all that we love. It hardly seems a bad thing to seek companionship and a comfortable living, and it is not, in and of itself. To dream, to strive to reach goals, to rise above the competition are not evil pursuits, but the more we seek to serve ourselves, the less obedient we are to that inner stillness that seeks union with the divine, with the essence of all that is.

These desires, these longings for life to be different, impede our spiritual growth. They separate us from our inner wisdom, from the relationship we have with God, from the community we share with other living beings.

Within all of us lies a spark of holiness, yet our temptations distract us from that spark. We become divorced from all we hold sacred. We lose the ability to see our true selves, to understand what we are called to. Instead of desiring to be obedient to the divine, we seek, instead, to sate our appetites.

Temptations Come to Us All

Every human being endures temptation. That’s probably why myths and stories about temptation abound. In most of them, we end up giving in and endure painful consequences. Adam and Eve ate the fruit and were expelled from the garden. Gilgamesh sacrificed everything in his quest for immortality, only to learn his search was futile. Midas lost his daughter because he couldn’t control his greed. These protagonists gained wisdom, perhaps, but at great cost.

Prophets have been similarly challenged. Like Jesus, Buddha and Zarathustra endured tests. Over and over, Angra Mainyu, the evil force in Zoroastrianism, sent demons to convince Zarathustra to renounce Ahura Mazda, the supreme deity, but Zarathustra never did. Buddha could not embark on his ministry, could not reach enlightenment, until he resisted the temptations of Mara, the master of illusion.

We are constantly pulled toward material gain. In our fear and loneliness, we often succumb. Yet most of us discover that fame, wealth, and power do not, in the end, satisfy us. We still feel afraid and alone.

That’s why myths and stories teach us to put our spiritual life first. If we connect with our inner wisdom, with that still, small place, with our god, then we will be content no matter what the state of our lives. That worked for Buddha and Zarathustra. It worked for Jesus, as well.

Why Was Jesus Tempted?

But why did the Spirit drive Jesus into the wilderness? Why did he have to endure the devil’s harassment?

According to scripture, God formed Jesus before he created the universe. In the gospel of John, we read, “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed” (John 17:5). So Jesus must have lived with the Father for eons. God had to know him intimately. How could he doubt him?

It is one thing for God to know someone as a fellow being in his ethereal realm; it is another to be sure of him once he has lungs to breathe with and legs to carry him across the ground. God could not know how strongly a human frame would twist Jesus’s heart and mind, for he himself had never been human. So God had to be certain. As Jeffrey Gibson put it, God had to know if Jesus would “willingly submit himself,” if he would take on the role God had ordained for him, would accept that, instead of conquest, God’s work could only be accomplished through Jesus’s “suffering and death.” [1]

Jesus could not be a valiant warrior king. He must be something new, a leader who showed strength by surrendering, power by dying. This was not a simple task. Was Jesus strong enough to withstand the lure of the world, brave enough to face scorn and torture? Would he give up everything he loved for the promise of a salvation that he, as a human being, could remember only dimly? Or would he choose Satan’s offer and accept a life of comfort and adoration?

For Jesus to Find Out

This is what God wanted to learn, but Jesus, too, needed to come to terms with his calling. Therefore, someone needed to show him what he would be giving up. Who better than Satan?

During his stint in the wilderness, Jesus could experience the temptations of the flesh. It is one thing to renounce pleasure when you exist as a spirit, to forgive when no human hand can harm you, to disdain to prove your power when you are powerful beyond measure. It is another thing to live in a body, to be a prophet in this world, and still remain obedient to God.

Therefore, the test had to be a true one. Jesus’s meeting with the Devil could only be called a temptation if at least part of him believed the Devil’s words. Only if he felt a craving for more than he had, if he longed for acclaim and approval, if he wanted to feel powerful, would this desert trial have meaning. Otherwise, the Devil would be no more than a gnat. A god who becomes human must understand human frailties, or why bother becoming a man?

As a man, Jesus endured doubt and fear. Welch suggests he was tempted to question his very relationship with God, his sonship, his divinity. If he could have, he would gladly have turned “away from the path of suffering love and servanthood.” [2] Perhaps he would have preferred to be just another man, a carpenter with a wife and children who never knew there was another calling. He might have felt such a temptation. But every time, he resisted.

We Long to Serve

But Jesus was tempted not only to serve his own needs; he was also tempted to take care of the needs of others. After all, he had the ability to do so. Not only could he turn stones into bread to feed himself, but he could make enough bread to feed the multitudes. He could heal anyone who asked, even bring them back to life. With that kind of power, he would be besieged by people begging him for favors. If he turned them away, they would scorn him. Thus, not only Satan tempted him; so did the faces of the poor and vulnerable.

Many of us feel that temptation. We want to solve the world’s problems, make everything right. Our attempts to fix things, however, can make them worse. Maybe we don’t see the big picture; maybe our solutions are clumsy. Sometimes we’re inspired to lend a hand because we feel uncomfortable, and we don’t take time to figure out what is really needed.

On the other hand, when we need help, we don’t always know what we really need. We hunger for a miracle, for a leader who makes promises, who is strong enough to protect us. We want our bellies filled right away, so we don’t care what kind of food we’re given, nor do we worry about what we’re expected to do in exchange for our meal. When there’s pain all around us, we just want to make it go away.

Seeking God’s Will

A few months ago, I shared a story by Martin Buber that is retold in Parker Palmer’s book, The Active Life, about an angel who could not bear to see humans suffer through plagues and starvation. He had the means to set everything right, and he begged God to let him do so. God agreed.

Eagerly, the angel set about making the world better, or so he thought. He forced an abundance of crops to grow, for instance, but when the people harvested the wheat, milled it, and baked it into bread, they discovered the result was inedible. The flour had no nutritional value, and the loaves tasted horrid. [3]

This was not the angel’s intention. He meant well. Eager, enthusiastic, he rushed in to make things right, but he was not wise in his generosity. If we aren’t careful, we might give the people bread they can’t eat.

As scripture tells it, Jesus had the power to make enough good, wholesome bread to feed every soul in Jerusalem. Reuben R. Welch acknowledges that “there is little good in talking to people about their souls while their stomachs are growling.” Yet Jesus “turns away from legitimate human needs” to fulfill a different ministry, one that would take him to cross and death. [4]

Is one ministry better than the other? Perhaps we need both. Yet if Jesus had focused on healing and feeding, he would not have become the light he was meant to be. Though he was hated and scorned, his body shattered, still he was triumphant. He healed hearts and fed souls.

The Need for Putrefaction

To turn away from the overwhelming physical needs of the poor, Jesus had to be able to bear the pain and hurt in their lives, knowing it was not the whole of the story. For as Buber reminds us, “the earth must be nourished with putrefaction.” [5] Beauty, abundance, joy all grow from fallow ground. They shine through our brokenness, arise from seeds that have been frozen and smashed.

Besides, people need to be free to make their own choices, avoid their own temptations, build their own lives. If Jesus did everything for us, eventually we would have no stories to tell, no music to play, no impulse to dance. We would feel empty and disconnected. Joy would disappear.

Jesus could trust in this truth because he spent forty days suffering in the wilderness, facing the demons inside and outside himself. He overcame his temptations. Thus, he could obey God when it became difficult. As Welch puts it, he could do “what is right and good in the sight of the Lord.” [6]

The Right and the Good

But how do we know what is “right and good”?

We can seek guidance from within, from friends and teachers, from some sense of the holy. Though we won’t always get it right, when we act from that place of wisdom rather than from our selfish desires, we feel connected to the wholeness of life. We feel congruent within ourselves. That is one way we know if what we are doing is “right and good.”

Of course, if we decide it is, we might feel self-righteous and superior. Temptations never cease.

The answer, however, isn’t to pretend we don’t feel pride, nor is it to blame others. It’s so easy to project our fears and resentments onto perfectly innocent people. This might make us feel better for a while, but it’s just another temptation. We could even say it’s a sin.

The Temptation of Sin

One definition of sin is a separation from God. In psychological terms, John A. Sanford explains, “it is separation within oneself.” [7] When we wall off our nastiness, justify our hatred, deny our responsibility for the pain we cause, this is sin. It is perhaps the greatest temptation we humans have, to see ourselves as righteous, good, deserving of salvation. When we do this, though, we create enemies of everyone else.

Of course, some of us learn early in life that we are worthless. Told over and over that we would amount to nothing, might as well be dead, had no brains, no grace, no hope, we came to believe it. In an attempt to avoid the pain of such memories, we sometimes dissociate from our hurts and invent demons outside us to hold our self-loathing. Then we do to others what was done to us.

In this way, we hurt those around us, but we also hurt ourselves. Life never goes well when we are ruled by hate rather than love, when we live enslaved by our fears. Often, one trial after another attacks us. Sometimes we blame Satan for that, as if some separate entity existed that embodied all the world’s evil.

Sanford tells us that some of us will make our way to the kingdom of God only after “frightful crises and dark experiences.” Talking about the “dark side of God,” her writes that this aspect of the holy “is intent on destroying everything that is not fit to exist,” scouring us out and forcing us to grow. [8]

Avoiding Temptation

What we don’t see can control us. Therefore, to avoid temptation, we must fast in the wilderness. We must pay attention to the demons within, but not yield to them. By inviting God into our hearts, we open ourselves up not only to pain, but also to growth. When we notice the frightened, angry, and spiteful side of ourselves, we can choose to soothe our wounded self rather than feed it. We can choose life instead of destruction.

Jesus spent forty days alone with wild animals and angels, looking within. He discovered his weaknesses; he found his strengths. Forging a deep connection with the God who created him, he embarked on a difficult, but satisfying, ministry that led, not to adulation and power, but surrender and death.

We are unlikely to be asked to make such a sacrifice. Yet whatever we are called to, if we are to avoid the temptations that derail us, we must reach into that deep inner wisdom, seek wisdom from the god that formed us. Jesus never stopped being tempted, but he never stopped speaking with his father, either.

Perhaps we can’t be perfect, as Jesus apparently was, but we can learn from his example. We can examine the demons within us rather than project them onto those around us, and, as we face our temptations, we can seek guidance from a force that is life, and grace, and love.

In faith and fondness,

Barbara

Credits

1. Gibson, Jeffrey. The Temptations of Jesus in Early Christianity, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1995, 78.
2. Welch, Reuben R.. Temptations of Jesus : His Victory and Ours, The Foundry Publishing, 2009, 70.
3. As told by Palmer, Parker, The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring, Indianapolis, IN: Jossey-Bass, 1999, 79-81, adapted.
4. Welch 31.
5. Palmer.
6. Welch 51.
7. Sanford, John A., The Kingdom Within: The Inner Meaning of Jesus’ Sayings, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987, 117.
8. Ibid 103.

Photo by Food Photographer | Jennifer Pallian on Unsplash

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