The Counterparts of the Three Temptations

Esus began His mission in the hill-country. — He did so not only in a geographical, but ina metaphorical sense. We have seen what are called His three temptations, They all originated in a state of mental elevation. They were suggestions to become Messiah by a stroke of power. Three courses, as we have seen, presented themselves to the soul of Jesus. He might take the platform of the social reformer — make the stones bread. He might assume the crown of a potentate — receive the kingdoms and the glory of them. He might invest Himself with the sacrificial prerogative of the priest — cast Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple. The people, the throne, or the

altar — these had been His alternatives. But to these three there had been one thing in common. They all indicated on the part of Jesus a condition of spiritual exaltation. He had taken the form of a servant, but as yet He was only sweeping the ufper rooms. The depth of the descent was still veiled from Him. His first vision had been, like all the visions of youth, a sight of the glory without the perspective. The roads presented to Him were all short roads. They were such roads as Elijah would have contemplated, as the Baptist would have contemplated. They promised to usher in the kingdom in a moment of time. They were attractive from their seeming directness, They appeared to lead right to the Metropolis, to the City of God, to the establishment of that great Theocracy for which men had been waiting so longingly and so long.

And we have seen how Jesus Himself put His hand upon the weak point in these temptations. We have seen how there came to Him the conviction that each of the three courses was vitiated by having for its motive the proof of His Messiahship. The goals were all good. To help the people was good; to purify the state was good; to sacrifice at the altar was good. But to do these things because the Messiah when He came was expected to do them, this was to make virtue a mechanical thing. Jesus felt that the welfare of the people must be sought for the sake of the people, that the purity of the state must be desired for the sake of the state, that the act of priestly sacrifice must be deemed precious for the sake of Divine and human love. The three courses were all legitimate to Jesus. He might play the part either of the generous bread-winner, the just king, or the holy priest. But He must play any or all of these parts, not on the ground of being the Messiah, but on the ground of being a man. He must be drawn to them by human sympathy, by human equity, by human piety; and the Messianic glory must be reached, not as a voluntary motive, but only as an unconscious result.

And now I come to a point which has always struck me as very remarkable. As we emerge from the scene of the temotation into the earliest active scenes of the life of Jesus, I am arrested by a striking fact. The first three of these active scenes are repetitions, in a sanctified form, of the three visions described in the temptation. Remember these three visions — the generous bread-winner, the king at the head of the legions, the priest sacrificing himself at the altar. Keeping these in view, take the narrative which in point of time immediately follows — that embraced in the second and third chapters of St. John’s Gospel. You will, I think, be struck by the similarity between the three scenes of the temptation and the three first episodes of the public ministry of Jesus. Let us stand again in the great gallery, and consider the Portrait before us, We have contemplated the meditative aspect of the features; but there is energy beneath the calm. We have seen His spirit in deep thought, pondering how His mission was to be realised. We are now about to cross the line which divides His hour of meditation from His hour of resolution. He has rejected in

spirit the solicitations of the tempter. He has

So THE COUNTERPARTS OF

refused on the s¢empter’s terms to be the bread-winner, the king, or the priest. But He is ready to be each and all of them on His own. As He emerges from the desert into the light of day, the first acts of the day are refrains of the desert. Jesus treads again the scenes of the temptation. He enters the three spheres which the tempter had indicated. He claims them; He appropriates them; He makes them His own — but not in the tempter’s way. He finds a new way, a better way of becoming the bread-winner, the king, and the priest.

Let us see how each of the first three scenes of the public ministry of Jesus is a counterpart of one of those which flitted before Him in the solitudes of the desert. In these solitudes the first solicitation to His heart had been, ‘ Prove your mission by making the stones bread.’ When He comes out from the solitude He is met on the very threshold by the counterpart of that solicitation — ‘Make the water wine.’ It is the same kind of work He is asked to do — a work of transubstantiation — the change of common into precious material. But what He had refused to try as a proof of His Messtahship He attempts for the sake of humanity; He does at the marriage feast what He would not do in the desert. This is what I understand by the words of the fourth Evangelist, ‘This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee’ The tempter had wanted this beginning of miracles to be made in Judea — in the depths of the wilderness. Jesus claims another scene for the work of transubstantiation. He selects, not the solitude but the crowd, not the lonely desert but the place of human concourse. Why? Because to take His suggestion from the desert would not have been to take it from the actual contact with human want. It would have been a purely official act, a Messianic act. But at the marriage feast it is far otherwise. Here, he stands on human sympathy alone. Here, there is nothing official, nothing Messianic, It is apparently a trivial occasion. That is the beauty of it. It brings out an accidental play

of the essential unselfishness of Jesus. Its F importance grows out of its insignificance. Let us ponder how.

When Jesus comes to that marriage feast He is full of Messianic thoughts. He is fresh from the wilderness — fresh from the inward struggle regarding the way to His. mission. On that mission He is intent. It is the subject of all His meditations; it stirs His waking hours, it colours His dreams, Suddenly there arises one of those family incidents which are supposed to be at the opposite remove from solemnity — the festive celebration of a wedding. Jesus is there asa guest — doubtless for reasons of consanguinity. We cannot think that He went without a sacrifice; His original desires must have been elsewhere. But these desires are surprised and taken captive. Something occurs to retard the family joy; a deficiency arises in the physical provision for the feast. At first His mind is somewhat far away; He is thinking of the greater salvation; He says, ‘Mine hour is not yet come.’ But at last the /¢//e hour eclipses for a time the great one. A trivial human need diverts Him for a moment from the main road — surprises Him, so to speak, out of His Messianic consciousness. Human sympathy rules supreme, rules alone. It is sympathy with a secular want, with a physical want, with a transient want. Everything in the picture is grouped and fashioned so as to emphasise and intensify the fact that the first public work of Jesus was prompted by humanity alone. It was something out of His previous line, on the junction of a new line. It was the beginning of that divesting of His own consciousness which was to be the star of all His future progress, and the goal of all His future glory.

I come now to the second counterpart of the temptations in the wilderness. The second of these temptations was that of empire. It practically amounted to this, ‘All these kingdoms of the world will I give thee if thou wilt rule as men rule — by physical force.’ This He had refused to do. Yet the temptation was the travesty of a rea, empire — an empire to which He was heir. As He emerges into the world there meets Him that reality of which the temptation was a semblance. It meets Him, not in Galilee, but in Judea. We are no longer at the marriage feast. We are under the dome of night, in the City of David. Jesus for the first time stands before us in the attitude of alawgiver. A ruler of the synagogue has bent his knee to Him, nay, has bent the knee to Him on the ground of something like physical power: ‘Master, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him,’

Here is something very near the suggestion of the wilderness. Nicodemus presents to Jesus an image of His power very similar to that which the tempter had presented. Jesus cannot receive the latter any more than He could receive the earlier suggestion. But now along with the travesty there bursts upon Him the reality. He sees that there zs an empire for Him. He sees that there zs a force of which He may be the centre — a force more potent than the physical, more abiding than the material — a force which when once communicated must be all-compelling. To Nicodemus He proclaims the condition on which He can be a king, asserts the only principle of His possible sovereignty- — the suasion of the spirit. He tells him that a man cannot see His kingdom by seeing any wonders He may do, that to feel the force of His sceptre he must be born of His Spirit. Those who follow the banner of the Messiah must not be driven. They must be like ‘the wind blowing where it listeth.’ They must have a sense of perfect freedom. They must do His will, not merely because it zs His will, but because it has become their own. Their obedience to Him must be the obedience of a kindred nature, of a faith resulting from similitude, of a love arising from common sympathies. Such is the empire that floats before the vision of Jesus; such is the kingdom which replaces in His mind the throne He had refused in the temptations of the wilderness.

But there is a third counterpart. The desert temptation had made its last assault upon the side nearest to His heart — His spirit of sacrifice.

[t had assailed him in the capacity of the priest. It had called upon Him to prove His devotion to the Father by a public surrender of His life into the hands of the Almighty: ‘Cast thyself down from the pinnacle of the temple.’ Jesus had refused on the ground that sacrifice was not good unless it drought good. But when He has come out from the solitude He is met by the veal demand for sacrifice. As He treads in reality those temple courts which He had paced in imagination, there rise before Him the impurities to which the house of God was subjected. He sees men buying and selling within the sacred precincts, and His soul is stirred with indignation. He feels Himself to be indeed on the pinnacle of the temple — to be the High Priest of the Father. Will He suffer this desecration? Is it not His province to interfere, to confront this unholy merchandise, to overthrow the tables of the money-changers, to drive out the oxen with a scourge of cords? To do so will be practically to follow the advice of the desert — to cast Himself down from the pinnacle. It will be exposure to obloquy, danger, violence, perhaps death. But it is no longer the same death as the desert proposed. That was for the sake of pain; this is for the sake of purity. That was to prove His piety; this is to make others pious. That was for a test of fortitude; this is for the benefit of mankind. There breaks upon the human soul of Jesus the true goal of sacrifice. The desert ideal vanishes, to appear no more; and in its room there rises a new idea! in which the thorn is only accepted for the sake of the flower. Henceforth, if called to endure the cross, He can only endure it ‘for the joy that is set before Him.’

ON of Man, let my goal, like Thine, be not the night but the star. Let me reject

with Thee the desert ideal. Let me learn with Thee that pain for its own sake is mot the will of my Father. Teach me Thine own experience that, where the will of the Father points to the thorny way, it is only because flowers lie farther on. If I am called to sacrifice, let it be to cleanse Thy temple. Let me feel that my sorrow is helping somebody, smoothing the path of somebody. If I take the road to the poverty of the manger, let me see the treasures which thither I bear. If I keep watch in the dark night, let me hear with the shepherds the angels’ song. If I have to bathe in the waters of Jordan, let me behold overhead the opened heavens. All sacrifice will be possible for me if I know it to be a ministry of love. I shall bear Thy cross when I have the joy that was set before Thee.