The Last Temptation of Christianity

When we consider what it means to trust Christ, I think it is very clear that this means more than a simple intellectual assent to the facts contained in the Bible.  To actually trust Him requires knowing Him.  To know Him as God is impossible for us, if that were possible then it was pointless for Him to become a man.  For, I contend, that the principle reason for His Incarnation and His way of life and death and resurrection as a man is to reveal Himself, who He is, to us.  If this is true, then the best possible way to know God is by studying the character of the man Jesus Christ, His psychology if you will.

To me, one of the most interesting places to look at His psychology is in His temptations.  Far too often we simply skip over the thorny question of what in these temptations was actually TEMPTING to Him.  I think the first point to look at is the fact that He was really tempted, that is He perceived something desirable in the devil's suggestions and felt some inclination to carry out the suggestion.  Without that they are not temptations at all.  I looked at the temptations some in a previous post but today I want to look especially at the third and last temptation and how it affects us today.

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’” Matthew 4

The root question here is, "Why would Jesus want to be the king of the world?"  We can't imagine that He desired anything they could add to Him, all of His actions belie that thought.  No, even in His temptations, He remains true to Himself.  So, why would the Son of Man who came to serve want to rule the world?  I think it is clear that He must have been thinking about the benefits we would receive from His kingship.  How much different would our world be if it were ruled by one who is wise and forgiving?  Our jails would quickly empty, all war, all strife of all kinds would very quickly cease.  No more ten thousand sects drunk on their own bullshit, but all men united as brothers in a single religion unerringly tied to the Truth Himself.  As Isaiah says even the animals would be at peace.  The sad Earth would abandon her mourning and put on gladness, for no one can be sad in the presence of the Bridegroom for whom we were all made.  I am not overstating the change that His government would bring to this world, if anything I am underplaying it.  It is very easy to see why the Lord who wept over Jerusalem would be tempted to heal all of her hurts.  The temptation was a temptation to save us.  It must have resonated with the deep things in His soul.

Indeed, the whole Temptation may be regarded as the contest of the seen and the unseen, of the outer and inner, of the likely and the true, of the show and the reality. And as in the others, the evil in this last lay in that it was a temptation to save his brethren, instead of doing the Will of his Father. George MacDonald

I think that the same temptation that tempted Christ tempts us today.  The church feels very strongly, I feel very strongly, the need to have a Gospel that heals men's hurts, that actually makes things better.  We want very much to have a church that is successful, that is converting the world, that is marching forward.  I think that this is why the idea of a Millenial Kingdom is so attractive to us.  The same temptation to DO SOMETHING that our Lord felt we feel too.  We think it is right and true and we still can't see why it would be sin for Christ to take the reins of Planet Earth into His very capable hands.

It was when Peter would have withstood him as he set his face steadfastly to meet this death at Jerusalem, that he gave him the same kind of answer that he now gave to Satan, calling him Satan too.  George MacDonald

Christ's goal was not to set all of the prisoners free of their prisons, but to make them free IN their prisons.  It is not that the poor cease to be poor but that they become rich in their poverty.  It is not so that we might cease to be dead, but that we might, in His Death, be alive even in our death.  And perhaps hardest to take, His plan to make us righteous is not for us to stop being sinners but for us to be righteous though still sinners-a righteousness that can't be seen at all and can only be believed.

Nothing but the obedience of the Son, the obedience unto the death, the absolute doing of the will of God because it was the truth, could redeem the prisoner, the widow, the orphan. But it would redeem them by redeeming the conquest-ridden conqueror too, the stripe-giving jailer, the unjust judge, the devouring Pharisee himself with the insatiable moth-eaten heart. The earth should be free because Love was stronger than Death. Therefore should fierceness and wrong and hypocrisy and God-service play out their weary play. He would not pluck the spreading branches of the tree; he would lay the axe to its root. It would take time; but the tree would be dead at last—dead, and cast into the lake of fire. It would take time; but his Father had time enough and to spare. It would take courage and strength and self-denial and endurance; but his Father could give him all. It would cost pain of body and mind, yea, agony and torture; but those he was ready to take on himself. It would cost him the vision of many sad and, to all but him, hopeless sights; he must see tears without wiping them, hear sighs without changing them into laughter, see the dead lie, and let them lie; see Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted; he must look on his brothers and sisters crying as children over their broken toys, and must not mend them; he must go on to the grave, and they not know that thus he was setting all things right for them. His work must be one with and completing God's Creation and God's History. The disappointment and sorrow and fear he could, he would bear. The will of God should be done. Man should be free,—not merely man as he thinks of himself, but man as God thinks of him. The divine idea shall be set free in the divine bosom; the man on earth shall see his angel face to face. He shall grow into the likeness of the divine thought, free not in his

own fancy, but in absolute divine fact of being, as in God's idea. The great and beautiful and perfect will of God must be done. George MacDonald

The Cross is not the road to glory.  It is the End not the Means.  His Kingdom really is not of this world, not because it belongs to another world, but because it transcends all worlds.  It is not some ignorant and aloof God who is all of our joy but the very Man of Sorrows.  It is His stripes that comfort us.  Christ did not die so that men might not suffer, but so that their sufferings might be like His.

Ah! but when were his garments white as snow? When, through them, glorifying them as it passed, did the light stream from his glorified body? Not when he looked to such a conquest; but when, on a mount like this, he "spake of the decease that he should accomplish at Jerusalem"! Why should this be "the sad end of the war"? "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." Not even thine own visions of love and truth, O Saviour of the world, shall be thy guides to thy goal, but the will of thy Father in heaven. George MacDonald Unspoken Sermons Vol. 1

Valjean's Soliloquy