The first Sunday in Lent is an apt time to reflect on the Gospel story of the temptation of Jesus. It has a number of layers, from which different useful lessons can be derived that go beyond Christian theology. In the Catholic Church, this year we get the version of the story in Mark’s Gospel, which offers no detail on the tempting. For that, one turns to Matthew 4:1-11. To start with, it’s an unusual story, the only one in the Gospels in which Satan appears and the only one in which there are no human witnesses but Jesus. The faithful reader is left to assume that Jesus must have relayed the story to one or more of the Apostles.
The story is a familiar one for how Jesus spars with Satan, as the two exchange quotes from the Old Testament; it establishes both that the devil can quote Scripture, and that Jesus rebuts him with authority. It also reminds us of the dictum that “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” What I’ve long found fascinating about the story, however, is taking it on its own terms: How would Satan approach the task of tempting Jesus? How do you tempt a man without sin — a man who is not just man but divine?
Satan takes three cracks at this. The first is the obvious route. Jesus has been fasting, and is hungry, and He is offered food. He is still a man, subject to the weaknesses of the flesh, and to be hungry is no sin; it is only a natural frailty.
The other two temptations are more interesting. Satan tests Jesus not as a man, but as God. How would you go about tempting God? You couldn’t, which is why it doesn’t work, but the attempts are revealing. They illustrate the tension in the one thing God wants but as to which He denies, or at least restrains, Himself.
In the second temptation, Satan takes Jesus to “the parapet of the temple” in “the holy city” — in other words, a place of obvious prominence — and dares Him to throw himself down, which will summon angels to rescue Him. In the third temptation, Satan offers him rule of “all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence.”
Why might it test God to offer these things? Well, if Jesus is rescued by angels at the heart of the city, He will reveal His divine majesty, and people will worship him. What other choice would they have? A direct demonstration of divine power is apt to have that effect. If Jesus rules humanity directly, the kingdoms of the world will be at peace and obedient to the laws of God.
These are, we are told, the things God desires of us: to believe and worship Him, and to obey His commands. Looking upon the fallen and chaotic state of humanity, what else could possibly test the Lord?
But Jesus refuses precisely because God’s plan of creating us makes our faith and obedience valuable and pleasing only when it is voluntary and freely chosen. For the Son of God to compel belief and obedience would destroy the voluntary nature of the one gift that is ours to give back to the Creator. It would undermine the whole point of why He is incarnate in the world.
This aspect of this story is in some sense a callback to the Book of Job, the most developed appearance of Satan in the Old Testament. Job centers around the devil’s wager, or taunt, that Job only worships the Lord because he’s been showered with blessings. To test that, the Lord allows Job to be visited with tragedy, misery, and physical agony. Job’s faith bends, but it doesn’t break, and because he proves that this is his choice, he is rewarded at the end and Satan loses the argument.
If there’s a lesson here for the rest of us, it’s that virtue and piety cannot be compelled by the authorities. Crucial though these things are to the good society, they can at most be encouraged, cultivated, and rewarded. In order to be worth anything, they must be earned, and earned by a free choice and a free conscience.