Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Absolute Temptation of Jesus Christ

I've talked about Jesus' temptation in the wilderness before, but I want to be a bit more clear about it. People don't seem to understand its ultimate relevance. The way most people perceive the Temptation comes across as more of a "Jesus Lite." Jesus is more than just a wishy washy person in our history. He is God, and the triumph he made in the wilderness is not only a singular victory, it is the very cornerstone of spiritual reality itself. If Jesus had not passed that test, nothing would have mattered, including the Crucifixion.

In order for someone to be tempted, they have to want the thing they are being tempted with. A person tempted with chocolate who does not like chocolate will easily pass the test.... but then he was never really tempted with anything. Many people I know, including family, believe that Jesus was incapable of wanting anything offered by the demons in the wilderness. If that is true, then he did NOTHING. All he did was go out into the wilderness and, like a robot, simply say no to everything offered. This alternate version of events makes Jesus out to be more of an automaton who can only do what God programmed him to do. This would not have been a victory for anybody.

These demons were offering Jesus a bounty of worldly things. Power. Money. Sex. As for the latter, the kinks and fetishes offered would have been extraordinary. I won't go into the specific details, but I'll simply hint that no perversion would have been off the table. The reason for the extreme nature of these temptations was because it was important that Jesus be tempted, not lightly, but absolutely. Every worldly vice would have been offered to him... and Jesus would have to desire those things in order for the temptation to be real. His ability to deny himself these sinful things that his human nature wanted so dearly would become his own personal and absolute triumph. Every sinful thing, big and small, he denied himself, and he did so of his own free will and despite a sincere yearning to indulge.

If Jesus had merely been a mindless automaton that could not be tempted by anything, then his choice to carry that cross and be crucified would have also been simply an act of mere programming and not based on a personal choice. The fact that Jesus chose to do these things through a sheer act of inner strength is paramount to my argument. Jesus did not just desire to sin a little... he wanted every type of sin, and he was tempted with that very thing... and he denied himself all of it for us. And his very act of denying himself those worldly things became the very standard by which we are expected to live... and will ultimately fail at... by varying degrees.

Jesus lived a completely sinless life... and then he chose to die for all us selfish ungrateful people who often don't accomplish 1% of what he did in his short life. We are constantly bombarded with the sinful things of this world, and we fall for those things over and over and over. And worst of all... we have the same choice he did. We could have all been like him... if we chose to be. But we never do. We never will. The only vestige of hope we have left is to look to the one man who passed every test with flying colors. We join him at the throne and stand with him. We do this because the Man deserves it. No one else does.

The temptation of Jesus Christ was absolute. Every sin imaginable was laid at his feet... and in the same way he chose to deny himself those sins... he also chose to give up his life. Wake up... and look to this Man... and know exactly who he is and what he has done. Amen.

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