Temptation thoughts. . .

Today we hear how our Lord was tempted as we are but remained faithful.  It is anything but a morality lesson and has everything to do with the sufficiency of God, working through His Word, to keep us strong, secure within the grasp of His grace, and faithful.  Jesus does not face the devil on His own, as some sort of superhuman heroic figure with powers beyond the ordinary -- though He could!  He faces them as Man for men, in the strength of God's Word, secure within the grasp of grace, and faithful.  He does so not to show us how to do the same but to be the obedient for the disobedient, the righteous for the unrighteous, and the strong for the weak.  He does so to show that original sin is real, that no one born of woman is immune from the taunts, temptations, and trials of desire -- though He, the God incarnate, is able to withstand what leaves us broken.  He stands up not simply to the devil and his twisted truths become lies but to the ordinary desires of the human heart to choose what is easy over what costs us something, what you do on your own over what you do in the strength of God's Word, and what you see with eyes in your head over what you see by faith.  And Jesus does what we cannot do -- again, not to prove Himself better than us or to teach us how to do what He does but as Man for men, in our place before the Law and before temptation.

It also tells us something of how the devil operates.  His appeal is not simply to the power of our desire but to the ability of our fallen hearts and minds to use God's Word to justify our sin and excuse it.  The devil taunts us not only with what we want (the easy, the comfortable, and the least costly path) but what, in a twisted view of Scripture, is what God wants.  In this, nothing has changed from Eden.  Except that God has given us the promise of His Word that we do not need to stand alone in the face of the devil's lies and perversion.  No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide an escape, so that you can stand up under it.  So says St. Paul to the Corinthians.  And with those words we are chastened.  Our lot in life is not extraordinarily more difficult or dangerous.  Temptation is common to all men.  We are not suffering more or facing more than what all face -- though not all at the same time nor is our suffering apparent to all.  But God has placed limits.  Like with Job, God has placed limits to what the devil can do to tempt us.  As comforting as that is, it is even more comforting to know that God has placed an escape -- a means to answer the devil's taunts and temptation's allure.  That is His Word.

Luther admitted, “My own worst enemy is closest to me, I am carrying him in my breast. Therefore, if God does not help me with His Holy Spirit, I am lost. I cannot govern myself for a solitary hour.”  Luther had a profound sense of the devil, of temptation, of his weakness, and of God's strength.  Perhaps nothing distances us more from Luther than our presumption that the devil is more myth than reality, symbol over substance, and legend than a regular and daily part of our lives.  Not for Luther.  Luther scholar Heiko A. Oberman once wrote, “if I were to cut out the pages in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works in which he mentions the Devil more than twice, I would be left with perhaps two and a half volumes.”  For us it is no luxury to live with God's Word a stranger and His voice unfamiliar because we do not take as seriously as the saints before how much the devil is at work against us.  For if we did, we would avail ourselves of His Word and truth as necessity.

Therefore Satan here attacks Adam and Eve in this way to deprive them of the Word and to make them believe his lie after they have lost the Word and their trust in God. Is it a wonder that when this happens, man later on becomes proud, that he is a scorner of God and of men, that he becomes an adulterer or a murderer? Truly, therefore, this temptation is the sum of all temptations; it brings with it the overthrow or the violation of the entire Decalogue. Unbelief is the source of all sins; when Satan brought about this unbelief by driving out or corrupting the Word, the rest was easy for him. . . . The chief temptation was to listen to another word and to depart from the one which God had previously spoken. (Luther)

That well describes our dilemma.  We listen to every word but God's and reject God's Word while accepted feelings as the most profound truth of all.  And the devil laughs.  But God has not abandoned us.  His Word and truth remain and His Spirit works in and through them so what St. Paul promised will not be set aside.  God's Word is not simply our refuge but our escape.