Recently one of our sons walked into my office—his face ashy white and his eyes shot through with fear. His lip quivered, and he confessed to me that he had been exposed to an evil, a vileness far too common in our world. Something no young heart should ever have to carry. The encounter was not his fault, but now he was aware of an unmistakable pull toward the darkness, an allure that we all know even if we can’t make sense of why or how it sinks its hook into our soul. I grabbed my son and cradled him in my lap, this boy who’s been too big to cradle for years. “I’m here,” I said. “You will not deal with this alone. You will never deal with this alone.”
Photography by Werner Van Steen
In that moment, my son didn’t need instructions on sin and repentance. His fear demonstrated that he knew the evil plain enough. My son needed me. He needed my strong and steady arms. He needed to hear, over and again, that his dad was stronger than this evil and would go in front of him to battle it.
This strong presence, this promise of going into the terror and the wickedness ahead of us, is precisely what Jesus has done on our behalf. Luke 4:1-2 tells us the Spirit led Him “into the wilderness . . . [to be] tempted by the devil” (NIV). And if we have any illusions about how following Jesus guarantees cozy comfort and safety, this description should send a chill down our spine. However, Jesus’ wilderness temptation enacted more than His individual standoff with Satan. Rather, Jesus faced Satan down in order to win redemption for the world. In His perilous temptation, Christ accomplished an epic triumph, a victory that reverberates across the whole of creation and into every human heart.
Historically, the church has often read Jesus’ temptation narrative next to Adam and Eve’s. One happens in a garden, the other in a wilderness. One tells of ruin, the other of redemption. The second Adam triumphs where the first Adam fails. Further, Jesus’ wilderness temptation recapitulates Israel’s temptations. Luke emphasized that the Lord’s struggle in the wild lasted 40 days. Any Jew who heard this would immediately remember the four decades their ancestors wandered in the barren desert, those desolate years of sin, struggle, and disappointment.
When Jesus, hungry and depleted, confronted the devil, He prevailed where Adam and Eve stumbled, and succeeded where Israel faltered. The first truth of Jesus’ temptation story is not the explication of helpful tips on overcoming our desires (though there is certainly wisdom to be gained) but rather an announcement of the cataclysmic fact that in Jesus Christ, God, has already leveled the lethal blow. Jesus is Lord even over temptation and is powerfully present with us even in the wild and wicked places.
This means that whenever we find ourselves drawn into the onslaught of temptation or despair (or however our wilderness manifests itself), God is already there ahead of us. In the very places where we most fear His absence, God’s love greets us, inviting us towards Himself. Divine love holds us in the dark and summons us into the light. Søren Kierkegaard fashioned this truth as a prayer:
Father in Heaven! Thou hast loved us first, help us never to forget that Thou art love so that this sure conviction might triumph in our hearts over the seduction of the world, over the inquietude of the soul, over the anxiety for the future, over the fright of the past, over the distress of the moment.
We are mistaken if we think our skirmishes with sin are fundamentally about our willpower or spiritual fortitude. The truth is, our affairs with sin are fundamentally a story about God and His grace, kindness, and might. If, in our places of temptation, we are left to ourselves while God sits in the corner waiting to see how well we come through, then we truly are doomed. However, we are not left to ourselves. God is not in the wings waiting. He has acted decisively in Jesus Christ, who confronted Satan in the wilderness and again on the cross. Whenever we find ourselves in the darkness, we discover Jesus Christ already there, wearing a smile and a victor’s crown.
