Jesus's Temptation

Mark 1 : 12 - 13

The account of Jesus’s temptation in Mark is much shorter than in Matthew and Luke. However, this does not mean it lacks important messages. These two verses are, in fact, very dense.

In the preceding passage, we read about Jesus’s baptism. But the story does not continue with a celebration. Instead, it is immediately followed by his encounter with Satan. In the modern context, especially in Europe, it may seem strange to speak about Satan. Of course, we are called to deliver the message about Jesus, not about Satan. Yet when we proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God, we cannot do so without also acknowledging the reality of Satan. Jesus came to proclaim the kingdom of God coming into this world. And at the same time, there is a war against the power of evil. This is a biblical teaching that is mostly discounted in the Western world.

Every time we sincerely seek to submit and surrender ourselves to God, we will always face resistance. When we want to do God’s work, there will always be attacks from Satan. And that, in itself, is a confirmation that we are doing what is right before God. If we grow weary of these spiritual attacks and wish to avoid them, one way is to stop doing God’s will. We may then live in comfort and enjoyment, and the attacks will cease. There is no need for Satan to attack us if we only seek our own pleasure and interests. But this kind of life is extremely dangerous. It is a life where we are not against evil but we are against God.

When we obey God, we cannot avoid the attacks of Satan. But the comfort and the good news is that we can fight this together with Christ, because Christ has done so before us. If we do not maintain a good relationship with Christ, then we will be victimized by Satan. We will have no strength to fight against evil. Our life will become fruitless, and we will not become blessings for others. We may become uninterested in keeping our relationship with God. We stop meditating upon his word and stop praying. But doing God’s commandment is impossible without his help. We need Christ when we are fighting against Satan.

This is not an outdated message. One of the most empirical doctrines in Christianity is about the existence of evil. For example, you might not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. It is a bit hard to deny the death of Christ, since it is an actual historical event, but perhaps you can still debate about the resurrection. However, when it comes to the existence of evil, I think everyone must agree that something is not right in this world. We have wars and conflicts. We have hatred, envy, pride, greed, and so on. This is real, and therefore, among all doctrines, the doctrine of sin is the most empirical. The Bible explains that this is because there is a war against evil, and that evil is real. And once again, we are invited to enter into the kingdom of Jesus and to take part in this war.

We read in verse 12, “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” In the original Greek, the word euthys is used, which carries the meaning of “at once” or “immediately.” There is no time to linger on the glory of baptism. There is no time to wonder about the beauty of baptism. There is no waste of time. And this is also the pattern in our life. Temptation will come immediately after we submit ourselves before God.

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” In the Bible, we receive a far deeper teaching than this. If it is impossible to live our everyday life without facing some form of exams or tests, how could we ask for exemption in following God? That kind of Christianity does not exist, and most of all, it is untested, unexamined, unproven. Jesus is the Son of God, and he was not exempted from those tests. If we read the tone of Mark, there is an earnestness in the story of the test here. The Spirit immediately drove him out, or it can also be translated as he was thrust out to confront Satan. This is something unavoidable.

The announcement of the kingdom of God is an announcement to go to war against the kingdom of Satan. When we try to avoid this war, we end up in other wars, such as political or economic wars, like those happening today. We have envy, pride, and greed driving us to topple one another. Why? Because we do not want to fight the real enemy, which is Satan. Avoiding the true war will lead us into unnecessary wars. If we, and our world, want to have peace, then we must fight the war against the real enemy, which is Satan.

Within ourselves, we also have weaknesses. We have lust and carnal desires, and against these we also need to fight a war. If we are clear on whom we are actually called to fight against, then we will not waste our time and energy on unnecessary wars. Paul said that we are not fighting against flesh and blood. Our fellow humans should not be our enemy, because we are fighting against the unseen power of darkness. However, we see in our fallen world, and even within the church, that we envy and hate each other, and we try to topple one another. In the end, there is no coming of the kingdom of God since we live in conflicts with each other. Hence, this story is important. It is not a remote story meant only for Jesus, with no relevance to us today.

Jesus, as the Son of God, was not exempted from this test. And what was the test? It was about how he viewed his divine sonship. Would he use it for himself, or would he submit himself in complete obedience to the Father? This test is also for us. We have resources in this world. Do we use these resources for our own pleasure? Or do we surrender them into the hand of God so these may be used by him? And of course, the most important resource in our life is our own life. Jesus surrendered his life instead of using it to enjoy the facilities of this world. Likewise, we are not brought here to Germany to enjoy its facilities. That is not the calling of our lives. The calling of Christians is to become a blessing to others, not to reap benefits from others.

We see in the life of Christ that when he was in the world, he could have used his power. When he was hungry, he could have turned stones into bread. But he did not use it, because obedience to God was far more important than using power and resources for his own advantage. Jesus is fully divine and fully human. As a human, he also had to choose whether to obey or not. Adam was also fully human, and he chose not to obey. That is the story of the fall. But in this story, we see that Jesus chose to obey his Father.

When we read this relatively short account from Mark, the highlight is the encounter with Satan. In Matthew and Luke, we can read all the three temptations, but these are not recorded here. Mark wants to stress that Satan is the power who seeks to ruin God’s reign in this world. Everything that is good from God will be turned upside down by Satan. That is why every time we pray for the kingdom of God to come and for revival, it is impossible that there is no spiritual war.

This war can take many forms. Perhaps our children become sick, and it takes up all our energy and time so that we no longer have the strength to do God’s work and fight against Satan. All the concerns and anxieties in our lives will strangle and choke us so that we will not grow in God. We may become discouraged by these spiritual attacks and begin to think that we should not be too ‘radical’ or overtly religious. Yet we read in 1 John 3:8b, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” It cannot be clearer than that. We, on our own, have no power to destroy the works of the devil. Only God is able to fight the war against the kingdom of evil.

We have spoken about the parallel between Adam and Christ. We can also observe the motif of forty in the wilderness here. In the Old Testament, the Israelites were in the wilderness for forty years (Deuteronomy 8). We see the parallel here, where Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days. Other examples of the motif of forty include Moses spending forty days and forty nights on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34) and Elijah traveling forty days and forty nights to Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19). So when the readers of Mark read this account, they can immediately connect it with the motif of forty found in the Old Testament.

The Israelites failed after forty years. They grumbled in the wilderness and were ungrateful for God’s providence. But Jesus endured his hunger for forty days, waiting until he was ministered to by the angels. We can see the contrast between the failure of the Israelites and the faithfulness of Jesus. Furthermore, we can draw a comparison with the story of Moses. Moses, of course, did not fail in the story. At Mount Sinai, he received the Ten Commandments. Here, Jesus himself is the Word of God. In the story of Elijah, he brought the Israelites out from their idols to the true God. Likewise, Jesus also challenged the people to return to the worship of the true God. This is why, in the temptation accounts in Luke and Matthew, Satan tempted Jesus to worship him.

Our life is also like being in the wilderness. And likewise, we are also tested. Either we, together with Jesus, worship God in our lives, or we fill our lives with all kinds of idols. We do not need to list all of these idols. We can examine ourselves. Anything that we love the most, instead of God, is our idol. It could be ourselves, our dreams, our comfortable lives, and so on. This does not mean that those things are necessarily wrong. But aren’t they often imprison us? We live in bondage because we want to serve those idols. Jesus came to liberate us from all these idols. Once again, we live our lives in this wilderness, and we are being tested. May we, together with Christ, overcome the temptations.

Lastly, we also read that Jesus was with the wild animals. There are several interpretations of this verse. One of the most popular interprets this as the initiation of the coming of the kingdom of God. If we read the Old Testament, for example in Isaiah 11, there is an eschatological vision where humans and wild animals live together peacefully. After the fall, the relationship between humans and animals was distorted, and they could no longer live in peace. But according to the Bible, in the beginning it was not so, and Christ is going to restore this, so that once again it will become a peaceable kingdom. He was with the wild animals, but he was not attacked. Hence, this marks the initiation of the coming of the kingdom in Jesus Christ.

There is also another interpretation that I find interesting. When Mark wrote this passage, he was living during the time of Emperor Nero. Nero was infamous for throwing Christians to the wild beasts. And Nero himself was like a wild beast. So when Mark wrote about the wilderness and the wild animals, he was, in a way, anticipating the life of Christians in the early church. They would be persecuted. They would suffer because of Christ. And some of them would face martyrdom.

So what is the good news? The good news is that Jesus was also there. The good news of Christianity is not that we will always be delivered from sufferings or difficulties. No, that is not the good news. The good news is that, despite all these experiences in the fallen world, we can still have a living relationship with Jesus Christ. When Jesus came into this world, he sanctified every aspect of human life. There is no part of human life that is untouched by him. If we feel lonely, Jesus was once left alone as well. If we have been betrayed, Jesus was also betrayed. Jesus was even a baby like us. He was helpless and had to depend on others, especially his parents. And even to the point of death, Jesus experienced it. So there is no part of our life that he has not visited.

Blessed are we if we know Christ, Christ who was tempted and Christ who was victorious over those temptations.