Refusing the easy way

No doubt, entering the season of Lent will have provided you with the opportunity to reflect on the significance of the temptations of Jesus as he fasted in the wilderness.  Luke tells us that Jesus was tempted over the 40 days, while Matthew presents the temptations as coming at the end of his period of fasting. Both record the same temptations, and the responses that Jesus gave to them.  Both of the gospels record that it was the Holy Spirit that led Jesus into the wilderness, with Matthew telling us that the purpose he was so led was so that he could be tempted or tested by the devil.

I have found myself pondering on the significance that this experience had followed the moment where Jesus had been baptised and when God the Father had declared Jesus to be his Son.  We know almost nothing of the life of Jesus during childhood and early adulthood. Drawing on Scripture, early Christians defined Jesus as being both fully human and fully God. Luke’s account of the 12 year old Jesus suggests some awareness of his nature, but we also get a clear suggestion of the development of the human aspect of his unique nature.  We know that he had to learn obedience, and would have shared in the religious life of his family, and probably the family business. Prior to his baptism, could any self-awareness have not been fully formed?

We are also left to wonder exactly what was the significance of the Holy Spirit coming upon him at his baptism.  How much, I wonder, did those weeks in the wilderness have to do with deepening his understanding of who he was and what was his mission.  Jesus had to be fully human in order to die on the cross and to become the atoning sacrifice that John the Baptist suggested when he described Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.  

As fully divine he was able to rise from the dead as victor over sin and death. As fully human, he was vulnerable to temptations to use his power to satisfy his hunger, to act in a superior way,, or to take an easy route to reigning over human affairs.  His faithful resistance in the wilderness finds an echo in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the endurance of the cross.

It seems to me probable that there were costs that Jesus willingly paid throughout his earthly ministry, and the trials in the wilderness as that ministry began were just part of price of being our Saviour.  What a contrast to our own commitment and all too prevalent easy believism that characterises far too much of western Christian life today.

Doreen and I have been reading through 1 and 2 Samuel recently and I was struck by the account of David refusing a generous gift of land and materials for a sacrifice (see 2 Samuel 24: 18-25).  Gad, a prophet, had shown Davis he was to build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.  But when Araunah discovers why David had come to him, he offered to supply oxem and timber for the offering.  David responds, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”  He declined the east way.

It is not a sacrifice if it has cost us nothing.  Far from an irrelevant thought as we enter Lent which might bring a challenge of self-denial.  Paul reminds us that in the light of all that Jesus endured for us, we should surrender our bodies to be a living sacrifice to God as an act of worship.  Two hundred and fifty years ago, Frances Ridley Havergal sets out the price of true surrender of our lives to God in following Jesus:

Take my life, and let it be

Consecrated Lord, to Thee.

Take my moments and my days.

Let them flow in ceaseless praise.

Take my love. My Lord, I pour

At They feet its treasure store.

Take myself, and I will be

Ever, only, all for Thee.

That’s deliberately refusing the easy way.

Dear God, help me to show that I am serious in worshipping you and to resist the temptation to take the easy path, rather than the path you have set for my feet.  Amen.

Barry Osborne 10th March 2019.