If you are the children of God
Commentary
Some stories from the Bible sound strange, disconnected from our lives and our frames of reference. When we read them, it seems as though we are reading someone else's mail. Our first lesson from the Book of Genesis features talking snakes and magic trees, and our Gospel speaks of the devil whom we often picture in red tights and sporting a goatee and whom we can easily dismiss.
Even Jesus' successful response to the temptations of the devil, impressive though they are, might lead us to applaud his stance, but how does the temptation of Jesus who was the Son of God connect to the temptations we mere humans face in our twentieth century lives?
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
The well-known story of Garden of Eden is truncated here in order to focus our attention on what has come to be called "original sin." It is not our intention to discuss what Augustine and others have done with this material, but rather we shall devote our attention to how each of us shares in the experience of Adam and Eve.
The three verses from chapter two include the divine prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the seven selected verses from chapter three tell of the refusal of Adam and Eve to heed the warning that the food would be hazardous to their health. Yet these ten verses cry out for some interpretation.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is introduced in verse 9 along with the tree of life. God placed the two trees in the garden, along with many other trees that were intended to provide food for Adam and even the ambience for dining ("pleasant to the sight and good for food").
Our pericope begins with the gift of fruitful labor that God bestows on Adam: working and protecting the soil. Then the Lord God handed Adam the menu: the fruit of every tree in the garden, excepting only the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eating from that forbidden tree will bring instant death. Perhaps before proceeding any further, we need to ask what is the meaning of this tree, especially the label "the knowledge of good and evil." Our first reaction, bred as we are on Greek thoughts and systems, is to regard knowledge as intellectual awareness. We are reading here, however, a story in Semitic thought, where knowledge is intimate experience. We need go only as far as 4:1 to see that the result of Adam's knowing Eve is pregnancy, and that is not a matter of intellect. Beyond the immediate reference, however, we have a virgin described several times as a woman "whom no man had known" (e.g., Genesis 24:16), and we are told that God spoke through Amos to Israel about his relationship in these terms: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth" (Amos 3:2). Surely God was intellectually aware of the existence of other nations. The point is that only with Israel did the Lord make a covenant that was nothing short of a marriage, so intimate and so responsible. In other words, when we say today, "He knew her in the biblical sense," we must remember to apply that understanding of knowledge to the Bible texts.
As for the "good and evil," the meaning would have to include moral decisions, but in all probability the meaning is more comprehensive. "Good and evil" means "everything," just as "heaven and earth" means the universe, and "men and women" means all the adults.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil would seem to represent, therefore, the experience of everything. That would mean absolute freedom, but that is not what God offered. God gave freedom galore to Adam (and then Eve), but that one prohibition separated the creatures from the Creator. That God gave freedom to the first couple is important to the story. He did not make them puppets to dangle from strings or robots to be controlled by a computer program. God made humans to be free, but not absolutely free.
Between our verses in chapter 2 and the ones in chapter 3 occurs that old rib trick in which God made woman to be the "help as his opposite" (literal translation of the Hebrew words), and so by the time we arrive at the picking caper in chapter three there are two humans. There also is, however, a serpent. Only in apocalyptic times did the serpent in the garden become identified as Satan or the devil, the source of all evil, the tempter. Here, however, the serpent is described as "crafty" but not evil. His role here is much like that of the serpent in the ancient Gilgamesh Epic, the one who ate the plant of life and thus deprived Gilgamesh of remaining eternally young.
What distinguishes this serpent from the snakes we have slithering around today is his ability to talk. His sly question to Eve causes her to explain to all readers thereafter that she knew the prohibition against eating the forbidden fruit and also its consequences: "you shall die." The serpent then contradicted the words of God and promised instead that they "will be like God, knowing good and evil." Eve streaked right down to the middle of the garden and munched away. Without pockets to take another piece back for her husband, she tossed him some, and he ate, too.
The result of their eating was immediately obvious: they became aware of their nakedness. Their shame became part of their new experience, getting in the way of their intimate knowledge of each other, and that was only the beginning of the results after they had opened Pandora's crate.
The first couple had had the opportunity to live their lives under the rule of God where they could have enjoyed a home, food, companionship, fruitful labor, and good health -- all in God's presence. Instead they opted for autonomy, that is, self-rule, and the bed they made for themselves looked like that of a teenager.
Romans 5:12-19
We do well to see the words of Paul in our pericope as completely consistent with what he has been writing since the beginning of the letter. In chapter 1 Paul indicated that the Gentiles are guilty of sin because of idolatry and that the consequences of that sin are many indeed. In chapter 2 he demonstrates that all Jews are guilty of sin because they had the law but failed to obey it. In chapter 3 he began to teach the doctrine of justification: "since all have sinned and keep falling short of the glory of God [translation mine]; they are now justified by his grace as a gift ..." (3:23-24). The universality of sin leads to the offer of universal justification. He will conclude his section on doctrine in a similar way: "For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all" (11:32).
At the beginning of chapter 5 Paul announced the gifts we have already received through Jesus Christ. "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God" (v. 1). Our present gifts are thus justification and peace with God. In verse 10 he announces another word to express the present gift: reconciliation. On the basis of these gifts already bestowed, Paul announces confidence in a future gift as well: "saved through him from the wrath of God" (v. 9).
All that leads us to Paul's understanding of sin and the role of Adam. Eve is omitted from the discussion because Paul wants to contrast the sin of one man (Adam) with the grace of God in one man (Christ). The omission of Eve in this argument is significant, however, in light of the later interpretations that blamed Eve for enticing her husband to eat the forbidden fruit, an accusation that has caused over the centuries of church history the judgment that women are the source of men's problems and should be sublimated, punished, avoided, and abused accordingly. No such interpretation of sin is possible here in Paul's discussion of sin or anywhere else in the New Testament. The argument against women, the attitudes regarding women, and the treatment of women are sufficient evidence for universality of human sinfulness. Surely women are not excluded from this universality of sin, but they are no more than equal partners with men both in sin and in grace.
Paul's point here is to indicate that sin started in Adam and death followed universally "because all have sinned," but against that seemingly hopeless condition "the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many" (v. 15). The contrast is spelled out in terms that would make any lawyer feel at home. The announcement from the judge because of the sinfulness that pervades us all is "condemnation," and the sentence is capital. But in spite of the guilt of us all, the announcement from the bench is the free gift of justification: acquittal with the ensuing benefits of freedom and life.
Imagery from the Old Testament helps Paul makes his concluding point: "so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous" (v. 19). The final words recall the benefit received from the vicarious suffering of Isaiah's servant: "The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities" (Isaiah 53:11). Interestingly, Paul cites the benefit by providing a different cause. It is not the death of Christ that Paul cites specifically here; it is his obedience, and that emphasis will pave the way for the day's Gospel. However, we should not make too much out of the omission of the cross in these paragraphs, because Paul could not speak of justification and the gift of righteousness without the crucifixion. The obedience which Paul attributes here to Christ is not his response to the devil in the temptation story but his willing death for the sake of us all.
Matthew 4:1-11
Matthew and Luke present a story of the temptation that is considerably different from Mark's. Indeed, Mark assigns a grand total of two verses to the temptation and relates nothing specific about the trials offered by Satan. Matthew and Luke seem to have been heirs to a tradition that lumped together all kinds of temptations Jesus might have faced during his life and ministry and assigned them to the devil.
In spite of the differences between Mark and the Q tradition of Matthew and Luke, all three synoptic gospels report the temptation immediately following Jesus' baptism. (Luke inserts not a story or an event but a genealogy that traces Jesus' lineage all the way back to Adam.) The close connection between baptism and the temptation is significant, especially in Matthew and Luke. At the baptism of Jesus the divine voice announced that Jesus was God's Son. The major issue in the temptations by the devil is precisely that identity.
The Spirit "led" Jesus into the wilderness "to be tempted by the devil." The temptations that follow, therefore, have a divine purpose behind them. The mention of the wilderness along with the number forty recalls the experience of the people of Israel, whom the Lord delivered from Egypt and brought into the wilderness where they remained for forty years. In that wilderness they experienced the loving care of the Lord, who provided food and water and protection from enemies. At the same time the Lord "has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments" (Deuteronomy 8:2). As God led Israel in the wilderness to test them, so the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
The first two temptations focus on the identity Jesus had just been given at his baptism. "If you are the Son of God," the devil begins. The first proof of his divine sonship can be demonstrated by making lunch out of the stones. In response Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3, indicating that though he is hungry, one lives not by bread alone but by the word of the Lord. The second proof of his identity is to throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple, and this time the devil quotes Scripture, Psalm 91:11-12, to prove the promise that God will send guardian angels to prevent him from crashing on the rocks below. Jesus responds by citing the prohibition against testing the Lord. That same temptation Jesus will face again, for the words, "If you are the son of God," will be shouted by mockers at the foot of the cross, challenging him to prove his identity by coming down off the cross (27:40).
The third temptation lies in the devil's offer to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world simply by worshiping him. Such devotion would also have been a denial of his identity as God's Son, and so Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:13 where exclusive worship of the Lord is commanded. With that final response from Jesus, the devil left, and the angels came to minister to him.
As the three temptations develop, it is interesting to observe how the elevation increases. The first occurred in the wilderness, apparently somewhere near the Jordan River. The second took place at the temple, some 900 feet above sea level. For the third temptation the devil took Jesus "to a very high mountain." The mountain in mind is probably not part of Israel's topography but the mythic mountain that stretched from earth all the way to heaven. (Recall last Sunday's discussion of "the mountain.") Only from that height could one see "all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor." The devil could not have gone any higher without trespassing into the heavens where God lived and ruled.
No matter what the elevation, Jesus did not fall for the devil's temptation to prove who he was. Those opportunities would have occurred many times in his life. He could have saved himself much grief and even his own life by proving his identity, but he would have lost the purpose for which he was sent if he had followed his own agenda rather than that of the Father. Perhaps as preachers we need to think of what the world or the church would have lost if Jesus felt the need to prove his identity. Above all, we would have lost the necessity for faith. Each generation would need to watch Jesus perform one stunt after another, each one demanding something more spectacular than the last, and faith would be useless. Trust would have no meaning. Love would cease to drive people together. And hope would abide only in the things we can see.
How does Jesus' response to temptation relate to us? First, and this is Paul's point in the second lesson, his obedience stands against the disobedience of Adam (and Eve), and in so swimming against the universal tide, Jesus takes the dominion away from death and places us under the dominion of God. Second, that the temptations to deny his identity come fast on the heels of his baptism leads us to focus on the identity we have as God's children and on the temptations facing us daily to deny that relationship in favor of something more popular and less demanding. Because Jesus was faithful and obedient to who he was and because we are baptized into his death so that we might rise with him, we can strive to follow his example in sending the devil away. When we can't, we can be assured that his faithfulness is the source of our justification, and that courtly pronouncement sets us free once more to be whose we are.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeiier
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
The first thing we should realize about our texts from Genesis is that they are intended as depictions of our life with God. The Hebrew word for "Adam" means "humankind," and the writer of Genesis 2-3 is telling us that this is our story, that this is the way we all have walked with our Lord.
Thus we learn from Genesis 2 that while we were created in the most intimate fashion by God and given his breath of life that fills our lungs in their regular pumping (v. 7), God nevertheless set limits on our existence. And those limits are symbolized by that tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden that God planted for Adam (vv. 8, 16, 17). The fact that God forbids us to eat of that tree does not mean that he forbids us to pursue scientific knowledge or even to go to the moon. Rather, the tree stands for the fact that we are not gods and goddesses, that we cannot construct our own right and wrong, that we cannot run our own lives and plan our own futures, but rather that we are dependent on God for knowing good and evil and for our ultimate destiny. We are not the masters of our own fate and the captains of our own souls, no matter how much our society would like us to be autonomous, self-governing individuals. No. We are creatures, wondrously fashioned in love by our Creator, and dependent on him for the continuance and direction and goal of our living. And if we try to live apart from that dependence, God tells us, we will surely die (v. 17).
The story of us all that we find in 3:1-7, then, is the portrayal of our attempts to shake our relationship and dependence on our Creator -- in short, to run our own lives and to be our own deities.
The serpent in these verses is not intended to be the figure of Satan. He has been created by the Lord, and his only distinguishing characteristic is that he is more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God has made (v. 1). He actually is just a character that the writer of this tenth century B.C. text uses to tell the story of all human beings.
The serpent engages the woman in what Dietrich Bonhoeffer has called the first conversation about God. That is, the serpent leads the woman to step outside of her intimate relation with her Maker and to discuss God as an object -- always a disastrous step. And what the serpent does in that conversation is to set three temptations before the woman.
First, the serpent tempts the woman to think that God is not good (v. 1), that he won't give the woman what she desires and what will be good for her (cf. v. 6). But like all of us pious folk, the woman is very zealous to defend God, and so she replies that she and her husband may eat of any tree except that in the midst of the garden, "Neither shall you touch it, lest you die" (v. 3). The Lord never said not to touch the tree, of course. And so a little self-will has entered the picture. The woman has begun setting up her own tiny rules. The door is open just a crack, and the serpent sees his opportunity.
The serpent therefore tempts the woman to believe that God is not serious. "You will not die" (v. 4). God is not really serious about his commandments -- all of those instructions that he has given us in his love. "You shall not kill, or commit adultery; you shall not steal or bear false witness; you shall not covet." "Love your neighbor as yourself." "Take up your cross and follow me." Nah. God is not serious about all those commandments. We won't suffer any punishment or evil circumstances if we ignore what God has said. His threat is just a bunch of bluff.
The third temptation, then, is to believe that God is jealous, that he cannot stand to have someone challenge his authority and status. "God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (v. 5).
There follow, therefore, two telling accounts of our sin against God in verse 6. The woman sees that the fruit is good for food, and that it is a delight to the eyes, and that it is desired to make one wise. In other words, eating the fruit looks like the right thing to do at the time! And that is the way it is with our sin, isn't it? It looks like the right thing to do! There are very few of us who set out deliberately to do something wrong -- at least never very often. We want to be good people. We want to live Christian lives. And some action looks like the good and right thing to do in some situation. It looks like the "loving" thing to do, like the "compassionate" act to take. And so we do what we think is proper. The only difficulty is that it goes against the command of God, as Eve's action goes against God's specific Word. And so we fall into sin, trying to do the "right thing" by following our own desires or wisdom.
But Adam's action in this story is typical of our sinfulness too. "And she gave to her husband, and he ate." In other words, he just goes along, as we just go along and fall into the sin of complicity. Someone makes a racial slur, and we just stand there and don't say a word. We just go along.
The result of our failure to heed God's commandments and to follow his will for our lives results in the distortion and corruption of every one of the good gifts that God has given us in his good creation. And that is illustrated by verse 7 of our text. The man and the woman in this story, who stand for you and me, were created as mutual helpers for one another, to be joined together in the joyful oneness of matrimonial love (3:18, 23-25). But when they break God's commandments and try to go it on their own and to be their own god and goddess, that good gift of marital one flesh is disrupted (v. 7). Suddenly there is a split between them, and the man's ego stands over against the woman's ego, and they are ashamed in their nakedness. And that mirrors the terrible battle and disharmony of the sexes that we know so well in our culture.
But what a pathetic ending is given to our text (v. 7). This man and woman -- you and me -- have wanted to be their own masters of their lives, shaping their own course, and deciding on their own what are right and wrong. They have wanted to be glorious creatures, replacing the glorious God and making him unnecessary. Instead, they must sew fig leaves together to hide their own nakedness from one another. There we are, in all of our glory and misery, wanting to be like God, and turning out to be pathetic and unclothed trespassers instead. It is a telling portrayal of our lives as sinful human beings.
Even Jesus' successful response to the temptations of the devil, impressive though they are, might lead us to applaud his stance, but how does the temptation of Jesus who was the Son of God connect to the temptations we mere humans face in our twentieth century lives?
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
The well-known story of Garden of Eden is truncated here in order to focus our attention on what has come to be called "original sin." It is not our intention to discuss what Augustine and others have done with this material, but rather we shall devote our attention to how each of us shares in the experience of Adam and Eve.
The three verses from chapter two include the divine prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the seven selected verses from chapter three tell of the refusal of Adam and Eve to heed the warning that the food would be hazardous to their health. Yet these ten verses cry out for some interpretation.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is introduced in verse 9 along with the tree of life. God placed the two trees in the garden, along with many other trees that were intended to provide food for Adam and even the ambience for dining ("pleasant to the sight and good for food").
Our pericope begins with the gift of fruitful labor that God bestows on Adam: working and protecting the soil. Then the Lord God handed Adam the menu: the fruit of every tree in the garden, excepting only the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eating from that forbidden tree will bring instant death. Perhaps before proceeding any further, we need to ask what is the meaning of this tree, especially the label "the knowledge of good and evil." Our first reaction, bred as we are on Greek thoughts and systems, is to regard knowledge as intellectual awareness. We are reading here, however, a story in Semitic thought, where knowledge is intimate experience. We need go only as far as 4:1 to see that the result of Adam's knowing Eve is pregnancy, and that is not a matter of intellect. Beyond the immediate reference, however, we have a virgin described several times as a woman "whom no man had known" (e.g., Genesis 24:16), and we are told that God spoke through Amos to Israel about his relationship in these terms: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth" (Amos 3:2). Surely God was intellectually aware of the existence of other nations. The point is that only with Israel did the Lord make a covenant that was nothing short of a marriage, so intimate and so responsible. In other words, when we say today, "He knew her in the biblical sense," we must remember to apply that understanding of knowledge to the Bible texts.
As for the "good and evil," the meaning would have to include moral decisions, but in all probability the meaning is more comprehensive. "Good and evil" means "everything," just as "heaven and earth" means the universe, and "men and women" means all the adults.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil would seem to represent, therefore, the experience of everything. That would mean absolute freedom, but that is not what God offered. God gave freedom galore to Adam (and then Eve), but that one prohibition separated the creatures from the Creator. That God gave freedom to the first couple is important to the story. He did not make them puppets to dangle from strings or robots to be controlled by a computer program. God made humans to be free, but not absolutely free.
Between our verses in chapter 2 and the ones in chapter 3 occurs that old rib trick in which God made woman to be the "help as his opposite" (literal translation of the Hebrew words), and so by the time we arrive at the picking caper in chapter three there are two humans. There also is, however, a serpent. Only in apocalyptic times did the serpent in the garden become identified as Satan or the devil, the source of all evil, the tempter. Here, however, the serpent is described as "crafty" but not evil. His role here is much like that of the serpent in the ancient Gilgamesh Epic, the one who ate the plant of life and thus deprived Gilgamesh of remaining eternally young.
What distinguishes this serpent from the snakes we have slithering around today is his ability to talk. His sly question to Eve causes her to explain to all readers thereafter that she knew the prohibition against eating the forbidden fruit and also its consequences: "you shall die." The serpent then contradicted the words of God and promised instead that they "will be like God, knowing good and evil." Eve streaked right down to the middle of the garden and munched away. Without pockets to take another piece back for her husband, she tossed him some, and he ate, too.
The result of their eating was immediately obvious: they became aware of their nakedness. Their shame became part of their new experience, getting in the way of their intimate knowledge of each other, and that was only the beginning of the results after they had opened Pandora's crate.
The first couple had had the opportunity to live their lives under the rule of God where they could have enjoyed a home, food, companionship, fruitful labor, and good health -- all in God's presence. Instead they opted for autonomy, that is, self-rule, and the bed they made for themselves looked like that of a teenager.
Romans 5:12-19
We do well to see the words of Paul in our pericope as completely consistent with what he has been writing since the beginning of the letter. In chapter 1 Paul indicated that the Gentiles are guilty of sin because of idolatry and that the consequences of that sin are many indeed. In chapter 2 he demonstrates that all Jews are guilty of sin because they had the law but failed to obey it. In chapter 3 he began to teach the doctrine of justification: "since all have sinned and keep falling short of the glory of God [translation mine]; they are now justified by his grace as a gift ..." (3:23-24). The universality of sin leads to the offer of universal justification. He will conclude his section on doctrine in a similar way: "For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all" (11:32).
At the beginning of chapter 5 Paul announced the gifts we have already received through Jesus Christ. "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God" (v. 1). Our present gifts are thus justification and peace with God. In verse 10 he announces another word to express the present gift: reconciliation. On the basis of these gifts already bestowed, Paul announces confidence in a future gift as well: "saved through him from the wrath of God" (v. 9).
All that leads us to Paul's understanding of sin and the role of Adam. Eve is omitted from the discussion because Paul wants to contrast the sin of one man (Adam) with the grace of God in one man (Christ). The omission of Eve in this argument is significant, however, in light of the later interpretations that blamed Eve for enticing her husband to eat the forbidden fruit, an accusation that has caused over the centuries of church history the judgment that women are the source of men's problems and should be sublimated, punished, avoided, and abused accordingly. No such interpretation of sin is possible here in Paul's discussion of sin or anywhere else in the New Testament. The argument against women, the attitudes regarding women, and the treatment of women are sufficient evidence for universality of human sinfulness. Surely women are not excluded from this universality of sin, but they are no more than equal partners with men both in sin and in grace.
Paul's point here is to indicate that sin started in Adam and death followed universally "because all have sinned," but against that seemingly hopeless condition "the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many" (v. 15). The contrast is spelled out in terms that would make any lawyer feel at home. The announcement from the judge because of the sinfulness that pervades us all is "condemnation," and the sentence is capital. But in spite of the guilt of us all, the announcement from the bench is the free gift of justification: acquittal with the ensuing benefits of freedom and life.
Imagery from the Old Testament helps Paul makes his concluding point: "so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous" (v. 19). The final words recall the benefit received from the vicarious suffering of Isaiah's servant: "The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities" (Isaiah 53:11). Interestingly, Paul cites the benefit by providing a different cause. It is not the death of Christ that Paul cites specifically here; it is his obedience, and that emphasis will pave the way for the day's Gospel. However, we should not make too much out of the omission of the cross in these paragraphs, because Paul could not speak of justification and the gift of righteousness without the crucifixion. The obedience which Paul attributes here to Christ is not his response to the devil in the temptation story but his willing death for the sake of us all.
Matthew 4:1-11
Matthew and Luke present a story of the temptation that is considerably different from Mark's. Indeed, Mark assigns a grand total of two verses to the temptation and relates nothing specific about the trials offered by Satan. Matthew and Luke seem to have been heirs to a tradition that lumped together all kinds of temptations Jesus might have faced during his life and ministry and assigned them to the devil.
In spite of the differences between Mark and the Q tradition of Matthew and Luke, all three synoptic gospels report the temptation immediately following Jesus' baptism. (Luke inserts not a story or an event but a genealogy that traces Jesus' lineage all the way back to Adam.) The close connection between baptism and the temptation is significant, especially in Matthew and Luke. At the baptism of Jesus the divine voice announced that Jesus was God's Son. The major issue in the temptations by the devil is precisely that identity.
The Spirit "led" Jesus into the wilderness "to be tempted by the devil." The temptations that follow, therefore, have a divine purpose behind them. The mention of the wilderness along with the number forty recalls the experience of the people of Israel, whom the Lord delivered from Egypt and brought into the wilderness where they remained for forty years. In that wilderness they experienced the loving care of the Lord, who provided food and water and protection from enemies. At the same time the Lord "has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments" (Deuteronomy 8:2). As God led Israel in the wilderness to test them, so the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
The first two temptations focus on the identity Jesus had just been given at his baptism. "If you are the Son of God," the devil begins. The first proof of his divine sonship can be demonstrated by making lunch out of the stones. In response Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3, indicating that though he is hungry, one lives not by bread alone but by the word of the Lord. The second proof of his identity is to throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple, and this time the devil quotes Scripture, Psalm 91:11-12, to prove the promise that God will send guardian angels to prevent him from crashing on the rocks below. Jesus responds by citing the prohibition against testing the Lord. That same temptation Jesus will face again, for the words, "If you are the son of God," will be shouted by mockers at the foot of the cross, challenging him to prove his identity by coming down off the cross (27:40).
The third temptation lies in the devil's offer to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world simply by worshiping him. Such devotion would also have been a denial of his identity as God's Son, and so Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:13 where exclusive worship of the Lord is commanded. With that final response from Jesus, the devil left, and the angels came to minister to him.
As the three temptations develop, it is interesting to observe how the elevation increases. The first occurred in the wilderness, apparently somewhere near the Jordan River. The second took place at the temple, some 900 feet above sea level. For the third temptation the devil took Jesus "to a very high mountain." The mountain in mind is probably not part of Israel's topography but the mythic mountain that stretched from earth all the way to heaven. (Recall last Sunday's discussion of "the mountain.") Only from that height could one see "all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor." The devil could not have gone any higher without trespassing into the heavens where God lived and ruled.
No matter what the elevation, Jesus did not fall for the devil's temptation to prove who he was. Those opportunities would have occurred many times in his life. He could have saved himself much grief and even his own life by proving his identity, but he would have lost the purpose for which he was sent if he had followed his own agenda rather than that of the Father. Perhaps as preachers we need to think of what the world or the church would have lost if Jesus felt the need to prove his identity. Above all, we would have lost the necessity for faith. Each generation would need to watch Jesus perform one stunt after another, each one demanding something more spectacular than the last, and faith would be useless. Trust would have no meaning. Love would cease to drive people together. And hope would abide only in the things we can see.
How does Jesus' response to temptation relate to us? First, and this is Paul's point in the second lesson, his obedience stands against the disobedience of Adam (and Eve), and in so swimming against the universal tide, Jesus takes the dominion away from death and places us under the dominion of God. Second, that the temptations to deny his identity come fast on the heels of his baptism leads us to focus on the identity we have as God's children and on the temptations facing us daily to deny that relationship in favor of something more popular and less demanding. Because Jesus was faithful and obedient to who he was and because we are baptized into his death so that we might rise with him, we can strive to follow his example in sending the devil away. When we can't, we can be assured that his faithfulness is the source of our justification, and that courtly pronouncement sets us free once more to be whose we are.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeiier
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
The first thing we should realize about our texts from Genesis is that they are intended as depictions of our life with God. The Hebrew word for "Adam" means "humankind," and the writer of Genesis 2-3 is telling us that this is our story, that this is the way we all have walked with our Lord.
Thus we learn from Genesis 2 that while we were created in the most intimate fashion by God and given his breath of life that fills our lungs in their regular pumping (v. 7), God nevertheless set limits on our existence. And those limits are symbolized by that tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden that God planted for Adam (vv. 8, 16, 17). The fact that God forbids us to eat of that tree does not mean that he forbids us to pursue scientific knowledge or even to go to the moon. Rather, the tree stands for the fact that we are not gods and goddesses, that we cannot construct our own right and wrong, that we cannot run our own lives and plan our own futures, but rather that we are dependent on God for knowing good and evil and for our ultimate destiny. We are not the masters of our own fate and the captains of our own souls, no matter how much our society would like us to be autonomous, self-governing individuals. No. We are creatures, wondrously fashioned in love by our Creator, and dependent on him for the continuance and direction and goal of our living. And if we try to live apart from that dependence, God tells us, we will surely die (v. 17).
The story of us all that we find in 3:1-7, then, is the portrayal of our attempts to shake our relationship and dependence on our Creator -- in short, to run our own lives and to be our own deities.
The serpent in these verses is not intended to be the figure of Satan. He has been created by the Lord, and his only distinguishing characteristic is that he is more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God has made (v. 1). He actually is just a character that the writer of this tenth century B.C. text uses to tell the story of all human beings.
The serpent engages the woman in what Dietrich Bonhoeffer has called the first conversation about God. That is, the serpent leads the woman to step outside of her intimate relation with her Maker and to discuss God as an object -- always a disastrous step. And what the serpent does in that conversation is to set three temptations before the woman.
First, the serpent tempts the woman to think that God is not good (v. 1), that he won't give the woman what she desires and what will be good for her (cf. v. 6). But like all of us pious folk, the woman is very zealous to defend God, and so she replies that she and her husband may eat of any tree except that in the midst of the garden, "Neither shall you touch it, lest you die" (v. 3). The Lord never said not to touch the tree, of course. And so a little self-will has entered the picture. The woman has begun setting up her own tiny rules. The door is open just a crack, and the serpent sees his opportunity.
The serpent therefore tempts the woman to believe that God is not serious. "You will not die" (v. 4). God is not really serious about his commandments -- all of those instructions that he has given us in his love. "You shall not kill, or commit adultery; you shall not steal or bear false witness; you shall not covet." "Love your neighbor as yourself." "Take up your cross and follow me." Nah. God is not serious about all those commandments. We won't suffer any punishment or evil circumstances if we ignore what God has said. His threat is just a bunch of bluff.
The third temptation, then, is to believe that God is jealous, that he cannot stand to have someone challenge his authority and status. "God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (v. 5).
There follow, therefore, two telling accounts of our sin against God in verse 6. The woman sees that the fruit is good for food, and that it is a delight to the eyes, and that it is desired to make one wise. In other words, eating the fruit looks like the right thing to do at the time! And that is the way it is with our sin, isn't it? It looks like the right thing to do! There are very few of us who set out deliberately to do something wrong -- at least never very often. We want to be good people. We want to live Christian lives. And some action looks like the good and right thing to do in some situation. It looks like the "loving" thing to do, like the "compassionate" act to take. And so we do what we think is proper. The only difficulty is that it goes against the command of God, as Eve's action goes against God's specific Word. And so we fall into sin, trying to do the "right thing" by following our own desires or wisdom.
But Adam's action in this story is typical of our sinfulness too. "And she gave to her husband, and he ate." In other words, he just goes along, as we just go along and fall into the sin of complicity. Someone makes a racial slur, and we just stand there and don't say a word. We just go along.
The result of our failure to heed God's commandments and to follow his will for our lives results in the distortion and corruption of every one of the good gifts that God has given us in his good creation. And that is illustrated by verse 7 of our text. The man and the woman in this story, who stand for you and me, were created as mutual helpers for one another, to be joined together in the joyful oneness of matrimonial love (3:18, 23-25). But when they break God's commandments and try to go it on their own and to be their own god and goddess, that good gift of marital one flesh is disrupted (v. 7). Suddenly there is a split between them, and the man's ego stands over against the woman's ego, and they are ashamed in their nakedness. And that mirrors the terrible battle and disharmony of the sexes that we know so well in our culture.
But what a pathetic ending is given to our text (v. 7). This man and woman -- you and me -- have wanted to be their own masters of their lives, shaping their own course, and deciding on their own what are right and wrong. They have wanted to be glorious creatures, replacing the glorious God and making him unnecessary. Instead, they must sew fig leaves together to hide their own nakedness from one another. There we are, in all of our glory and misery, wanting to be like God, and turning out to be pathetic and unclothed trespassers instead. It is a telling portrayal of our lives as sinful human beings.
