Temptation to Slander by the Slanderer: Thoughts on Lent 1

Still wet from His baptism by John in the Jordan, with the word of His Father still ringing in His ears, Jesus is led by the Spirit, the same Spirit that descended upon Him when He came up from the water, into the desert to be tempted by the devil.

The word devil (διάβολος) means slanderer. It's instructive that the evil one is described as a slanderer. It tells us how he works. What he seeks to do. What his endgame is. Slander is the utterance of false statements or reports about a person, or malicious misrepresentations of his actions, in order to defame or injure him (OED). Slander is false speech that ruins the reputation and good name of others. Slander makes the tongue one of the strongest and most lethal weapons. I gives the tongue ability to inflict damage upon the reputation, and thus upon the credibility of everything that is subsequently said and done.

Thus, the devil slanders God. He speaks falsely, challenging God's reputation, His good name, and thereby His Word, His promises, and His works. For when reputation is defamed so also is everything that the slandered says and does. And so it is that the temptation the devil uses against us is to slander God so that we don't trust Him: His Word, His promises, His works.

It is one of his primary tactics from the beginning: "Did God really say . . . ?" "Surely, you won't die." "If you are the Son of God . . . ." The devil challenges the Word and Work of the Father at Jesus' baptism. He seeks to defame God's good name and reputation as the one who is love and does everything out of that love. He uses the tongue to damage God's credibility. He calls into question what is said and done by the Lord. He wants Jesus to doubt and act on that doubt. The only way to fight it is to use the same weapon, to use the tongue, with God's Word and Work firmly placed upon it to put the devil in his place. To counter the false report, the malicious misrepresentation with the truth found in God's Word, His promises, and His works.

He does the same to us but in a different way. He slanders God by questioning whether we are God's children not by getting us to do something but based upon what we have already done or left undone. He slanders God by showing us that we have slandered God in our thoughts, words, and deeds. He shows us that our sin, our rebellion slanders what God has said about us, the way that the Prodigal Son slanders his father when he asks for his inheritance. The devil tempts us by showing us that we are part of the problem. That we, too, are slanderers, not just him. He says: "If you are a son of God, why do you not honor your father and mother?" "If you are a son of God, why do you have so much lust and greed and envy? Why do you speak ill of your neighbors? Why do you grumble about having to come to church to meet God and receive His gifts of eternal life? The devil points out that because of our sin, we slander God's good name and reputation. We call Him a liar with our deeds, with the way we treat one another. Is not all sin a defamation of His Name? The very Name He placed upon us in Holy Baptism? Is not all sin a disparagement of His Word and Work?

The devil is real. But he likes to hide behind us, using us like human shields or as suicide bombers. He's real but he's also a coward. He's on the retreat. He's lost. The battle is over. The Victory is won. This is his last ditch attempt, out of desperation with no hope of success. And it's a good thing we undergo this temptation. It's a good thing we endure the fight. "For where there is no enemy, there is no fighting; where there is no fighting, there also is no victory; where there is no victory, there also is no crown" (Gerhard, Postilla, I:222). If we endure no fighting, no temptation, then we have no enemy. That means that we have already lost and are on the wrong side.

But we endure temptation. We do fight. We have an enemy. It is the devil, the world, and our sinful nature. We know who we're fighting against. And we know that we've already won because Christ is risen. He has fought in our stead. And He is victorious. He holds the keys to death and the grave. He has the Words of eternal life. He is the bread of God's Word that came down from heaven, so that when we eat of Him we have forgiveness of sin, life, and salvation. And with this bread, this Word, on our tongues, we confess the truth, we sing His praise. For in Him we, too, are victorious. In Him, We have an imperishable crown.

Thoughts on Lent 1 and Temptation

A question of identity, a confusion of desires, a challenge to our future: these are what makes temptation so strong. It is what our Lord endured and conquered for us.

Temptation begins with a question of identity: "If you are the Son of God . . . ." Another way to say this is: "If God is really your Father . . . ." The evil one, the world, our sinful nature seek to mislead us into thinking, believing that God is not our Father--1) that he will not provide for us (first temptation); 2) that he won't protect us, that he won't keep us safe, and healthy, that he won't allay our fears (second temptation; Psalm 91); and 3) that there's another way to the same result, to argue that the end justifies the means, to live by sight and not by trust, to be an individual, to go your own way, to rebel, to reject God as Father and not be Son.

And the reason temptation is so powerful is because it confuses our desires, it disorders them. God created our desires for bread, for sex, for security and health, etc. There is a proper use of them. We may not live by bread alone, but we do live by bread. We are tempted to what appears to our natural desire by what is good (seeing that it was pleasant to the eye and good for food). And so in temptation, when our desires kick in for what is good, we abstract the desire, seeing the good in it, thinking that God created us to desire these things, and he wouldn't want me to despise his gifts, it suddenly seems all the more reasonable to indulge.

It's reasonable because we justify it as a gift from God (which is only half true). And since it is from God, or it is natural, or some other similar justification, we become convinced by the future that the world, the devil, and our sinful nature hold out to us: "You will surely not die" and "You will be like God knowing good and evil." And if we become our own gods, if we're our own masters, knowing good from evil, we are authors of our future, a new reality of what will happen.

I think that the one temptation we most struggle with is also the one that is least understood and the most overlooked. It's the second one. Who would be tempted by the challenge to cast yourself down from the temple mount? Psalm 91 is about God's protection and man's fear, "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty . . . You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday" (Ps. 91:1, 5-6). That despite what it may look like, God is with him in times of trouble, and will vindicate his trust.

This temptation is another assault on God as Father and Jesus as Son. What son doesn't want to know the love and acceptance and protection of his father? For Father's not only provide by giving bread, they protect from threat and fighting for them. It is a twisting of our desire to know beyond doubt, to see and to feel that our father loves us, will protect and fight for us.

And so we look for signs of the Father's love in our own life. We point to our blessings as badges of his love and acceptance, but the crosses we avoid. Are we any different than the health, wealth, and prosperity Gospel preachers? We want to find assurance in things we can measure. We try to bargain with God that "if he keeps us safe, we'll do x, y, and z." And so when our ultimate goal becomes security and protection, God becomes a means to that end. And so we test him to see if he's able to serve us in our worship of our real god--the desire to be protected and loved, the desire for that sense that everything will be alright.

The sinful world, our own sin, and the evil one work to give us a bad conscience. They work tirelessly to make us see only the evil, the gunk, the grime, the crap in our own lives and in the world. The temptations call us away from looking at the Father in order to look at ourselves.

Jesus didn't cast himself down from the temple mount because he didn't come to protect himself. He came for us.

Perhaps this is over analyzing, overly psychological. But what do you think? How does this second temptation come home to roost in your own lives? In the pastor's life, the church's life, the family's?