Matthew 4 - Introduction

CHAPTER 4.

THE TEMPTATION, AND THE BEGINNING OF THE GALILEAN MINISTRY.

It is in every way credible that the baptism of Jesus with its connected incidents should be followed by a season of moral trial, or, to express it more generally, by a period of retirement for earnest thought on the future career so solemnly inaugurated. Retirement for prayer and meditation was a habit with Jesus, and it was never more likely to be put in practice than now. He had left home under a powerful impulse with the Jordan and baptism in view. The baptism was a decisive act. Whatever more it might mean, it meant farewell to the past life of obscurity and consecration to a new, high, unique vocation. It remained now to realise by reflection what this calling, to which He had been set apart by John and by heavenly omens, involved in idea, execution, and experience. It was a large, deep, difficult subject of study. Under powerful spiritual constraints Jesus had taken a great leap in the dark, if one may dare to say so. What wonder if, in the season of reflection, temptations arose to doubt, shrinking, regret, strong inclination to look back and return to Nazareth?

In this experience Jesus was alone inwardly as well as outwardly. No clear, adequate account could be given of it. It could only be faintly shadowed forth in symbol or in parable. One can understand how in one Gospel (Mk.) no attempt is made to describe the Temptation, but the fact is simply stated. And it is much more important to grasp the fact as a great reality in Christ's inner experience than to maintain anxiously the literal truth of the representation in Matt. and Luke. In the fight of faith and unbelief over the supernatural element in the story all sense of the inward psychological reality may be lost, and nothing remain but an external, miraculous, theatrical transaction which utterly fails to impress the lesson that Jesus was veritably tempted as we are, severely and for a length of time, before the opening of His public career, in a representative manner anticipating the experiences of later date. All attempts to dispose summarily of the whole matter by reference to similar temptation legends in the case of other religious initiators like Buddha are to be deprecated. Nor should one readily take up with the theory that the detailed account of the Temptation in Matt. and Luke is simply a composition suggested by O. T. parallels or by reflection on the critical points in Christ's subsequent history. (So Holtzmann in H. C.) We should rather regard it as having its ultimate source in an attempt by Jesus to convey to His disciples some faint idea of what He had gone through.