Luke 4:9-12

4 th. Luke 4:9-12.

Third Temptation.

This trial belongs to a higher sphere than that of physical or political life. It is of a purely religious character, and touches the deepest and most sacred relations of Jesus with His Father. The dignity of a son of God, with a view to which man was created, carries with it the free disposal of divine power, and of the motive forces of the universe. Does not God Himself say to His child: “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine”? (Luke 15:31). But in proportion as man is raised to this filial position, and gradually reaches divine fellowship, there arises out of this state an ever-increasing danger, that of abusing his great privilege, by changing, as an indiscreet inferior is tempted to do, this fellowship into familiarity. From this giddy height to which the grace of God has raised him, man falls, therefore, in an instant into the deepest abyss into a presumptuous use of God's gifts and abuse of His confidence. This pride is more unpardonable than that called in Scripture the pride of life. The abuse of God's help is a more serious offence than not waiting for it in faith (first temptation), or than regarding it as insufficient (second temptation).

The higher sphere to which this trial belongs is indicated by the scene of it the most sacred place, Jerusalem (the holy city, as Matthew says) and the temple. The term πτερύγιον τοῦ ἱεροῦ, translated pinnacle of the temple, might denote the anterior extremity of the line of meeting of two inclined planes, forming the roof of the sacred edifice. But in this case, ναοῦ would have been required rather than ἱεροῦ (see Luke 1:9). Probably, therefore, it is some part of the court that is meant, either Solomon's Porch, which was situated on the eastern side of the temple platform, and commanded the gorge of the Kedron, or the Royal Porch, built on the south side of this platform, and from which, as Josephus says, the eye looked down into an abyss. The word πτερύγιον would denote the coping of this peristyle. Such a position is a type of the sublime height to which Satan sees Jesus raised, and whence he would have Him cast Himself down into an abyss.

The idea of this incomparable spiritual elevation is expressed by these words: If thou art a Son of God. The Alex. rightly omit the art. before the word Son. For it is a question here of the filial character, and not of the personality of the Son. “If thou art a being to whom it appertains to call God thy Father in a unique sense, do not fear to do a daring deed, and give God an opportunity to show the particular care He takes of thee.” And as Satan had observed that Jesus had twice replied to him by the word of God, he tries in his turn to avail himself of this weapon. He applies here the promise (Psa 91:11-12) by an à fortiori argument: “If God has promised thus to keep the righteous, how much more His well-beloved Son!” The quotation agrees with the text of the LXX., with the exception of its omitting the words in all thy ways, which Matthew also omits; the latter omits, besides, the preceding words, to keep thee. It has been thought that this omission was made by Satan himself, who would suppress these words with a view to make the application of the passage more plausible, unduly generalizing the promise of the Psalm, which, according to the context, applies to the righteous only in so far as he walks in the ways of obedience. This is very subtle.

What was the real bearing of this temptation? With God, power is always employed in the service of goodness, of love; this is the difference between God and Satan, between divine miracle and diabolical sorcery. Now the devil in this instance aims at nothing less than making Jesus pass from one of these spheres to the other, and this in the name of that most sacred and tender element in the relationship between two beings that love each other confidence. If Jesus succumbs to the temptation by calling on the Almighty to deliver Him from a peril into which He has not been thrown in the service of goodness, He puts God in the position of either refusing His aid, and so separating His cause from His own a divorce between the Father and the Son or of setting free the exercise of His omnipotence, at least for a moment, from the control of holiness, a violation of His own nature. Either way, it would be all over with Jesus, and even, if we dare so speak, with God.

Jesus characterizes the impious nature of this suggestion as a tempting God, Luke 4:12. This term signifies putting God to the alternative either of acting in a way opposed to His plans or His nature, or of compromising the existence or safety of a person closely allied to Him. It is confidence carried to such presumption, as to become treason against the divine majesty. It has sometimes been thought that Satan wanted to induce Jesus to establish His kingdom by some miraculous demonstration, by some prodigy of personal display, which, accomplished in the view of a multitude of worshippers assembled in the temple, would have drawn to Him the homage of all Israel. But the narrative makes no allusion to any effect to be produced by this miracle. It is a question here of a whim rather than of a calculation, of divine force placed at the service of caprice rather than of a deliberate evil purpose.

For the third time, Jesus borrows the form of His reply from Scripture, and, which is remarkable, again from Deuteronomy (Luke 6:16). This book, which recorded the experience of Israel during the forty years' sojourn in the desert, had perhaps been the special subject of Jesus' meditations during His own sojourn in the wilderness. The plural, ye shall not tempt, in the O. T. is changed by Jesus into the singular thou shalt not tempt. Did this change proceed from a double meaning which Jesus designedly introduced into this passage? While applying it to Himself in His relation to God, He seems, in fact, to apply it at the same time to Satan in relation to Himself; as if He meant to say: Desist, therefore, now from tempting me, thy God.

Almost all interpreters at the present day disapprove the order followed by Luke, and prefer Matthew's, who makes this last temptation the second. It seems to me, that if the explanation we have just given is just, there can be no doubt that Luke's order is preferable. The man who is no longer man, the Christ who is no longer Christ, the Son who is no longer Son, such are the three degrees of the temptation. The second might appear the most exalted and dangerous to men who had grown up in the midst of the theocracy; and it is intelligible that the tradition found in the Jewish-Christian Churches, the type of which has been preserved in the first Gospel, should have made this peculiarly Messianic temptation (the second in Luke) the crowning effort of the conflict. But in reality it was not so; the true order historically, in a moral conflict, must be that which answers to the moral essence of things.