Gospel of Matthew: Being Tempted Through Our Gifts

Matthew 4:1-11

I'm always struck by the fact that after baptism, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested. Mark uses the word "drove" which is what always comes to my mind, but Matthew, interestingly, says led. I like the idea that Jesus is obediently following step-by-step the big plan of what God has in mind.

It only recently occurred to me that this story has to come to us from Jesus in the way that he told it to his apostles. Otherwise no one would have known about it.

One of the things I like best about this story is that Jesus faces his trials in a very human way. He is the Son of God — as his baptism just made clear — and yet he wins the battle as a man. So we can do it too.

William Barclay points this out while making some other good points about temptation which are good for our own reflection in times when we're struggling against making the wrong choices.

Christ in the Wilderness by Ivan Kramskoy, 1872

We must always remember that again and again we are tempted through our gifts. The person who is gifted with charm will be tempted to use that charm "to get away with anything." The person who is gifted with the power of words to produce glib excuses to justify his own conduct. The person with a vivid and sensitive imagination will undergo agonies of temptation that a more stolid person will never experience. The person with great gifts of mind will be tempted to use these gifts for himself and not for others, to become the master and not the servant of men. It is the grim fact of temptation that it is just where we are strongest that we must be forever on the watch.

(v) No one can ever read this story without remembering that its source must have been Jesus himself. In the wilderness he was alone. No one was with him when this struggle was being fought out. And we know about it only because Jesus himself must have told his men about it. It is Jesus telling us his own spiritual autobiography.

We must always approach this story with a unique and special reverence, for in it Jesus is laying bare his inmost heart and soul. He is telling men what he went through. It is the most sacred of all stories, for in it Jesus is saying to us that he can help others who are tempted because he himself was tempted. He draws the veil from his own struggles to help us in our struggle.

Quote is from Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Matthew by William Barclay. This series first ran in 2008. I'm refreshing it as I go.