THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS

  

THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS

 

This is an excerpt from my review on the book, “Mere Sexuality” by Todd Wilson regarding the authors amazing assertion that Jesus was tempted with homosexuality. In that review, I peruse the prospects of different types of homosexuality of which there are four that I propose...

1. Consequential, 

2. Classical, 

3. Cultural, and 

4. Cataclysmic Homosexual sin.

I will address the “consequential” type here as it pertains most closely to answering the authors assertion that Jesus was tempted with same-sex attraction and homosexuality.

 

Not only is this a statement against the author’s assertion that Jesus was tempted toward homosexuality and same-sex attraction, but it is also a brief position on the temptation of Jesus in general and what I think it means that He was tempted in like manner as we.

 

The author’s assertion that Jesus was tempted with homosexuality taints the sinlessness of Jesus. Homosexuality, in part, is a sin of consequence from which one suffers from prior sinful mental or actual behavior. It is not a “first stage” or core sin. One who proposes that Jesus was tempted by homosexuality, also must assert that Jesus suffered previous sinful thoughts or behavior from which the temptation toward homosexuality was derived. In the similar - as one who is a thief, previously guilty of covetousness; or, one who is a fornicator or drunkard yielded to the lust of the flesh.

 

{Homosexuality is a consequence of prior sinful attitudes and behavior}

CONSEQUENTIAL Homosexuality.

 

There are those who would assert that homosexuality is much deeper and broader than just a consequence of rejecting God. And for many of their positions I do not find support in the Bible. I delve into some of the deeper aspects of the origin of homosexuality in my treatment of it in the “classical” and “cataclysmic” perspective of homosexuality. And I try to plant it firmly in biblical principle rather than cultural movements. As for now, the “consequential” aspect is sufficient and relative to the temptation of Jesus.

 

The consequential view of Homosexuality, in principle, is simply the outcome or result of rejecting God our creator and worshipping the creature. The end or consequence of such a life is that God lets go of the individual and their judgment IS HOMOSEXUALITY. (Rom 1.18-24) If Jesus had been tempted toward homosexuality, then He would have to have previously rejected God the Father.

 

Rom 1.26

For this reason God gave them over (consequential) to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

 

In purview of my stated premise, Jesus would also have had to have fallen to the temptation of idolatry in any of the three contextual roots of homosexuality, or “bent sexuality” – classic, cataclysmic, or consequential. 

In order for Jesus to have been tempted with homosexuality and to be able to personally identify in like manner with the bent sexuality of the author’s targeted readers, Jesus would first, have been guilty of idolatry. 

 

For Jesus to have been tempted with homosexuality, He must have consequentially rejected God the Father and fallen to idolatry. Jesus was not an idolator, thus He was not tempted toward homosexuality.

 

Regarding the lesser “Same-sex Attraction” aspect of homosexuality – or the mental perusal of homosexuality, I still hold to the position that this was not a temptation that the impeccable Christ faced. Let us not be so kind to the mental descent toward homosexuality by labeling or branding its lustful state as “Same-sex Attraction”; rather, let us brand it as it actually is, “PROHIBITED ATTRACTION”. Jesus had no Prohibited Attraction. Jesus was not tempted in this “down-the -road” sin for the reasons that follow.

 

My Position on the Temptation of Jesus

 

I confine the temptation of Jesus to all points, or in “like manner” as mankind to the following three core temptations found in 1 John 2.15-17:

 

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 

For all that is in the world, 

1. the lust of the flesh and    (The “FEEL IT” sins)

2. the lust of the eyes and    (The “SEE IT” sins)

3. the boastful pride of life, (The “BE IT” sins)

is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

 

Satan offered Jesus these things (the things of the world) in His momentous temptation, but Jesus did not love the world. “These things” are what is in “like manner” to mankind.

 

Another point to make regarding the empathy that Christ had for sinners references Heb 4.15, 

 

Hebrews 4.15: For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

 

The last part of this verse describes a limitation of His temptation. Man’s temptations come in most cases from previous sin – there is nothing new under the sun. Not so for Jesus. Jesus had no previous sin from which to be tempted. He was unaffiliated from any lure of inherent sinful tendencies or experiences.

 

Typical and despot temptations experienced by all mankind had necessarily no place in Christ. He was tempted as we are, sharing our nature or in our likeness, yet with this exception, that there was no sin in Him to become the spring of trial for a much deeper trial. 

There was no shadow of sinfulness in Him that cast a darker trail into deeper temptation. Though His temptation was vastly fiercer, it was not more complex.

It was fiercer because He never yielded – He withstood it until it resolved in righteous triumph. It was not more complex because He had no sin from which to rehearse or to resist due to previous failures.

 

First, what does temptation look like to the spotless Son of God? So much of what I experience by temptation is a rerun of previous temptations which have actually lapsed into sin. 

I have fallen in various areas, so when I am tempted by those areas again, I am tempted to do what I know I have already done and to which I have already succumbed, but Jesus has never succumbed. Jesus was GOD with a human nature. Impeccable.

 

For Jesus to be tempted in like manner or in our likeness only means that HE WAS HUMAN when he was tempted. There was no time during his temptations that Jesus did not understand about human frailty, weariness, fatigue, hunger, stress, desertion and loneliness, and all conditions that mankind could experience in the daily grind of living. 

 

D.A. Carson expresses his idea of normal human travail, “Our physical and personal discomforts are often used by the Enemy of our souls to make us, in the first instance, doubt God, doubt his love for us, doubt his care for us, and doubt his provisions. It’s relatively easy to trust God when everything is going well. Then, get a four-month backache, and if somebody tells you, “Curse God and die,” you’ll be tempted to do it.”

 

Jesus was the SECOND ADAM; thus, it is my surmise that Jesus was only tempted and victorious in the foundational, or core temptations that the FIRST ADAM was tempted when he was sinless. It does not mean that since he was human that he was tempted in all manner of reprobate sins that all mankind is tempted. He was not seated at a smorgasbord of evil delights from every tantalizing arena bubbling out from the abyss. To not be tempted add-infinitum with every possible sinful thought of all time from every square inch from around the globe does not disqualify Him from being tempted in like manner as mankind. 

 

He can and will only sympathize with our state as far as His own sinless experience.

His experience was “in like manner to our nature - human nature” not in like manner to our depravity.

 

In this regard, homosexuality is a “down the road”, deeper temptation that sprang from another and another depravity. Homosexuality is a “Daisy Chain Sin” that is a consequence of other sins. Jesus was never tempted with “bent sexuality”. Jesus was never tempted with homosexuality or prohibited attraction. Jesus was never tempted from the lens of depravity.

 

If Jesus was tempted with “bent sexuality” (which the author will not adequately define), then He was guilty of many previous sins that were the precursor to homosexuality. HE was impeccable!

 

If the author persists that Jesus was tempted toward same-sex attraction or homosexuality, the author must insist that Jesus was in some degree guilty of idolatry, as per Romans Chapter One. 

Anyone who so eagerly presents Jesus as the deliverer of fallen mankind by presenting a Jesus who experienced a walk on the same broad road of destruction as those who need deliverance has lost the transcendence of the GOD-Man for the imminence of God-MAN.

Reiteration from previous - We no longer can offer a deliverer to the “sexually bent” who was not sexually bent himself. Expounding further, Jesus was the “Second Adam”. The First Adam was initially sinless before the fall. Jesus was sinless throughout his life with no Fall.

If there was a “Point-to-Point” temptation with Jesus, it was with Adam in the garden before the fall, not with all mankind after the fall. 

 

One can nearly overlay the Tempters temptations with The First and Second Adam. The temptation to lust with the eyes and with the flesh and to boast with pride was the Tempters enticement to both of the Adams. One fell, the other did not. The First Adam’s fall in these three areas led the human race into a downward spiral in all manner of evil and wickedness, of which homosexuality is one, and which the Second Adam was never tempted nor could ever identify. 

 

One sin led to another, and then another and another; each sin that humanity did succumb, spring-boarded to new, lower plateaus of depravity. This is what the author wants the reader to believe about the Second Adam. The author wants Jesus to personally identify, point-to-point, with every individual sin of every individual sinner. Jesus was never tempted with a point-to-point sin with all humanity because he never fell to the lust of the eyes, flesh and boastful pride of life (1 Jn 2.16).There simply is no consequential depravity to sinless living.

 

It does not mean that He doesn’t know the pain and suffering that sin brings to mankind – He is omniscient. 

 

The reason why I hype on this issue so much is because the author’s central comforting answer to those who are sexually bent (depraved) is for them to believe that Jesus was tempted to be sexually depraved, too; thus, he can identify. Even more reckless, is that the author infers, or at least does not deny, that Jesus WAS sexually bent that He may identify with the sexually bent.  The author then has nothing to offer the reader if he offers a mushy, struggling Jesus who, out of necessity, had to have fallen to previous sins in order to identify himself with “springboard” sins of all mankind.

 

Ultimately, if there is a Point-To-Point sin identification, then it would have occurred on the cross. If the author insists that Jesus can identify with our sin, it ought to be at the cross only, not in His experience. If the sinner was a thief, adulterer, drunkard, homosexual or whatever, then Jesus suffered the wages of each of those sins. He paid the eternal penalty of the homosexual, the drunkard, the adulterer and we may even stretch His personal identification to the idea that He was punished as though a drunkard or adulterer on the cross. But he was without sin himself. 

2 Cor 5.21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

 

TEMPTATION OF ALL MANKIND	TEMPTATION OF  ADAM AND EVE	TEMPTATION OF JESUS
1 John 2.15-17	Gen 3.6	Lk 4.2-9
For all that is in the world,  1. the lust of the flesh and    (The “FEEL IT” sins) 2. the lust of the eyes and    (The “SEE IT” sins) 3. the boastful pride of life, (The “BE IT” sins)	(Lust of the Flesh) When the woman saw that the tree was good for food,    (Lust of the Eyes)  and that it was a  delight to the eyes,   (Boastful Pride of Life) and that the tree was desirable to make one wise,   she took from its fruit and ate	v.2-3 (Lust of the Flesh) And He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended,  He became hungry.  And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”   v.4.5  (Lust of the Eyes) And he led Him up and showedHim  (Displayed for Him to See) all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.   v.4.9  (Boastful Pride of Life) And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him,  “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here;… he will command his angels concerning you to guard you…’ (YOU ARE SOMEBODY – You are THE Son GOD! Abort your mission  Phil 2.5-9)