Our Great Temptation

 

 

“From that time Jesus began to point out to His disciples that it was necessary for Him to go to Jerusalem and to suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and to be killed, and to be raised up on the third day. And yet Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You!” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s purposes, but men’s.”” Matthew 16:21 – 23.

 

The things we think are good can be bad, very bad.

 

“When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate” (Genesis 3:6).

 

Suppose Jesus had heeded Peter’s words and gone along with Peter’s plan to spare Him suffering and death? Where would we be?

 

Look closely at Peter’s words. “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” Peter is both rebuking God and invoking God. In the Name of God Peter is opposing God. In the Name of God Peter is playing the role of Satan.

 

Consider that this passage is preceded by Peter’s glorious confession of Jesus as the Christ. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). This was revealed to Peter by the Father (16:17).

 

One minute Peter is receiving revelation from the Father and confessing that Jesus is the Messiah, the next minute Peter is playing the role of Satan invoking the Name of God.

 

Peter was tempting Jesus and Jesus responds, “You are a stumbling block to Me.” We may think of Jesus’s temptation in the Wilderness (Matthew 3), we may think of Jesus struggling in Gethsemane, but do we think of Jesus facing the temptation that Peter presents Him with in the words, “God forbid!”?

 

The temptation is to spare Himself. The temptation is to think that perhaps the Father has another way, a way other than the Cross. Maybe Peter has special insight, after all the Father has just given him revelation concerning Jesus as the Christ, maybe the Father is giving Peter insight into a way other than the Cross.

 

But Jesus knows the Way of the Father, the Way of the Cross; from before the foundation of the world He has been the Lamb slain, destined to be both Priest and Sacrifice. Jesus loves us too much to love Himself more. Jesus will become a curse for us so that we might be freed from death and live by the life of God. Jesus will be made sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus will “taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9) so that we may “pass out of death into life” (John 5:24).

 

Are we tempted to say to Jesus, “God forbid!”?

 

Is the idea that Jesus must suffer and be rejected by the religious leaders too much for us? Is the thought that Jesus is rejected by the national, political, military, economic, and social powers of this present age too much for us? Have we deceived ourselves into thinking that Jesus can be made palatable to the powers and authorities and peoples of the world – including to our own nation?

 

Let us be clear, “The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). The Gospel is a message of “foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:21); to some it is a stumbling block, to others it is foolishness (1 Cor. 1:23).

 

If we think that the economic and political and national powers of this world, if we think that any system in this world is endorsing Jesus, is following Jesus, is adhering to Jesus, then we are deceived. The Cross of Christ and the Christ of the Cross bring an end to all things, most especially our egos, our self-centered agendas, our self-glorification, our wars and fightings, our vitriol. The Cross is self-sacrificial, those who follow Christ live cruciform lives – this is not the way of the world, it is not the way of politics or worldly economics or the way of an imperial cult.

 

Nor is it the way of the world’s religion – just as the religious leaders who were supposedly the heirs of Moses engineered the crucifixion of Jesus, so those who are supposedly the heirs of the Gospel often do the opposite but with the identical motive – they seek to keep Jesus off the Cross so that they may keep their lives (and ours!) off the Cross, so that Jesus might not be an offense to them, to us, or to the world.

 

For what follows Jesus’ words, “Get behind Me Satan!”?

 

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what good will it do a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every person according to his deeds.”” (Matthew 16:27).

 

In other words, Jesus is saying that just as He is going to the Cross, so we are to go to the Cross (Galatians 2:20). And let us make no mistake, there is shame associated with the Cross of Christ, shame that is repulsive to the world and the powers of the world – shame that offends our religious self-righteousness. Hence the writer of Hebrews exhorts us to “Go outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Heb. 13:13).

 

Our great temptation is to spare ourselves the Cross. It is to avoid the Cross. The temptation of pastors is to spare themselves and their people the Cross, to avoid the call of Jesus that we must deny ourselves, lose our lives, and follow Him. We do not want the Cross to be our way of life, we want success and prestige and comfort and affluence and glittery self-affirming religion to be our way…why we may even fall prey to desiring theological constructs that appeal to our desire for knowledge but avoid the Cross and the Cruciform Life. 

We do not want a Jesus who hangs on a Cross in shame, who eschews the wisdom of the world, who serves the poor, the stranger and immigrant, the unclean, the disenfranchised. We do not want a Jesus who is not a showman.

 

Our great temptation this Holy Week, as it is every week, is to say with Peter, “God forbid it!”

 

“May it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).