Temptation: A Transformative Battlefield

A friend asked me about "temptation" - here is the beginning of my response: 

Dear Friend,

You’ve asked me about temptation; a subject I wish someone had talked to me about when I was a young Christian.  A subject I wish someone had talked to me about when I was a middle-aged Christian. Come to think of it, a subject I wish brothers (and sisters) would talk about now that I am an older Christian.  You get the idea.

I think it was Oswald Chambers who said to the effect, “A Christian wakes up every morning on a battlefield.” This is not a bad thing when we consider that we are engaged in a war of liberation (Isaiah 42:1 – 7; Matthew 10:1 – 8). In this war we are being transformed into the image of our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29). We might say that we are on a transformative battlefield. On the one hand we wrestle with the enemy (Ephesians 6:10ff; 2 Corinthians 10:3 – 6), and on the other hand our heavenly Potter molds us into the image of His Son as we encounter pressures within and without (2 Corinthians 1:8ff; 7:5).

When professing-Christians say that they are seldom tempted, I wonder whether they have become desensitized to sin, especially the sin of “self” – the gravitational pull of who we are outside of Jesus Christ. To be sure I think I have known saints who live in the age to come more than they live in this present evil time, and I do not doubt that their lives are “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3) in a wonderful fashion. However, let us remember the agony of our Lord Jesus in the Garden on the night of His betrayal – was He tempted to forego the Cup? I cannot understand that mystery, but I think it is wise to keep our Lord Jesus in Gethsemane before me.

I am also reminded of a Peanuts comic strip in which Charlie Brown is talking to Linus after playing another season of football. Charlie Brown says something like this:

“Just once I wish I was enough of a threat for the opposition to double-team me.”

What about us? If we are a threat to the enemy, then we can expect to be doubled-teamed. If the enemy sees us as threatening, by God’s grace, to liberate others with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then we can anticipate opposition – we may be double-teamed or triple-teamed or worse. The enemy may use plays he has used before, but he may also devise snares which we cannot initially see and understand.

This brings us to a tension when thinking about temptation; we’ll call it the way of negation and the way of affirmation. This is a classical way of understanding the dynamic of saying “no” to temptation and sin and self while saying “yes” to Jesus Christ. Think of it as a bungee cord with one end hooked to reckoning ourselves “dead to sin” and the other end hooked to reckoning ourselves “alive unto God” (Romans 6:11).

I love meditating on Hebrews 12:1 – 3 (ESV):

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

“Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?”

Christ is the Founder and Perfecter of our faith. We can be confident that He will complete the work that He began in us (Philippians 1:6). He is our faithful High Priest who has been “tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

We are on a transformative battlefield with Jesus Christ, He is with us always, never leaving us or forsaking us (Matthew 28:20), and greater is He who is in us, than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).

Christ is with us in the temptations we encounter – let us cultivate lives of “looking to Jesus” – never forgetting who He is, and who we are in Him.

John Newton's Counsel

About a year ago I posted a portion of the letter below from John Newton and made some comments...it seems that I ought to send this out a few times a year as I see professing-Christians swept into the confusion of our society...

The toxicity we are imbibing is causing brain, mind, heart, and soul damage; we are living in an opium den and don't know it.

An excerpt from a letter from John Newton (author of the hymn Amazing Grace) to a young pastor, John Ryland, Jr. This is dated August 1, 1775 and the context is the rebellion in the American Colonies.

“You and I will not differ about politics…As a minister and a Christian I think it is better to lay all the blame upon sin. Instead of telling the people Lord North [the Prime Minister] blunders, I tell them the Lord of hosts is angry. If God has a controversy with us, I can expect no other than that wisdom should be hidden from the wise. If our Lord’s kingdom was of this world, then I think his servants would have as good a right as others to take the lead in political disputes; at present I believe they will do as well to let the dead bury the dead, to mourn for what they cannot help, and to ply the throne of grace as the best and most effectual method of serving their country. I believe the sins of Britain and America have too much prevailed, and that a wrong spirit and wrong measures have taken place on both sides because the Lord has left us to ourselves….

“It seems to me one of the darkest signs of the times, that so many of the Lord’s professing people act as if they thought he was withdrawn from the earth, and amuse themselves and each other, with declamations against instruments and second causes and indulge unsanctified passions instead of taking that part which is assigned them, Ezekiel 9:4. [Sighing and crying for all the abominations done in the midst of Jerusalem.] I believe if instead of unavailing clamours against men and measures they would all unite in earnest prayer, we might hope for better times, otherwise I fear bad will be worse. Thus you have the substance of my political creed. Only I should add further that I believe the Lord reigns, that He is carrying on his great purposes in a straight line, that his wall shall be built in troublous times, and that He will be a sure sanctuary to them that fear him. For the rest I refer you to Ps. 46….”

Newton continues to write…concerning Jeremiah:

“He preached against sin, and foretold judgment, but I do not find that he made a parade about liberty, or concerned himself with the administration. He does not seem to have troubled his head, who was scribe or recorder, or who was over the host, for he knew that whoever had the management, the public affairs would miscarry because the Lord fought against them. When I hear the cry about liberty I think of the old cry, ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians’ [Acts 19:28, 34.] Civil liberty is a valuable blessing, but if people sin it away, it is the Lord [who] deprives them of it…It grieves me to hear those who are slaves to sin and Satan, make such a stir about that phantom which they worship under the name of liberty, and especially to see not a few of the Lord’s people so much conformed to the world in this respect…”

Words from My Past

I've been sorting through files, downsizing it's called. I didn't realize I'd kept so many pages of musings from decades ago. Some are typewritten, many are handwritten. Some are on yellow legal-size paper, others are on scraps of paper or on the back of other documents. 

There are charts I made of Biblical history, diagrams of Biblical books, harmonies of Gospel sections, word studies. I came upon a study of "gates" I did - I began in Genesis and kept going, trying to understand the significance of "gates" in the Bible. After all, "gates" are places of ingress and egress, and places of authority.

When I worked for Pulte Home Corporation in the late 1970s or early 1980s (can't recall the specific dates) I used the back of voided purchase orders to write thoughts down during the day. I found the following on the back of a purchase order dated March 24, 1978 - the thought must have come to me at work, during the day, and I took a voided purchase order and wrote:

"Faith is not blindly leaping, but rather sightfully walking. There is ample evidence in the Scripture that natural seeing does not produce faith, but that the development of our inner senses causes us to walk in faith."

I still believe that. Paul told the Corinthians that they were still not ready for solid food, that he couldn't speak to them as spiritual men but as "men of flesh" (1 Cor. 3:1 - 4). 

The writer of Hebrews makes a similar complaint to the recipients of his letter, concluding that "...solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil" (Hebrews 5:11 - 14). 

People talk about what they see, and if our eyes are on the natural world most of the time then we will primarily (sometimes exclusively) speak of natural things. Jesus tells us that if our eye is single  and clear then our whole body will be full of light (Matthew 6:22). 

Paul says that he and his companions don't look at that which is seen but at that which is unseen, for that which is seen is temporal but that which is unseen is eternal (2 Cor. 4:17 - 18). 

Psalm 119:130 tells us that when the Word of God comes into our lives, our hearts, our minds, our souls, that it gives light. 

Unless we cultivate our spiritual eyesight we simply cannot live lives of faith. Unless the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ, unless the Word of Christ and the Christ of the Word, is our center of gravity we simply cannot live as citizens of the Kingdom of God. As Jesus says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." 

We cannot serve two masters, we cannot do it - and yet we kid ourselves and others by thinking and living as if we can. When we attempt to serve two masters the Kingdom of God pretty much always loses - because God is not going to play those games with us...in fact...He will judge us and we will suffer the consequences of spiritual adultery. 

Of course the Kingdom is, in another sense, always advancing; the shame is that when we refuse to take up our cross and follow Christ that we do not advance with the Kingdom. We, who could be blessings to others, remain on the sidelines with lives uncommitted to Jesus Christ. 

Well, now you know what I was thinking back on March 24, 1978; and you also know what I'm thinking about today - 41 years later.