Lent is a season in which we focus pointedly on our sin and mortality, a season of repentance. It is fitting that Lent begins where sin begins, and so the theme of this first Sunday in Lent is facing temptation. The scriptures traditionally associated with this week also focus upon temptation. Temptation, of course, is a universal and ongoing human experience, faced by every human, our first parents, each of us, and the Son of God, Son of Man himself. Each of us, following our first parents, failed in this test; thankfully Christ has triumphed for us, living a righteous life. Therefore, as a true and righteous man and as the eternal Son, his death has the power to take away our sin.
Temptation begins in Eden: Genesis 3-4 tells of the fall of our first parents, and with them, all of us. It also shows the typical pattern of temptation, desire for that which is forbidden by the Creator, a justifying lie (you will be like God … Gen 3:5), and then sin and disobedience itself. In contrast to the fall, Psalm 1 sings of the blessing found in a righteous life. Matthew 4:1-11. the second Adam, Jesus Christ, directly faces temptation and the tempter at the outset of his public ministry, immediately following his baptism. Having identified with sinners by his baptism, Jesus faces the test of temptation and defeats the tempter himself.
Interestingly enough, in Mark 8:37-38, temptation is presented not in the person of Satan, but by one of his disciples, Peter. Jesus rebukes him and the suggestion that he can avoid the cross – and with the cross, the will of the Father. Jesus’s obedience reaches it’s climax the Garden (Yet not as I will, but as you will – Matt 26:39), and that obedience is sealed by his enduring the cross. Jesus has faced and conquered temptation and with it, sin and death. We are called moment by moment to follow in his pattern, and in reliance upon his strength, to conquer when facing temptation.