What did Jesus say about temptation?
Jesus was tempted himself, at length and in detail, and the gospels record it without embarrassment. He taught people to pray not to be led into testing, told his followers to watch and pray because the spirit is willing but the body is weak, and used deliberately extreme language about cutting off whatever keeps pulling you under.
What Jesus said
The wilderness account has three offers: food when he is starving, spectacle, and power over everything without the cost. None of them are obviously evil on the surface. Each one is a shortcut to something he actually wanted.
His response each time is to answer from scripture rather than to argue or negotiate. He does not engage the logic of the offer.
In Gethsemane he tells his friends to stay awake and pray so they will not fall into testing, and then says the line about willing spirit and weak flesh. It is said with sympathy rather than contempt, about people who are about to fail.
And in the Sermon on the Mount he uses shocking language about removing a hand or an eye. It is hyperbole, and the point of the hyperbole is proportion. Whatever keeps taking you down is worth more decisive action than you have been giving it.
The hard part
The wilderness temptations were not offers of something bad. They were offers of good things by a shorter route, which is what makes them recognizable. Most real temptation is not a choice between good and evil but between the slow right way and the fast one, and that is much harder to spot in the moment.
What this looks like today
- •Name the shortcut. Every wilderness offer was a legitimate want on a faster path.
- •Do something decisive rather than incremental about the thing that keeps winning.
- •Ask for help before you are in it. He told them to pray in advance, not during.
Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13, Matthew 26:41, Matthew 5:29-30, Matthew 6:13
Go deeper: this comes up in the 40 days