Interpretation, Temptation, and Divine Humanity in Matthew 4

Permit me to take another moment and comment on the first part of this text (vv. 1-11). I see three important themes emerging from the text. First, I see that careful interpretation of scripture is crucial in combating temptation and other sorts of spiritual garbage that the enemy throws at us. One can notice that even the enemy knows the Scriptures well enough in order to twist them to say whatever he wants. Our own practices of using Scripture can be as careful as a scientist experimenting with a dangerous virus. When the experiment and research are applied correctly a life-saving vaccine could be developed. One careless move and we have a scene from Steven King’s The Stand where causalities are massive. Our spiritual life is no different.

One interesting fact that I learned while taking a course on Biblical Interpretation is that the verse and chapter delineations were introduced during the twelfth century and were not part of the original texts. What this means is that there are several contextual clues around each verse to be considered for understanding what the original author meant. I have had a tendency to chop up Scriptures by verse and even sub-verse to get across a point. But then I realized I had it all wrong. Scriptures speak for themselves. There is an art and science to correctly interpreting scripture. The good news is that its not rocket science – we need only seek what God is saying in the text and set aside our own biases and motivations to listen to what God says. I recently purchased a Bible that omits the chapter and verse numbering and even groups the books in a different fashion based on the original Hebrew arrangements (e.g. Ezra and Nehemiah). I find it a new experience reading the Bible as it were literature rather than a data dump from someone’s computer or a legal document.

The second idea is around the reliance of Scripture alone. Christ argued effectively based on Scripture and Scripture alone for His “defense” against the enemy. We will face this same sort of intellectual – or rather spiritual – conflict on a daily basis. As Christians we are counselors for the defense and have a charge to understand what Scripture says convey it either internal when tempted or external to those who ask (1 Peter 3:15). The reformers had a saying: “Sola Scriptura” or by Scripture alone. I think it says it all. Makes for a great t-shirt

Finally a key theological concept comes out of the text. It is the idea that Christ was fully God and fully man all at the same time (hypostatic union). Some of us got into a nice conversation about this a few months ago whether or not Christ was human enough to sin. I contended, based on my limited knowledge of the topic, that yes He could have been fully man and fully God otherwise the temptations experienced here were nothing more than a farce to patronize the rest of us. Christ exercised extreme humility and loving passion for mankind by suppressing His divine nature during this period. He had every right and opportunity to crush the enemy like a bug. The enemy asserts to offer the entire world to Christ in exchange for some homage. Was Christ tempted to say “Hey idiot, who do you think made the world?” Rather, Christ shows us the example of how to react to opposition and temptation by calming quoting Scripture (“it is written”). Thank God for His guidance in human form.

More on the idea of hypostatic union is available from Wikipedia and the Moody Handbook of Theology (p. 227).

Tagged as: bible, Matthew, nt, NT Challenge