The Devil Made Me Do It

Estimated reading time: 3 minute(s)

We’re in the book of Luke now, me and the boys, and today we got to the story of Jesus being led by the Spirit out into the desert where he didn’t eat for 40 days. First of all… that’s just insane. That’s a really, really long time to not eat. And one of the best lines in the whole Bible follows the statement of that fasting fact… “And he was hungry.” You think? 🙂

So what ensues is a little battle between Satan and Jesus. Satan tries to trick Jesus, and Jesus doesn’t buckle. He defeats Satan with his knowledge of Scripture and his pure “Jesus-ness”. I remember from many decades ago now, in my Children’s Bible (the big brown one with all the cool drawings…) seeing the epic battle unfold. Jesus in his flowing white robes (standing tall, and regal, looking none the worse for wear, even though “…he was hungry”) and Satan looking ugly and menacing, with his tiny little horns protruding from his red skull cap or whatever. It was quite obvious who was the good guy and who was the bad guy… and it was even more obvious who would be the victor.

As I was reading the story again today, I couldn’t help but wonder, why was Satan even trying? Didn’t he know that Jesus was God? I mean… Jesus made everything (I think that’s in Colossians) so… that means he made Satan… (Lucifer, or whatever you might want to call him) and, so, they knew each other, right? What made him think he had a chance of tricking Jesus into giving in to a desire for food, or power, or anything else? I mean… he’s God, right?

But that’s when I thought… maybe Satan understood Jesus more than we do sometimes. I’ve mentioned this before on the good ol’ blog… we are prone to over-deifying Jesus (if that were possible). Like in my old Children’s Bible. Jesus was clearly deity there. Totally unaffected by his humanness. One could argue, he seemed not even “human” at all. And we tend to do that to Jesus, whether in drawings, or in our relating to him. We remember that he is God, but we forget that he is our brother. A person: body, soul, spirit… just like us.

It seems like Satan understood this, and was trying in every way he could to get Jesus to fall… because he could. In Hebrews it says Jesus was “tempted in every way” as we are. That means there had to be a chance he might choose poorly. It wouldn’t be a temptation if in his God-ness he could just be perfect without even trying. No, Jesus was (and is???) very much a human being, just like us.

So what does that mean? Is there wisdom to be gained from the Devil? Can we maybe understand Jesus more from seeing what he thought of him? I’m not sure. Perhaps I am reading too much into it. (I can do that sometimes…) 🙂 But, it seems that he knew something about Jesus we tend to forget. He’s so much like us. And I do think that’s amazing. It means he can totally understand us, and relate to us… and I think that’s exactly what God wanted. What an amazingly cool connection we have to him. He’s not some super-man… He’s just like us.

There’s not really a big “point” to this post… I just found it really interesting that the Devil thought he could trick Jesus… he was really trying, so, it seems like there was some chance he might be able to. Or so he thought.

It definitely would have been strange to “hear” Jesus say the words, “The Devil made me do it…”