It
is important to recognize that the Lord lived on this
earth with a double purpose. For the first time
there was a Man on this earth whose whole life was an
expression of what God wanted, in Whom all the rights of
God were fulfilled. This was what God had intended
from the beginning. In Christ He saw it.
On
the other hand, Christ therefore became the Cornerstone
of a spiritual temple, a temple in which God’s
rights are fully respected. Christ was never
intended to stay by Himself. He was intended to
become the Head of a body, the grain of wheat with much
fruit, a vine with many branches. But what applies
to the Head must also apply to the whole body; what
applies to the body, also to the individual
member. The Vine is to be recognized by its
branches. By way of summarizing we can say: Christ,
in living fellowship with His own, is purposed to be an
expression of God’s rights. God is to
be everything and in everything.
That
is why Paul does not address the Corinthians as an
assembly of individuals, but he writes to “the
church of God.” She is the church of
God. The Lord desires His full rights in everything
that belongs to Him.
If
Christ is the Head of the church, then what should be
true for all the members must first be made real in
Him. Let us therefore now draw our attention to that
through which God assures His rights in
Christ. Herein a completely new outlook opens up for
us on the life of Jesus Christ. We see that
everything depends on the rights of the Father being
expressed from moment to moment by Him. Let us
briefly prove this by mentioning a few points.
Right
at the beginning of His life we want to see two things:
firstly the position that Jesus takes, and secondly the
consequence of the stand He has taken.
This
relates to His baptism. We do not have to say much
about baptism as such. We can summarize it in a few
words.
What
did He want to express through it? Nothing less than
that He Himself, with everything that He was, had died.
However, this is not about a dying to sin in Him. He
was without sin. Since it could not be about dying
because of sin, and since baptism is nothing else but a
picture of death and resurrection, in the case of Jesus
Christ, therefore, it must have a special
background. This is indeed the case. It would
have been possible for Jesus Christ to live a personal
life, that is, a life of His own choice, without the
unbroken relationship with the Father, according to His
own human will. In itself that would not have been
sin. He could have acted independently of the
Father.
Now,
here we see the meaning and purpose of the baptism of
Jesus Christ. His baptism was to express that He
wanted to live in utter dependence on the Father, that He
had died to everything that did not stand in close
connection to His Father. It is futile to ask if a
life independent from God would have led to sin, as it
was in the case of Adam, because precisely through
baptism the Son of God testified that He was not thinking
of independence in the slightest and that He had died to
every possibility of it. He refused to possess any
will of His own. He gave the Father that which He
demanded. He gave Him an unrestricted right to dispose of
Him as He wished to. “Lo, I am come to do
Thy will, O God” (Heb. 10:7).
This
is the negative side to start with. The positive
side, however, is in the fact that God now had such a
Man, that somebody was there, a Man on this earth, in
Whom the rights of God had been completely kept, Who
could say: “Not My will, but Thine.” In
other words: “I don’t want to live an earthly
life as I want to my liking, but a life in full
subjection and dependence on God. Not I, but God!” Paul
writes in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter
5, at verses 14 and 15: “For the love of Christ
constraineth us; because we thus judge, that One died for
all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they
that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto
Him Who for their sakes died and rose again.”
Let
us express that in the shortest way possible for all of
us: From now on I live for God! Nothing outside of
Him, everything for Him. This is the way in which
God comes to His rights. With reference to Jesus,
this was the meaning of His baptism.
We
see the Lord taking this stand from the beginning and
from that moment everything had to be in agreement with
this foundation. This means testing. That is
why the road from the Jordan led to the desert. “He
fasted for forty days and forty nights. Then He was
hungry" (Matt. 4:2; Deut. 8:3). A state of
physical weakness is always a good prerequisite for
temptations from the enemy. The devil selects his
occasions in such a way that they seem to promise
success. He would have little to hope for, had he
come forty days earlier, when Jesus stood in the full
power of Him Who had spoken from an open heaven: “This
is My beloved Son.” When, however,
circumstances seemed suitable to him, he questioned the
sonship of the Son of God with the word: “If Thou
art the Son of God....” (Matt. 4:3). A
promising position for the enemy! A person who is
close to dying of hunger and thirst, for whom something
has to happen quickly, if he is to stay alive! At
that moment the devil attacks. That is temptation.
Do
we not have the right to dare to do something for the
sake of staying alive? The enemy whispers to us:
“If you don’t do it, you will die.” For
us, however, everything should revolve around the issue,
without which nothing existed for the Lord Jesus: to
persevere in dependence on the Father for as long as He
wants.
There
are times when we feel as though we are pushed into a
corner. Maybe we have taken a position of absolute
obedience towards God. We have declared to God that
we are willing for His will to be done. It does not
take long before we find ourselves in an impossible
position. Such a position is basically about nothing
less and nothing else but our faithfulness towards
God. Are we prepared to die rather than take our
life into our own hands and give up our dependency on
God, to perish rather than do something which God has not
told us to do?
In
connection with this temptation there is the possibility
of a new discovery. We find this in the answer Jesus
gives the devil: “It is written, Man shall not
live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). The
enemy could have answered: “Without food you will
die." But the Lord knows another kind of food.
Obedience means life. Jesus did not turn the stones
into bread and yet still lived another three and a half
years. Later when the disciples returned to Him,
when He was sitting on the edge of the well of Samaria
and asked Him to eat, He could tell them, from a deeper
experience than they could imagine: “My meat is
to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His
work” (John 4:34). It is manna for us
to be faithful to God. There is life in obedience.
The
second temptation.—The devil set Him on the pinnacle
of the temple. “If Thou art the Son of God, cast
Thyself down” (Matt. 4:6). The devil
puts himself on the same ground as the Lord. He uses
the Word. The temptation becomes therefore more
intense. Besides the Lord, probably nobody knows the
Word as well as the adversary. Therefore spiritual
discernment is needed. This we have in the answer: “It
is written: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord Thy God” (Matt.
4:7; Deut. 6:16). In which context is this Word
written? Israel was in trouble. The question
arose, whether the Lord was in her midst or not; in other
words, a questioning of the faithfulness of God, whether
God keeps His Word or not. Is it not significant that the
Lord uses exactly this passage to answer the
enemy? The devil says in other words: “If You
believe that the Father is with You, then try it. If
You are really convinced that He is on your side, then do
something for once that will show this.” A big
temptation that our Lord did not succumb
to. But what must we do? We find
ourselves in trouble. Do we believe that God is
faithful? Do we consider the possibility that God
could deny Himself? When the Lord says: “I
am with you,” let us believe it. Let us
never do anything to put God to the test. The Lord
has a right to demand such a position from us. Jesus
gave His Father this right. He held fast to the
position that He had taken: “Not My will,
but Your will be done.”
The
third temptation.—The devil took Him to a high
mountain. “All these things I will give Thee, if
Thou wilt fall down and worship me.” The answer:
“Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him
only shalt thou serve” (Matt. 4:8-10).
Here
too the context is important. The words are in
Deuteronomy 5 verses 8 and 9. There we read of the
worship of other gods. “Thou shalt not make
unto thee a graven image, nor any likeness... for I,
the Lord, am a jealous God.” Let us take
note that God jealously demands all worship, to be
recognized and honoured as the only true God. With
this passage the Lord defeats the enemy. God
demands all our worship.
World
dominion is bound up with this last temptation. How can we
gain world dominion? Who will rule over the kingdoms
of the world in the end? He, Who has maintained the
rights of God to the full. “The kingdoms of
this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of
His Christ” (Rev. 11:15). This is true for
the church. She is destined to reign. The pressure
of the enemy in connection with the offer of world
dominion has to do with his demand of worship. Let
us be assured that every pressure in our life serves the
purpose to get us to worship the devil. Is this
possible? Now, let us suppose we were in difficult
times. It is possible for us to evade the
difficulties. If it were faithfulness towards God
and God-given revelation that brought us into this
difficult situation, we could perhaps alleviate this
situation through compromise. We could give in to
something. Certainly, it would be
unfaithfulness. We would steal from God what is His.
But the difficulties! That is the enemy. That
is the pressure: to bring us to a place where we rob God
of something, or in other words, where we give the devil
something. Ultimately it is about the issue of whom we
worship, whom we trust completely, unreservedly. Our
Lord Jesus Christ kept His position faithfully. At
the Jordan He took this stand. “Nothing for Myself,
everything for the Father. I live to do the Father’s
will.” And then comes the test, the
temptation. Then everything gets examined and tested
as to its reality. But the day came when the Father
could give His Son the confirmation from heaven: “This
is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. And He
was transfigured before them.”
We
too will be put to the test. For us too it is about
the proof of the reality of the position to which we
testified. We testified to have died to sin, self
and the world. From now on I live for God
only! This will be put to the test. It will be well
with us if in faith we hold fast to this position, if we
stand firm in everything that has been given to us in our
Lord Jesus Christ. In Him we have the
victory. In Him we have everything. Oh, that we
could wholeheartedly and with uninterrupted willingness
say together with Paul:
“For
the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus
judge, that if One died for all, then were all dead: and
that He died for all, that they which live should not
henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him Which died
for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:15).