Love Stands the Test

Temptation… testing… “O God, lead us not into temptation”… “O God, save use from the time of trial”… from the time of testing…

And yet testing, temptation is very much where we discover just what the Christian faith might be all about.

When life choices seem easy and being Christian seems to be about living in the community that we’re living in, it’s very easy for us to miss the depths of the calling which is ours through Jesus Christ.

Imagine yourself as that mother standing before the king forced to choose between losing her child to another woman or losing her child to death—forced to choose between a life for her child from which she will be separated, or certain death for that child. And before we think the decision is easy, we must remember that children for women on their own were life, were the future, were the only superannuation there was for old age. The choice is not just life and death for the child; it is the choice between maintaining a just claim, between being right, between maintaining some sense of who she was as a women, a mother, and losing it all, not just the child—losing everything status, future, hope. It would have been so easy to continue to make a claim for her rights as a mother, rather than to see the possibility of life for her child.

And lest we forget the other woman—this child is a possible future for her. She has nothing to lose. If she cannot have the child, she does not have hope, and if she does not have hope, then hope for another is simply a slap in the face.

Temptation… testing… “O God, lead us not into temptation”… “O God, save use from the time of trial”… from the time of testing…

And yet testing, temptation is very much where we discover just what the Christian faith might be all about.

Temptation and sin—they’re two words that we don’t like very much: perhaps because we’re afraid that the finger is pointed at us; perhaps because it has been and we have found ourselves denigrated and defiled before other people. Certainly, some of us have probably been on the unfortunate receiving end of the kind of evangelism that seems to have to remind us that we are worms, in order to provoke the sort of emotional catharsis that the evangelist is looking for—hardly good news at all.

But if we thought that those experiences meant that we could cast out sin and temptation from our understandings of ourselves and our awareness of ourselves before God, then we would be sadly disappointed. There is no way to tell the human story without speaking of failure and fracture, pride and arrogance, alienation and separation from the God who loves and longs to be in continuous and reciprocal relationship with us, who stands the test of loving us through thick and thin.

Our theological story, our God story, the story of God and everything in relation to God (including us) tells us that God created a good creation; and that something happened to change a good creation into a flawed one; and that something has something to do with the action of humanity. It is we who are the site of the problem.

However we describe what it is about us that gets in the way of relationship with God—it does get in the way. Whether it’s the thinking too much of ourselves called pride, or the thinking too little of ourselves called shame; whether it’s the wanting to be more than we are that is arrogance or the wanting to hide who we are that is fear; whether it is the seeking after many things that is gluttony or the failure to work towards that to which we are called that might be labelled sloth—however we describe it, it’s there; and it does get in the way of our relationship with God and with each other.

So we cannot simply ignore it, we have to face it; and facing up to sin and temptation costs. The story of Jesus in the wilderness speaks to us of that cost.

When tempted to fill his immediate needs without regard for his commitment to seek after the things of God, Jesus affirms the importance of God’s purpose, but he goes hungry.

When tempted to produce displays of power and force God’s protection of his life, Jesus affirms the importance of treating God with respect, but that means the journey that he walks is not an easy one—it is full of suffering.

When tempted to claim a position of power without reference to the purpose of God, Jesus affirms God’s authority over all things and God’s claim on our allegiance and our servanthood, but servanthood for Jesus means the cross.

Facing sin and temptation costs. But how much more does sin and temptation itself cost us—separation from God and from each other. And we find ourselves in a far more amenable position that Jesus. Because the good news is that it is precisely through Jesus’ facing of sin and temptation, through Jesus standing the test, that we find ourselves confronted by God’s grace, more abundant that anything we might ever claim for ourselves by ourselves—the abundance of God’s gracious declaration that we have nothing to answer for; that in God’s eyes, we are still and have always been the much loved children of God; that, because of God in Christ, we are called just, and called to work for God’s justice in our lives and in the life of God’s world.

The grace of God, the love of God, the gifts of God matter because we are a people confronted with sin and temptation—our own, and that of the whole of humanity. The grace of God matters because we can’t fix what’s wrong on our own. The grace of God matters because we are very human—frail, fragile, fractured, faithless—in need of God’s love, God’s mercy, God’s care. And God’s love stands the test!

Perhaps we can only really appreciate the abundant grace of God, when we really face up to the depth of the sin that is ours—not by pointing the finger at others; not by ticking off our good and bad points; not even by obsequiously grovelling before God; but by recognising who we are—human; and remembering who God is—utterly gracious, utterly loving, utterly merciful, utterly forgiving—a God who stands the test!