What Is the Meaning of Jesus’s Temptation in the Wilderness?
The baptism and subsequent temptation of Jesus not only stand at the outset of Jesus’s public ministry but, as a pair of events, also seem to set the terms for it. In his baptism, Jesus is anointed for his mission, even as his subsequent temptation in the wilderness seeks to draw him away from it. Together, these events help us to understand all that follows, revealing Jesus’s relationship to the Father and the devil’s place as his primary antagonist. The Synoptic Gospels record three distinct accounts of Jesus’s temptation (Matt 4:1–11; Mark 1:12–13; Luke 4:1–13). All three bear witness that after his baptism by John in the Jordan, Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days. Matthew and Luke note that he spent this period fasting. Towards the end of the period, he was tempted by the devil (named Satan in Mark’s account), after which he was ministered to by angels (in Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts). But what exactly was at stake in each of these temptations, and what do they reveal ...