Looking beneath the surface of the story, we find ourselves face to face with the well-known temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Wrapped in contemplation upon what His Divine sonship involved, He was driven into solitude, and tempted, as He worked out His life's plan, to substitute evil independence for good dependence, then to flee to the opposite extreme and substitute evil dependence for good independence, and finally to disregard the means in His zeal for a righteous end. These temptations are as common as humanity and as uninspiring as night. Could one have stood by when Jesus was struggling with them, doubtless nothing more would have been seen than is visible to-day when some man in loneliness, with his eyes lifted toward the hills, wins the mastery over himself and his unseen tempters. Yes, the Master's temptations were just as commonplace as ours. Why, then, this fine dressing up of the commonplace? Because, when in after days Jesus told His companions of His conflict and victory, He saw with the illumination of retrospect what at the moment of the struggle He could not see, the glory of it all. The story is not a fiction of the imagination. It is a true picture of what occurred, a revelation of the splendour that lies at the foundation of every spiritual contest, a record of literal truth not perceived at the time, but clear to the vision after all was over.
"After all was over"—the mean and commonplace incidents of to-day, form the raw material out of which is woven the romance of to-morrow. The ugliest facts make the choicest romance after they have been tempered in the crucible of time. Ask a soldier how much romance there was when the fight was hot. The sublime in battle is visible only from the vantage ground of victory. Often when the life of some humble and afflicted child of God comes to a close, we see what was hidden from our eyes during his days on earth—the heroism of his career. At first we esteem him "stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." Afterward we admire the grandeur and largeness of the life that once seemed so narrow and lame. Before death the character of the affliction claims our attention; afterward the character of the afflicted; now the ugly fact and then the glory; "first that which is natural and afterward that which is spiritual." Consequently there are two methods of recording human history—bare fact, concrete, grim, commonplace; its romance, abstract, majestic and just as real. We need both kinds of description—Gethsemane with its agony and gouts of blood, and the wilderness with its dramatic imagery. Neither one is more real than the other. If the wilderness had its grim side, Gethsemane had its romantic side. The ideal is realized, when the real is idealized.
Grant the truth of this—and who will gainsay it?—and it follows that while the temptations of Jesus were as commonplace as ours, ours are as glorious as His. S. Paul saw it all quite plainly, when in radiant language he rolled out to his Ephesian friends that superb call to battle. "Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." There is nothing in the whole of Scripture that makes life seem more splendid and glowing, and yet the occasion is one of extreme peril and hardship—the moment of temptation. It is not so that the scientific character of our age, with its darting electricity and whirring wheels, forbids romance to lift its head. Glory of the highest type will live as long as dauntless human souls aspire to God, let the world be as matter of fact or as evil as it chooses. The only thing that can dim glory is the domination of sin in man.
§ 3. So much for the splendid opportunity which temptation affords. How to meet it is what the story of the life of the Son of Man makes manifest.
(a) It is noticeable that neither by precept nor example are we encouraged to pray for the removal of temptation. Once, it is true, Jesus expressed it as His desire that a cup of pain might pass from Him, but He conditioned His prayer—"not My will, but Thine, be done." God did not remove the cup, but what was better still He gave Him strength to drink it. A prayer of S. Paul's was treated in like manner. The thorn in the flesh was not withdrawn, but it was transformed into a means of imparting spiritual vigour—"My grace is sufficient for thee." It is said of Pascal, whose last years were full of agony, that his malady became a new quality of his genius and helped to perfect it. Christian character as well as great genius "has the power of elevating, transmuting, serving itself by the accidental conditions about it, however unpromising."[11]
This being so, even Gethsemane is an encouragement to the man who is sore tried, to pray for power to transcend his trial rather than that it may be swept out of his life by the hand of God.
'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant,
More life and fuller that I want,
and not exemption from trial.
The lingering on in life of a temptation, which, if not born of past sin, at any rate has been intensified by self-indulgence, affords us our only chance of expressing penitence to God for failure in loyalty to Him in this respect or that. How can the man, in whom the fires of passion are dead, express before God his sorrow for sins against purity in days that are gone? It is easy to conceive of such a person entreating God to give him back his temptation, that, by a reversal of former decisions, he may prove the reality of his penitence. So far as we can see, the one chance a man has of regaining a lost virtue, is through the very temptation by means of which he was robbed of it. Excessive resistance wins back, slowly but surely, what was lost by excessive indulgence. What is needed is not freedom from but freedom in temptation. This latter is possible for every Christian.
(b) Freedom in the life of temptation is achieved by meeting every enticement to sin with an upward rise toward virtue. It is quite inadequate to beat off temptation. We must spoil the strong man and possess ourselves of his goods. One sad feature of life is that we always undershoot the mark, and for the most part perfection in purpose results in nothing better than mediocrity in achievement. It is the sure fate of the man that is contented to view temptation merely as an invitation to hell which must be declined, that he will yield at least occasionally to the sin to which he is tempted. Only he who flings himself upward when the pull comes to drag him down, can hope to break the force of temptation. Temptation may be an invitation to hell, but much more is it an opportunity to reach heaven. At the moment of temptation sin and righteousness are both very near the Christian; but of the two the latter is the nearer.