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Pastor's Blog December 31, 2020

"Jesus Is the Son of God I"

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The Gospel of Matthew uses five different episodes to show that Jesus is the Son of God and pose the question to readers, "Will you recognize Jesus as the Son of God and give your life to him?" 

The first episode is found in Jesus' wilderness temptation in Matthew 4, where Satan confronts Jesus with three temptations: exercising supernatural power to alleviate hunger, assuming divine assistance from experiencing death, and giving worship in exchange for getting glory and human kingdoms.  In his first two temptations, Satan prefaces his ploys with the phrase, "If you are the Son of God..." (verses 3 and 6). 

Historically, most Christians have understood Satan's "if" conjectures to be his attempt at undermining Jesus' divine identity and getting the Savior to doubt that he is God's Son.  After all, at Jesus' baptism the Spirit of God came upon Jesus and the voice of God said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17) - which is a combination of Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 42:1, two biblical passages that talk about the Messiah being the Son or Servant of God.  But most likely, Satan is both confused and resistant to Jesus' divine identity - and this is why his first two temptations begin with the words, "If you are the Son of God."  Satan isn't sure who this Jesus is, exactly.  Obviously, he knows Jesus is important, because the Father has claimed him as the divine Son and the Holy Spirit has anointed him with divine power.  But Satan remembers the pre-incarnate Son, and the man Jesus looks weak and frail in comparison.  Is this Jesus the real deal?  Similarly, Satan doesn't like that God has identified Jesus as the Savior of humanity by publicly supporting and vindicating Jesus at his baptism with prophecies highlighting he is the Messiah. 

Satan wants to counter what God has to say about Jesus, and he hopes his temptations will undermine Jesus' trust in who God says he is and the identity he gets from God.  Ultimately, however, Satan is defeated in this scheme.  Satan drops his prefacing "if" for the final temptation (showing he knows Jesus is the Son of God), and bungles up that temptation by trying to blackmail the Son of God into worship him! 

In the end, Jesus' baptism and temptation answer Satan's ruse by showing the Savior is truly the Son of God.  So the question Matthew has for you is this: "What do you think of Jesus?  Will you recognize Jesus as the Son of God who is God's Delight and Chosen One?"