Issue 182
This is the second in a short series on the testing of Jesus as He started a new phase of the work He was born to do
If you watch an athlete, especially in a short race, you will often hear the commentators analysing the start. If the athlete gets off to a good start he or she is in which a chance – if a poor start, it is sometimes hard to recover.
In other contexts you hear people saying ‘start as you mean to carry on’. The same principles apply in work, in that once you have established a reputation it is hard to change it.
Staying with the race analogy, you will also have noticed how important it is not to fall at the first hurdle. Of course, it’s a problem if you fall at any hurdle but in the work context, as in a race, the damage always seems more severe if the fall is early on – literally you have no track record.
As you would expect, Jesus of Nazareth was acutely aware of this principle. The first hurdle in his new public race was to overcome the dilemmas of temptation. We will look at the individual temptations over this series but it is worth taking them as a whole to start with. What was the integrating theme of these three dilemmas being thrown in the way of the carpenter’s son as he embarked on his mission as the Son of God?
I would suggest that in all cases he was being tempted to take shortcuts: before him was placed a shortcut to satisfying his hunger and escaping physical struggle; there was a shortcut to enable a display God’s protection of him and a shortcut to power by obtaining it through compromise.
These temptations were thrown at him in order to lure him into being everything he was not. They represent an invitation to an inauthentic life – to live a life of short term gratification, stupid display and obtaining things by compromise. For Jesus of Nazareth it was a temptation not to do the work he was born to do in the way he was born to do it through the character he had.
The exact nature of these temptations is different to yours and mine (unless you know how to turn stones into food), but the dilemmas are the same. In the workplace you are constantly challenged to take shortcuts – individually and corporately – for immediate physical, material gain. The temptation to compromise for a quick fix is almost endemic.
More subtle, but no less real, is the temptation to reduce reputation while elevating the importance of a stupid issue. So a dispute will break out over trivia and people will reduce themselves to the size of the issue. “Unless this is sorted I will leave” is to, as it were, throw oneself off the building in the hope of forcing someone’s hand – often over something that doesn’t matter.
Less subtle but more dangerous is the temptation to obtain what you want at any price. Whether it be power, influence, money or status, what price are you prepared to pay? Jesus was being asked to give up all that he was for a prize which he really wanted. The problem was that this was the wrong route, the wrong price and involved a dishonourable deal with the wrong person.
This was a massive first hurdle – the place to start and then carry on. Here he was needing to get off to a good start and do the work he was born to do. Understanding this principle will alert you to the need for spiritual watchfulness when new starts arrive.
Knowing that the Son of God himself overcame these hurdles will be a great example and an inspiration to you.
Knowing the Son of God personally will, however, also show you deep in your soul that his good start paved the way for all good starts. His success here and later on is your hope and, even more mysteriously, leads to the realisation that even if you should fall at the first, second or any other hurdle, the race is not over. He started so you will finish.
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Work well
Geoff Shattock
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