The Deifying of Need

by Grant Thorpe

Whether our major sphere of ministry is in a local church, or a campus group, the task we have to do is set out for us by the Lord of the church. He has established the people of God, has defined their task, and will secure their end. But Jesus himself was tempted, as Messiah, to act in ways which would have neutralised his ministry. What we call his period of temptation was not a time of moral temptation, but of vocational temptation: 'Are you the Son of God? Then what about doing this or that?' At every point, Jesus recognised the subversion for what it was and spurned its attraction.

The church, as the body of Christ, continues the ministry of reconciliation which Christ began. (See Col. 1:24-29 for a good example of this.) But the church also is tempted in the same way that Christ was, with regard to her vocation. How does she fare? Does she recognise the subtlety of the temptation and spurn the attraction?

I don't think it is easy to understand the temptations Christ encountered. It is easy to appreciate certain principles at work in them, but the difficulty we have in understanding them appears when we try to give examples of how they may reappear in our own circumstances. Jesus knew the breadth and significance of his task more clearly than any of us are likely to, and also knew the extent and power of the forces which gathered to oppose him. But we should seek to understand. We have the mind of Christ. We can ask for wisdom.

Jesus had fasted and was hungry. The first temptation that came was to make some food from the stones on the ground. Now who would recognise that as a temptation? Was his period of fasting not over? Was it wrong to perform miracles to satisfy his own needs? He performed miracles later to meet the need of others, and possibly himself (eg. stilling a storm, paying his taxes). Why was it wrong this time, and why should so much hinge on it?

We are dependent on Christ for the answer. He recalled Israel's wandering in a desert in Moses' day. The people had become hungry. They were humbled. They called out to God for help. God was testing them to know what was in their heart. Were they only interested in bread, or in his word to them? He gave them manna to eat, so that they would know that they did not live by bread alone (i.e., by an assured supply of it) but by everything that he said. God was disciplining Israel as a father disciplines his son (Deut 8:1-6). Jesus replied to his first temptation by recalling this moment of history.

Can it be that Jesus was being tested, to see what was in his heart? We know that, like all other human beings, he learned obedience by the things he suffered (Heb 5:8). Having come in flesh, he needed to decide to use his body to do the will of God (Heb 10:5-7). This resolution now appears to be tested in the crucible of his hunger so that he can affirm his trust and his love for the Father as more important than the meeting of his own needs.

As with Christ, so with his people. The church's task is to live by all that God says-and as much by his word of promise as by his word of command. But this cannot happen in a neutral environment. It must happen in the context of our daily necessities, and in the presence of our fears that in some way we will be deprived. One can readily see now why Jesus forbade anxiety regarding food and clothes. He did not want merely to encourage us, he wanted to warn us against giving too high a priority to our own human need, and not because those needs were unimportant, but because to doubt that they were important to God was unthinkable, and because life did not consist in these things but in hearing and doing the will of God.

In certain respects our own culture has raised the filling of human need to the level of the highest good. That may appear to be a noble ideal and of great benefit to society. But if it is a replacement for people's trust in God, it is an idolatry and ultimately destructive of our greatest good.

The church is tempted to follow the patterns of its environment every day. In particular, the church is tempted to make the needs of the world, or the needs of her own members, the basis for all her operation. In certain circles the church was urged to let the world write the agenda. The more modern phenomenon amongst evangelicals is to make a survey of needs-in the church or the community-so as to know what things to plan for.

We should be clear that Jesus went about meeting needs constantly, and in fact yearned for people to have the faith that God wanted to meet them in the midst of their need. So there is nothing amiss if the church seeks out and endeavours to provide for the needs of people. Hence the subtlety of the temptation. The question is, are we meeting the needs of others because we think their life consists in that? If so, we are diverting people from there true God and Father and we have become unfruitful in the work of the kingdom.

Each of us knows what he or she is doing in this regard. One may serve his neighbour out of faith, the other out of mistrust and rebellion, but they may work side by side. But Jesus was careful about how he responded to need. His mother implicated him in a need at a family wedding. But Jesus was not readily moved by his mother, and must have sensed, after the request, that herein lay the call of his Father to reveal his glory (John 2:1-11). Always, Jesus worked because he saw his Father working, and never otherwise. His works were the expression of his Father's care, not his anxious substitute for them.

When the church, or our campus groups, are accused of being out of touch with ordinary people and their needs, they may be correct. It may be that we are so far out of touch with the natural outgoingness of our Father and his Christ that we have nothing fresh to give to the world. But it may also be that we have never experienced the graciousness of God's word-his word of forgiveness and justification-and that in fact we are secretly ashamed of it. We may have opted for something more practical and more readily approved by the world. If we sense that God is distant and remote, our own needs, and the needs of our fellows, will loom so large that they will come to dominate our thinking and our planning. The lampstand of our witness will have been removed, and only a humanistic shell will remain.

Jesus recognised the temptation to deify need on this and numerous subsequent occasions. He had no doubt concerning his Father, and therefore no fears concerning himself and no panic for the world. He was in no danger of letting the world write his agenda. Through the gospel, this is the confidence we have as well. With the Messiah, we know that our future and our hope are assured, and that nothing is more important than the word that comes from God. It is because that word has caused us to come alive that we know that our life consists, not just in living, but in hearing and living out his word.

Ultimately, the question is: 'Can the word of God go to the depths of human awareness and need, and meet that need?' Those who have heard the word of God's kindness to the world, and watched it bear fruit in their lives and in the lives of others, will have no doubts at this point, and so will not be lured from their task by the first temptation. They know they have no means to live apart from God's word addressed to their conscience, and no right to exist apart from being obedient to its call.

But on campus and in the churches, Let us pray for a hearty heralding and hearing of that word of Christ and his cross. Let us also move out to do good to all as we have opportunity-not slavishly in response to the demands of others, but simply and in response to the purpose of God.

(Readers may wish to examine the second and third temptations as well. Read Matt 4:1-11. What do these enticements mean for Christ? For the church? And how do they apply?)