Response to the First Temptation
So what was Jesus’ response to the first temptation? He did not deny that humanity has tangible and immediate needs that the would-be leader must recognize and address. He himself was deeply moved by human want and acted with compassion when confronted with the needs of the poor, hungry, oppressed, and sick. He knew all about the need for bread, teaching his disciples to pray, “Give us today our daily bread.”27 In fact, he was several times so moved by the immediate physical hunger of those who came to hear him that he resorted to the miraculous in order to feed them.28
But to the tempter in the wilderness, who sought to influence the direction and principal thrust of his public ministry at its very outset, he responded by saying, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”29 In other words, he rejected the first advice of the tempter, who would have had him focus his public work solely on meeting the most immediate physical needs of humanity, by declaring that human beings have deeper spiritual needs that cannot be satisfied by bread alone or the products of business and industry alone or the services of governments alone—important as these may be in their place.
There are needs that the would-be spiritual, business, or public leader must recognize as being beyond his or her ability to satisfy, needs that cannot be satisfied by the products of industry or politics or governments, even if those outputs were supernaturally blessed. These needs ultimately can only be satisfied in a different way and from another source—the full range of grace and truth (“every word”) emanating from God himself. It is necessary that human beings’ need for bread—for the products of industry and the services of governments—be met, but that is not sufficient in itself to give us the abundant life that Jesus came to offer.
The Grand Inquisitor vehemently insists that Jesus made a huge mistake by failing to take this initial advice offered by the wise and dread spirit. “Thou didst reject the one infallible banner which was offered Thee to make all men bow down to Thee alone—the banner of earthly bread; and Thou hast rejected it for the sake of freedom and the bread of Heaven.”30
Later during Jesus’ public ministry he encountered this temptation again, this time not in the wilderness but in the public arena, and he responded in the same way.31 He was teaching on the far shore of the Sea of Galilee, and a great crowd gathered. He observed that they were hungry (he was not indifferent to hunger) and asked his disciples, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?”32 They protested that it would take eight months’ wages just to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite. But Jesus took what they had—five small barley loaves and two small fishes that a boy had brought for lunch—and miraculously multiplied these to feed the multitude.
When the crowd realized what had happened, they reacted precisely as Satan predicted they would if Jesus had turned stones into bread—they formed the intention to make him king by force.33 What was Jesus’ reaction? The disciple John, who recorded this incident, says Jesus rejected their advances, withdrew into the hills, and hid himself from them.
When they continued to seek him out he rebuked them, as he did Satan in the wilderness, saying, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs [the work of God] I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man [Jesus] will give you.”34 Jesus went on to preach a sermon on “bread from heaven” and did so in language and imagery so repugnant and offensive to his audience that even his closest followers said to each other, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” And, John added, “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”35
Implications for Us
So what are the contemporary equivalents of this first temptation for would-be spiritual or political leaders today and how would we—how should we—respond to them?
On the religious front, is not one of the modern equivalents the temptation for the spiritual leader to offer people some version of the prosperity gospel? “Follow Jesus, and he’ll give you economic prosperity and security here and now”—a very compelling and persuasive argument, particularly when offered to people in desperate economic circumstances as in much of the developing world.
On the political front, a contemporary equivalent is for the political leader or candidate for public office to offer voters only that which addresses their most tangible and immediate needs. “Vote for me and I’ll pave your road, reduce your taxes, increase your benefits.” This appeal can be refined and focused by doing extensive public-opinion polling, identifying the voters’ most immediate and palpable desires or grievances, and then promising to meet those regardless of the appropriateness of doing so or even the capacity of the candidate, leader, or government to do so.
Thus the tempter whispers to the political leader, “Base your appeal exclusively on an offer to meet their most tangible and immediate needs, and they’ll vote for you by the thousands. But stray off that message—for example, into challenging them with the responsibilities of citizenship and liberty or the sacrifices required to maintain freedoms or achieve equality or the demands of rendering service to others—and they’ll simply reject both you and your platform.”
As a former leader of a political party I have been very much involved in the development of election platforms, based in part on polling and in-depth assessments of “what the voters want.” In a democratic society where the needs and demands of the public are to be respected and responded to by those aspiring to public office, there is a place for doing so.
People do need bread—Jesus did not deny it—and they need jobs, incomes, housing, roads, schools, hospitals, and many of the services of the welfare state. But I think the temptation for us, those involved in democratic politics, is to come to believe that that is all they need, that if we could only satisfy the material and service needs of our electors we will have done all that can and should be done to achieve what the Grand Inquisitor referred to as the universal peace and happiness of man.
Perhaps the most important lesson from the first temptation is for leaders to recognize the limits to what political leadership, legislatures, and governments have to offer humanity. We can offer our people goods and services (and these are important), but we cannot in reality provide them with that which will satisfy their deeper human needs—deliverance from evil in their own lives, forgiveness for the wrongs of the past, the healing of broken relationships, or hope for the future that is independent of their material and temporal circumstances. These must ultimately come in a different way from another source.
It is Jesus’ response to the first temptation that cautions leaders against appealing solely to the immediate and the physical. It reminds us that human beings have basic needs that go beyond the material and the temporal. Jesus alerts us to the limits of what the market and the state can offer and deliver.
How do we—how should we—respond to the contemporary equivalents of the first temptation? The Grand Inquisitor says, Accept as offered the advice of the wise and dread spirit. Jesus says, Reject it—man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
