As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
The questions I’ve raised above are not ivory tower speculations. I believe these questions are important to answer if we are to understand fully the implications Christ’s temptation as well as his victory over temptation for you and me. Consider the following three points of practical application:
The greatest battle ever waged on earth’s soil took place two thousand years ago in the desert of Palestine. There met the champions of evil and righteousness. Satan, the most intelligent and powerful creature ever made and who’d become the archenemy of God, stood toe-to-toe with the Promised Descendant of Eve, Jesus of Nazareth, the long-awaited Messiah and the Son of God. It was a conflict of cosmic proportions. And the final outcome of his battle determined the destiny of men.
“Christlikeness looks different in different domains. Just consider: Christ offers particular commands to women and others to men; some to masters and others to bondservants; some to fathers and others to children; some to young men, others to old men, and still others to older women; some to pastors and others to church members.
“ ‘You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body’ (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). We are to glorify God with our bodies, not glorify our bodies. As Christians, our bodies are sacred, as the Lord has taken up residence in our lives.
“Anthropology is a topic of ecclesiastical concern in my own denomination. Last summer at its General Assembly, the Presbyterian Church in America appointed a study committee to consider questions related to human sexuality, having only two years earlier received a report on women in ministry. Many of the public controversies among Southern Baptists regarding gender roles, sexual abuse, critical race theory, and even church-state relations also touch directly upon anthropological questions.
“Whether it’s our infatuation with the concept of identity, or the increasing ethical questions surrounding AI (artificial intelligence), many in and outside the church will agree that our own age presents myriad questions about what it means to be human.” - TGC
The other day I was driving in downtown Kokomo and saw a comical sight—comical for me, at least. A man in pickup truck was backing into a parking space, tapped the streetlight pole with his truck’s bumper, and—boom! Down she went. Although he did not hit the pole hard, one weighty tap was all it took.
We, too, are fragile. In Psalm 103:13-14, the psalmist reminds us that, “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (ESV).
“There are people made in the image of God whose vocational gifts tend toward manual labor and craftsmanship. It is unhealthy to devalue those gifts in comparison to others.” - The Universal Basic Income and the Theology of Work
“But in fact there are people whom God has deemed to call good because His salvation has made them good. His Word records a number of examples…” - GARBC
Discussion