Growing in Christ
Sin and Temptation
Review: Tempted and Tried by Russell Moore
18 months ago
It seems a little odd to me to try and make a bridge between us on the subject of temptation. If the news outlets are any indicator, Senators still face the temptations of infidelity, government heads still face the temptations to oppress and abuse power, mariages are still fraught with the temptations of adultery and financial anxieties, and on the whole, people continue to live in a fallen, broken world.
When it comes to understanding the nature of the temptations we face and how to find help and hope, there’s no better person to look to than Jesus. Jesus was tempted, and was tempted by none other than Satan himself, in the flesh. It’s this passage out of Matthew 4 about the temptation of Jesus that Russell Moore opens up for us in his book, Tempted and Tried: Temptations and the Triumph of Christ.
Maybe this seems like a strange angle to you in understanding your own temptations. How can Jesus, who was sinless, relate with someone like you and me? Deep down, maybe you whisper with me, “Isn’t learning from giving in to temptations and making mistakes just what it means to be human? So how can Jesus relate with that?”
Here is where Dr. Moore is helpful. In his book he plainly opens up the temptations Jesus faced in Matthew 4 and breaks them down so we see the full weight of what was at stake in each of Jesus’ temptations. At the root of every real temptation Jesus faced was a temptation I feel so desperately allured by every day. Have you ever just wanted to be provided for, protected, and given good things? If you’ve ever faced those desires, and the sinful temptations to get them apart from God, then you have an idea of the temptations Jesus faced.
But this is how Moore’s book is helpful. Jesus didn’t just come to endure the temptations we face on a daily, hourly basis, he came to conquer them. He came to be tempted and tried so that he could vindicate his people to new life. Where our father Adam failed, Jesus came to be faithful.
Ultimately, temptations are about identity – the call of where we’re going to find it, and who’s going to satisfy our cravings. But it’s not just about finding idenity, it’s about who that identity is in. Moore makes this brilliant insight into Jesus’ temptation, and implicitly, our own:
Satan was not just trying to temp Jesus; he was attempting to adopt Jesus. Satan, in all three temptations, is assuming the role of a father – first in provision, then in protection, and now in granting an inheritance. Satan didn’t just want to be Jesus’ lord, he wanted to be his father. (137)
At the root of temptations are the question: Who are you going to call your father? God or Satan. Bob Dylan once sand, “It might be the Devil, it might be the Lord, but your gonna have to serve somebody.” At the root of Jesus’ and our temptations are the question of who we’re going to serve and root our identity in. Moore is helps us see the real, raw, weighty nature of Jesus’ temptations, and how we are not only assailed by the same temptations, but how rooting one’s identity in Christ through repentance and faith, being a child of our Heavenly Father (rather than our satanic father) is key to walking in newness of life.
If you’re like me, this can all begin to feel a little… invasive. But that’s the point – you and me need the invasion of a Healer, one who can fix our brokenness. This is how Moore’s book is so deeply helpful. Moore is clear and articulate in opening up Scripture, and he aptly exemplifies the sympathy of Jesus for sinners like us in the pastoral, caring heart of Christ he takes in his posture towards us in how he applies Scripture. This book is profoundly practical and rich with good insights into how we live.
I think that on the spectrum of books about sin in the Christian life, Moore’s Tempted and Tried is one of the most accessible books on the subject. Obivously John Owen has written a great deal about sin and temptation, but even abridgments and updates of his work can be rough reading. Moore’s angle of engaging the Christian life through the life of Christ is immediately helpful. If you want to overcome sin with simply more of Jesus, then entering in through the temptations and triumph of Jesus is the place to begin.
In the end, my only critiques of the book is that the chapters are long and that I despise end-notes (the constant flipping to the end of the book!). But, eh… that’s small beans, and I need to get over myself.
If you want to know more about the temptations of Christ and his compassion for sinners like us, read this book. If you want to overcome sin and temptation, but know that such a goal must require Jesus to succeed, read this book. If you’re weary of being beat over the head with moralistic rules on how to overcome weaknesses, read this book. If you want a profound adoration and love for Christ to be the powerhouse in working through temptations and sin, read this book.
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If you’d like to read a few selections from Moore’s book, I’ve quoted him here, and Tim Challies has put two selections up here and here.
Title: Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ
Author: Russell D. Moore
Boards: paperback
Pages: 196
Volumes: 1
Dust jackets: n/a
Binding: sewn and glue
Topical index: yes
Scriptural index: yes
Publisher: Crossway
Year: 2011
Price USD: $13.99 / $10.04 at WTSBooks
ISBN: 978-1-4335-1580-4
Danger: Seeing temptations as normal
19 months ago
I’ve had a realization about a way I’ve been reading the Bible all wrong.
I’m thoroughly enjoying Russell Moore’s latest book, Tempted and Tried, which is about the nature of temptation and how we find hope in Christ’s triumph over temptation (specifically in his time in the desert being solicited by Satan).
In a section of chapter two, Dr. Moore opens up James 1:13:
But the danger is that we might see our temptations as a normal part of the fabric of the universe, as the way things are supposed to be. That’s true for both believers and unbelievers. We must recognize that “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (James 1:14). The human story, after all, starts with a man who blames God (“the woman whom you gave to be with me,” Gen. 3:12) for the fact that he fell into his own twisted desires. (37-38, bolding mine)
This hit me square in the face. How often do I excuse my own temptations as just a part of the way the universe is? Which is to implicate God, because this is just the way he’s made things to be – for my struggle… What Dr. Moore is doing here is two things:
- Helping us see that our desires are good and God given to be used and enjoyed how God designed them to be.
- Temptations that seek to pervert those desires are not the way God designed the universe to be.
This is to say that God designed us with good desires to enjoy the world around us. But God did not create us to satisfy our desires by our own designs. For example, it’s natural to desire friendship. It’s natural to desire to love others and to live in loving fellowship with them. What’s unnatural and twisted (and kinda creepy) is how I pervert those desires to be about my sense of feeling accepted, turning other people into servants to my sinful cravings and desires of how I want to be loved and adored. Instead of using my desires for friendship as God intended to love and delight in other people, I treat other people as though they have to serve my idols of anxiety and finding identity in their praise. (And if you’ve been around this whirling planet enough, you’ll know that this endeavor never works, and never satisfies.)
Dr. Moore goes on:
We too often assume our current sinful status is what it means to be “real.” That’s because we’ve never known a world in which there is no sin. If you grow up all your life on a coastline near an uncapped oil spill, you might conclude that seagulls are covered in tar. As you read or travel, though, and see the birds in their natural state, you’ll discover your experience was abnormal; that’s not the way it’s meant to be. Too often we dismiss as ‘all too human” that is not human at all; it’s a satanic nature parasitically imposed on the human after the fall of Eden. (43-44)
What I began to see here is that those temptations I feel as so natural – from the craving to have acceptance with others, to the lustful look at a woman – is my way of blaming my sin on God. I think I’m far too often the type, as Dr. Moore points out, that thinks “blaming my temptations on God” is something people do who are in bed with their adulterous lover and they just “couldn’t help but follow their ‘soul mate’, this is God’s fault for sending love.” But I think James is aiming much closer to home.
Dr. Moore moves on to say this:
…[M]uch of what we include in “temptation” isn’t temptation at all. It’s beyond our good, created desires being appealed to. It’s instead those embryonic stages of sinful desire. (45)
I think the application here is simple:
Recognize where you and I are seeing temptations and sins as “normal” as anything but normal. The seagull isn’t supposed to be drenched in oil, no matter how long we’ve seen him like that. Our world and heart aren’t supposed to be drenched in temptation, no matter how long we’ve learned to live like they are.
Recognize that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). When we see that our desirse are twisted, we need to repent, and ask God to correct them to be the good gifts they were designed to be.
May God give us grace to do this.
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If you’re interested in Dr. Moore’s book, Tempted and Tried, I recommend you check it out here. You can also follow him on twitter. I’ll be writing a review about it in the days to come.
No bare life in Christ
01 year ago
I’m warning you, if you keep reading, you’ll be filled with the joy of Christ, but it won’t be easy.
With that said, I wanted to share one of those glorious gems I’ve come across in reading John Owen.
Neither does this living head communicate only a bare life unto believers, that they should merely live and no more, a poor, weak, dying life, as it were; but he gives out sufficiently to afford them a strong, vigorous, thriving, flourishing life (John 10:10). He comes not only that his sheep “may have life,” but that “they may have it more abundantly,” that is, in a plentiful manner, so as that they may flourish, be fat and fruitful. Thus is it with the whole body of Christ, and every member thereof, whereby it “[is] to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph. 4:15-16 – changed to ESV). The end of all communications of grace and supplies of life from this living and blessed head [Jesus Christ] is the increase of the whole body and every member of it, and the edifying of itself in love. His treasures of grace are unsearchable; his stores inexhaustible; his life, the fountain of ours, full and eternal; his heart bounteous and large; his hand open and liberal: so that there is no doubt but that he communicates supplies of grace for their increase in holiness abundantly unto all his saints.
Wow, ok, take a knee. We need a breather. Dr. Owen is saying that Christ did not save us to be dull Christians, who plod along. Jesus did not save us to have a “bare life”, but a life full of joy in him. I don’t know about you, but this is a continual struggle for me. I don’t experience the joy of Christ very much. I’m probably not what you would call a regularly happy Christian.
However, it is not through introspection that this spiritual demeanor changes. Change comes actually through seeing this grand reality that Owen holds forth. Growth comes through love; love for Christ and what he offers that makes us happy – Himself. Being united with Christ through faith means that we enter into enjoying the joy and love of God. Christ has paid what our sins deserve, that we might receive what he deserved: unending, ever increasing joy in God. And it is through Christ himself that we receive this life that is more than bare life. It is a life with God. It is a life of joy.
But yet, maybe you’re asking with me, “Yes, I know this is true, and have tasted it from time to time, but why do I feel that my faith is stale and weak, and that my joy in Christ is minimal at best?” Owen, in being a thoughtful pastor, got on to help us at this point.
Oftentimes Christ gives very much grace where not many of its effects do appear. It spends its strength and power in withstanding the continual assaultsof violent corruptions and lusts, so that it cannot put forth its proper virtue toward further fruitfulness…It is forced oftentimes to put forth its virtue to oppose and contend against, and in any measure subdue, prevailing lusts and corruptions. That the soul receives not that strengthening unto duties and fruitfulness which otherwise it might receive by it isfrom hence. How sound, healthy, and flourishing, how fruitful and exemplary in holiness, might many a soul be by and with that grace which is continually communicated to it from Christ, which now, by reason of the power ofindwelling sin, is not only dead, but weak, withering, and useless!
Owen’s point is this. Often, the people of Christ bemoan their own weakness, minimal growth in grace, and lack of joy in Christ, all the while Christ is at work! They forget to see that the grace that would be working fruitfulness in their lives is actually working to prevent them from growing worse in sin. Owen gasps with us at how healthy many Christian souls would be, how happy they would be in Christ, if the grace they would be enjoying weren’t attacking their primary enemy: sin!
This Christ that we love is so full of grace towards us that he is working in us even in (especially in) those moments when we least feel it. Christ is killing and holding back our sinful nature that he has conquered, even when we don’t think to ask him to do it. (And then I go and moan to God about not feeling his presence… all the while he’s preventing me from becoming a worse wretch than I would naturally be.)
When we see the “life abundantly” that God has for us in Christ, the moments of weakness are filled with the confidence that Jesus is with us, even when we don’t know the joy of his presence, so that we can find even more joy and happiness in him. He is our fountain of life.
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My quotes come from Overcoming Sin and Temptation by John Owen, edited by Kelly Kepic and Justin Taylor. You can pick it up at Westminster Books for a bare $13.67. I highly recommend it! It will have a profound impact on your walk with Christ and your joy in the Holy Spirit.
