shattering your small cosmos: Discernment: even the devil knows the scriptures

Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: 'He will command his angels concerning you and with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.'"

Jesus answered him, "Again it is written, 'You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.' "

—Matthew 4.5–7 (NAB)

Today marks the first Sunday in our Lenten discipline, and the readings from today’s Lectionary provide the setting to demonstrate our need for repentance and forgiveness—the first reading describes the fall of humankind in the garden at Eden, and the second reading provides a bridge from our fall to Christ’s “fall” (for lack of a better word) via the crucifixion.

The Gospel reading is the temptation of Christ in the desert from the fourth chapter of Matthew, and what has always impressed me about this particular part of scripture is the very fact that is given elsewhere in Scripture:

…for Satan himself can masquerade as an angel of light…

—II Corinthians 11.14

Perhaps the reason it becomes to easy to fall into the temptations we fall into is because our enemy, Satan, has a knack for making things look so good, even using the things that are right and true to entice us into what’s not.

Note that in the first reading, from Genesis, that Satan was not wrong about the tree that Adam and Eve ate from. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it would indeed make them like God, having the knowledge of good and evil.

Note also Satan’s temptation in Matthew 4. The devil quotes correctly from Psalm 91.

But there is a huge difference. Satan has a way of using truth and twisting it for his own purposes. The difference between a right response and a wrong response is what we call discernment.

The difference between discernment and lack of discernment is clear between the Old and New Testament readings. Where Eve lacked discernment and didn’t foresee the consequences of her and Adam’s actions, Jesus had discernment to recognize the temptation and respond to it accordingly—note, with scripture (quoting from Deuteronomy 6:16).

Satan is not stupid. Remember he used be in God’s presence (Isaiah 14:12–15), and there are records in scripture of Satan having access to heaven and to God’s presence (see the beginning of the book of Job). The devil knows the Scriptures and knows truth and just the right twists on it to push his agenda.

There’s another passage this reminds me of: