Limits

 

           Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”   (Matt 4:5-6, NIV)

 

I have always wondered about this temptation, the second of three that the devil brings to Jesus. I understand hunger and lust of power (the other two temptations). But what attracts someone to jump off a high building? Is the devil trying to tap into Jesus’ secret bungee jumping fetish? If the devil was smart, couldn’t he pick something that would frankly be more…tempting? 

 

There are several ways of approaching this passage. If we understand the devil tapping into the desire to move and stretch and achieve beyond the limits we know and feel every day—now that is a real temptation. Who of us trying out for sports in high school did not wish for stronger limbs, more agility and coordination? How many billions are spent yearly on ways to make ourselves look more beautiful? In my field of medicine, I have not found too many people with diseases or disabilities who would prefer to hold on to them rather than be cured or improved, getting rid of the limits that they bring.

 

The devil’s implication to Jesus is: “This world has limits. Gravity is one, your weak body of water and meat is another. You don’t need those limits! Your life would be so much better without them! Jump off this tower and see how God your father will break the rules for you! Go now, free yourself from foolish limits!”

 

Jesus is not against going beyond limits. He cured a paralyzed man and a man born blind. He breaks free from death itself in his resurrection. But he knows this must be on God’s terms. He knows his place as subject to God and God’s plan for the salvation of the world. The scripture he reaches for to answer the devil has to do with this exact issue: being under the rule of God, in honor to God, quoting God’s own word from Deuteronomy 6:16: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

 

My field of medicine is fundamentally an attempt to stretch and move the limits that we are subject to in our bodies: in disease, in aging, in death. Yet every intervention comes with a trade-off. You can live longer and without infections if you have HIV, but you have to take your meds. You have to have a surgery if you want to be cured of your infected gall bladder. You can often in the modern age live longer than before, but you will still be limited by age and disease. During COVID, there was a choice to reduce peoples’ risk of the virus, but at the cost of restrictions and vaccines.

 

I had a patient recently who had treatment after treatment, was in and out of the hospital, and was not getting better. Though we had moved the limits with medical care, he was still dying. Death is the ultimate limit on a person, and his was getting closer every day. When he decided to stop the intensive and difficult treatments, my patient accepted the reality of the limits of his physical body. Paradoxically, his freedom immediately increased since he was allowed to eat, going off the strict therapy plan.

 

Jesus knew that if he jumped off the tower and he lived, he would be cheating the limit of death. But Jesus, already limiting himself to time and space the night he was born in Bethlehem, chose again to be limited by death along with the rest of us. Paradoxically, Jesus death was the method God chose to save all of us, to bring us a new life in heaven—and deliver us from this death’s limits.

 

In our modern, developed world, we may have difficulty seeing the value of limits. Advertising tells us repeatedly how limits can be overcome by the newest product. Airplanes and rocket ships promise us the world and more. The temptation is strong to ignore the message of God who gave us limits so that we might look inward and upward and not only to our own happiness and comfort. Yet the devil’s well-dressed lie is still a lie, and the word of God is still the truth. Jesus invites us to follow him and accept limits for what they are: caring guard rales placed by a loving father who would rather not see us broken on the stones below.