Genesis 2: 15-17; 3:1-7 ; Romans 5:12-19 ; Matthew 4:1-11The Temptation of Adam and EveAs is usually the case on the first Sunday of Lent, we are given the story of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness for our Gospel. But, in order to understand the symbolic significance of this story, we must go back to the book of Genesis and to the temptation of Adam and Eve.As the story of Genesis tells us, God created a good and glorious world and, within it, he placed a garden paradise. In that garden, he put a man and a woman, Adam and Eve. The first two people, made in his image and given dominion over all the creatures of the earth, given the commandment to be fruitful and to multiply.At the beginning of our reading, we are told that the Lord God put the man in the Garden of Eden, to work it and to tend it. God gave the man every tree of the garden, except for one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God said to the man, “Do not eat of this tree, because, in the day that you do so, you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:15-17).We may wonder why the Lord God set up Adam and later Eve in this way: was it a trick or some cruel test of submissiveness? We speak here, of course, of deep mysteries, but it seems reasonable to say that God was seeking a response of obedience from Adam. In other words, he was looking for Adam to exercise his freedom to obey God and therefore to draw closer to him.This is an important observation because it relates to all human experience: God has given us freedom to choose. We can choose how we live. We can live righteous or unrighteous lives. We can be good or evil. Most fundamentally, we can offer our lives to God in faith and obedience or we can ignore God and live as though he were not there and as though he does not demand anything of us.Consider how profound this work of God is: our will – what we decide to do – is most truly the thing that is ours. God has truly given this into our hands. Everything else belongs to him except this. All we can say to God is that we offer ourselves to him. We have nothing else to give.…Or indeed, to withhold. And this is precisely how the story unfolds. The tree is given so that Adam and Eve might obey God. And yet, slightly further on in the story, we hear of a serpent in the Garden speaking to the woman, Eve. The serpent represents the devil, who we meet in the story of Christ in the wilderness. In the Garden of Eden, he begins by contradicting God’s words and saying that by eating of the tree the man and woman shall not die. And then he says something very interesting, “God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5).The devil is crafty. He is a liar, but he mixes lies and truth together to confuse and attack Eve. For it is true that God’s purpose in creating humanity was to make us like him. And the devil repeats this truth to Eve. Likewise, to have her eyes opened and to know good and evil was, in a sense, what God intended for her.But there is a crucial difference.God’s purpose for the man and woman was to know good and evil by rejecting evil through obedience.The devil’s purpose, on the other hand, was for them to know good and evil by embracing evil through disobedience and therefore knowing through direct experience what it was to disobey and to know evil.There was, in other words, a sense in which Eve would become like God. But it was not the sense that God had in mind – quite the opposite, in fact. For disobedience – then, as now – would separate Adam and Eve from God, whereas obedience would have united them with him.The Christian life is filled with temptation. We want that which is immediately pleasurable or pleasing to us. Through the grace of God, we can often embrace what he gives us as a gift from his hand. But there are many, many times when we must say, “no” to what is placed in front of us.Observe the dynamic: We have some kind of desire in life. Perhaps it is something unfulfilled – a desire for success in one’s career, a desire marriage and family, the fulfilment of some childhood longing. It could simply be a desire for pleasure or gratification of some sort.In order to have these desires fulfilled, we are often presented with a choice: the wrong thing now or to wait until the right thing presents itself.The wrong thing will be instantly gratifying but will lead us away from God and lose the lustre with which is shone in the beginning.The right thing may be difficult but it will lead us towards God and will make us receptive to whatever he has for us in the future.Adam and Eve made the mistake of going for the first option: disobedience, gratification, followed by desolation and spiritual death.Because of their example and the power of their actions, we follow in the same way. And thus we are destined for the same end.This is a sad story but it is not the end of the story.The Obedience of ChristWe turn now to Christ’s temptation in the wilderness.Immediately, we see that it was a work of the Holy Spirit to take Christ to the wilderness to fast forty days and to be tempted by the devil. We see that this is a retelling of the story of the Garden of Eden. Like Adam and Eve, the man, Jesus Christ, was put in an uncultivated place by God to abstain from food and to be tempted by the devil.Christ, then, is re-enacting the story of Adam and Eve, but doing it in the right way. It is like he is another Adam but, instead of disobeying God by the listening to the serpent’s voice, he is obeying God by contradicting it.The Early Fathers of the Church called this concept “recapitulation”. And the point of it is that, whereas Adam and Eve disobeyed God, Jesus uniquely and perfectly obeyed the voice God, living a perfect life and offering it in sacrifice to God upon the cross. In doing so, Jesus thus opened up a new way for humanity to be united with God.In our New Testament reading, Romans 5, the Apostle Paul speaks of Christ’s righteousness which is given to us.The Greek word that lies behind the words “righteousness” and “justification” in the New Testament is vigorously debated by scholars. But the essence of this word is to say that the perfect life of Jesus – and his perfect obedience – are, in some mysterious sense, transferred to us.And thus we are brought to God through Jesus and we are given power to live in a different way. We are given power to be obedient to him and to grow into ever closer union with him.Union with ChristAnd, yet, this gift of righteousness is not simply something static, like a kind of title which means very little and makes no difference to our lives.Rather, the gift of Christ’s righteousness transforms our hearts so that we desire to grow in union with God through Christ. We understand that what is being offered to us – in comparison with the deceit of sin and evil – is true life, true joy, true peace. And so we choose that instead. And we go on choosing that as we grow closer to the one who offers it to us.This is why Lent, really, is such a joyful time – because it gives us an opportunity to make that decision (to prefer God to other things) over and over again. Lent is not just about putting away obvious sin. That is, of course, very important and Lent is a good time to focus on this.But Lent is really an intensification of the entire Christian life, which is a stretching out for God, a desire to grow closer and closer to him, with every act of sacrifice or abstinence offered in petition that this may be the case.And, as we do these things, an unworldly joy emerges within us, a stillness that does not depend on the gratification of the flesh or the lust of the eyes or the pride of life. We glimpse the ultimate reality, our peaceful destination, our true home. And we recognise that we are willing happily to do without anything to arrive there.And so friends, we give thanks for the work of Christ in rejecting the temptation of the devil. We give thanks that he lived a perfect life for us and laid it down in his death. We receive his gift of righteousness. And we stretch out to grow closer to him and to God this Lententide.In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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