There’s a scene from the movie Saving Private Ryan that has been seized on by some Christ followers as illustrative of the motivation to follow that should drive our life as Christ-followers. The movie centers around a young soldier who parachuted in behind German lines and ran into problems. As a result, an elite team of Army Rangers was sent in to rescue him. Their efforts to locate him eventually lead them to a bridge where German tanks were trying to break through Allied positions—a setting where they ran into fierce opposition and paid a terrible price. As Captain Miller—the commander of the rescue squad played by Tom Hanks—lay dying, he drew Private Ryan—played by Matt Damon—close and, with his final breaths, said, “Earn this! Earn it!” He knows he and his men are about to die and he wants this young soldier to feel the weight of duty to live a life that repays the debt.
If you fast forward to the end of the movie, it ends with Ryan, now an old man, on his knees at Miller’s grave saying, “Every day I think about what you said to me on that bridge. I’ve tried to live my life the best I could. I hope that was enough. I hope in your eyes I earned it.” And then he turns to his wife and says, “Tell me I’ve led a good life. Tell me I’m a good man!” It’s a poignant and powerful moment in a gripping movie, but there’s also a heartbreaking element to it. For here’s a soldier who lived under the impossible obligation to earn a sacrifice made for him … who felt the weight of a crushing imperative and could never quite be sure if he’d done enough to merit it. He knew he’d been the recipient of a costly sacrifice and he wanted to be sure he was deserving of it. But he never had the assurance that was the case.
For many, that mirrors their understanding of the Christian life. Jesus died to save me and now it’s my job to live life in a way that’s worthy of what He did. Not that there’s anything wrong with feeling a sense of debt for Jesus’ sacrifice—we should! Every time we take communion, we’re reminded of the profound nature of what He did on our behalf. But this is an approach that, if we’re not careful, can foster a deep sense of guilt and turn our relationship with Him into an onerous and burdensome thing—something that’s not sustainable for the long haul. After all, who wants to go through life connected to a God who makes us continually feel guilty and bad about ourselves. And like Private Ryan we can never be sure if we’ve done enough … if our efforts to prove worthy of His sacrifice were sufficient.
It’s against that background that Matthew 4:1-10—the account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness—has taken on new significance for me. For if we take the Private Ryan approach and think the best way to promote obedience in our life is to drive ourselves with the whip of indebtedness—if guilt and the intense stress of proving ourselves worthy of a sacrifice made on our behalf is fueling our efforts to follow Jesus—we see this story as a lesson in how to do the right thing. We watch Jesus rebuff the onslaught of the devil. We pay particular attention to his methodology—answering his attacks with Scripture. And all the while we tell ourselves, “Here’s how I ought to live. Here’s what I should be doing.”
Please don’t misunderstand. Jesus is our example, and we should learn from Him. But if this passage results in us feeling a deeper sense of guilt for how we’ve fallen short, I believe we’ve not only misunderstood what it’s trying to teach us, but we’ve also misunderstood God’s method for stimulating followership in the first place. For a life of following Jesus isn’t supposed to be a life of guilt, bondage, and enslavement. It should be a life of freedom, joy, and delight.
This story happens at the outset of Jesus’ public ministry … when He’s transitioning from embracing the family trade of carpentry and starting to lean into His identity as the Messiah and Son of God. It begins with a time of intense testing and, at the end of an extended fast, the devil comes to Him and says, “If you’re the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.” There’s a sense in which this temptation was entirely plausible—in fact, one of the things that often makes temptation so hard to withstand is the fact it makes sense on the surface. It seems reasonable. “You’re the Son of God. Use your power to satisfy your hunger. Nothing wrong with that.” But Jesus’ answer addresses not the reasonable tone of the temptation but the underlying lie. He quotes a verse from Deuteronomy 8—a chapter that recounted God’s care for the Hebrew children during their wandering in the wilderness. As you know, they faced many trials and tests during that season—each of which was designed to bring them to a place where they depended more fully upon the promise of the Lord than they did upon His provision of bread.
This first temptation was a temptation to be dissatisfied—to be frustrated and annoyed with God’s plan … to be exasperated with His guidance when it introduced some measure of difficulty and hardship into our life. It’s a temptation many of us know quite well. For instance, when someone else’s path seems easy and painless and ours feels strenuous and hard, who of us hasn’t been tempted to accuse God of being indifferent and uncaring? This was the initial temptation Jesus faced.
Next, Satan comes at him with a temptation to doubt—to doubt God’s reliability … to doubt the veracity of His promises … to test one of them and see if He really was as dependable as He claimed to be. And again, how like Satan … to twist and distort Scripture to give his temptation a measure of plausibility. We’ve all experienced this—in fact, we’ve all probably done it at some point—manipulated and skewed Scripture to justify something we want, or something that feels legitimate to us.
Jesus again responds by quoting a passage from Deuteronomy … this time from chapter 6. The context there is drawing the people’s minds back to an episode recorded in Exodus 17 where the Hebrew people, because they had no water, griped and grumbled against the Lord—a place that was ultimately given the name Massah (which means ‘grumbling’) because they tested the Lord. Deuteronomy 6 was basically a warning—a reminder—for Israel not to repeat that mistake and test the Lord that way again. It was this experience Jesus leveraged when the devil came at him and tempted him to put the legitimacy of God’s promise of protection to the test.
Then, finally, the devil comes at him and suggests a shortcut. “No need for a life of obedience. No need for the cross. You can sidestep all the sorrow and pain if you’ll merely bow down and worship me.” We can certainly question whether Satan was in the position to offer what he offered to Jesus—I don’t think He was. But that essentially misses the point. For the point is Jesus was tempted to bypass the hard stuff so He could get to the good stuff … to take the easy road … to avoid the suffering that came with the territory of being God’s Son and experience just the accolades and benefits. It was a temptation to embrace glory without the Cross … to experience the spoils of victory without obedience. And again, how like us—to cut corners and take a shortcut to what we perceive to be a beneficial payoff or a good end.
As I look at this story and think about how it applies to our lives, I think it has a very important, but often overlooked, message. The lesson of this passage is not that Jesus had a better technique to respond to temptation than we do … one that enabled him to succeed where we’ve so often failed. Nor is it that we need to do a better job of memorizing Scripture so that when Satan comes at us, we can have something at the ready that can put him in his place and we can move on down the road. Again—not that memorizing Scripture is a bad thing … it’s not! But our entry into heaven is not going to be determined by how many Scripture passages we can recite. Our eternal destiny is not the result of how we score on some entrance exam that will gauge our Bible knowledge or how many landmark verses we can recite by memory. Our entry into heaven is determined by whether our character conforms to the example of Jesus … whether the values, priorities, and principles for living we see evidenced in Him have been emulated, replicated, and duplicated by us.
So, the question is, “What will enable us to replicate the values, priorities, and principles for living demonstrated by Jesus?” And I’m convinced the Captain-Miller-to-Private-Ryan approach isn’t up to the task. A sense of debt can’t motivate the kind of followership that is at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. Feelings of guilt can’t elicit the kind of patterning oneself after His example that is the essence of what it means to be a follower. The only thing capable of doing that is grasping the wonder of what He did for us on the cross and realizing that salvation comes to us as a gift—not as a burden to be endured or a duty to be submitted to. Jesus doesn’t come to us and say, “Well now, since I’ve done this incredible thing for you, I need you to earn it. Don’t make me regret what I’ve done for you!” That’s a lie of Satan that is every bit as twisted and distorted as anything He experienced in the wilderness.
I’m convinced the motivation needed to effectively follow Jesus is not one of approaching life as if we’re a debtor trying to work off a loan. The motivation needed is one of seeing what He did as an expression of His deep, deep love and recognizing that He gave Himself freely and willingly for us. When you receive a gift, as you know, you don’t pay it back—to try to do so would offend and insult the giver. When you receive a gift, it sparks in you a disposition of gratitude and thankfulness. And it is that kind of mindset—one of appreciative hindsight and grateful remembrance as opposed to one of being in debt and riddled by guilt—that can motivate the kind of allegiance reflective of true followership. To follow Jesus is not a matter of trying to somehow earn and be worthy of what He did on our behalf. To follow Jesus is to recognize the life-changing nature of what He did and live all of life as a never-ending “thank you”—to strive to love Him back as fully and completely as He loved us.
Granted—these two approaches probably look very comparable and similar on the outside. The life of the person who’s driven by guilt and trying to pay off a debt will likely look very much like the life of the person who’s doing what they’re doing out of a deep sense of gratitude and love. In terms of the external, you likely won’t see a great deal of difference. But on the inside—in that hidden realm only God can see—there will be a stark difference. For the life that flows out of love will have a joy, buoyancy, and delight to it. There will be an air of contentment, enjoyment, and well-being about it. It won’t have a sense of encumbrance and heaviness about it. It will be marked by cheerfulness, enthusiasm, and a sense of sparkle.
It was Augustine—the early church father who lived from roughly 350-430 AD and whose writings had an incredibly profound impact on the theology of the church—who said, “Love God and do as you please.” At first glance this sounds like he’s giving us a license to live a double-life—to do anything we want because it’s OK … to indulge ourselves and satisfy our deepest desires in whatever manner we choose because it really doesn’t matter … to receive the gift of salvation and not feel any kind of compulsion to live out its practical implications. But in actuality, this statement is anything but. For when we genuinely and truly love, our deepest impulse and motivation will be to please and honor the One we love. When we genuinely and truly love, the inclination of our heart will be to delight and be faithful to the one we love. The soul trained to love God will not intentionally and knowingly do anything to displease, injure, or offend Him.
And that should be the motivation that undergirds our followership. We don’t do what we do because we’re trying to prove ourselves worthy. We don’t do what we do because we feel guilty and we’re trying work off a debt. We don’t do what we do because we perceive an deep sense of obligation. We do what we do because we love Him deeply, are exceedingly grateful for all He’s done, and want our life to be a comprehensive and continual “thank you”. That’s the only motivation to follow that will sustain us for the long haul. That’s the only approach that will enable our life of followership to be one of joy, delight, and pleasure and not one of exhaustion, duty, and drudgery. For God did not invite us to a life that is exacting and heavy—challenging, yes, but not arduous. He invited us to a joyful, exuberant, and buoyant life—one where the yoke is easy and the burden is light.