Something that the gospels have in common is the pairing of the stories of the baptism of Jesus by John, followed by Jesus being tempted by Satan out in the wilderness. The details are expanded and contracted in different gospels.
We see that
as the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. It is
fairly obvious. But something to
consider is that this is also the beginning of Jesus’ Kingship. This is one aspect of the Messiah, that He
will be of the line of King David, that He will sit on His Father’s Throne. This has both an earthly and a heavenly
quality to it.
I think we recognize
the heavenly aspect far more quickly.
The language about heaven is that God will place Jesus at God’s right
hand. But the language is even more,
that Jesus will be given the place of God as our Judge, one huge aspect
of Kingship.
This is what
we interpret today. How about the first
readers of the Gospels? Now, there is an
axiom about interpreting the Bible that we can find Jesus on every page. What has struck me is that this pairing of
Jesus’ anointing and his temptation find a parallel in the Old Testament, in
regards to Kingship.
In the book
of First Samuel, first Saul and then David were anointed by Samuel, at God’s
command to be the kings of God’s people.
The story of David supplanting Saul is for another time, but there is a
striking parallel in each of their anointings.
The most obvious is Samuel. He is
the ‘judge’s judge’, forming a bridge between the book of Judges and the
regional “war leaders” to this centralized King.
In each case,
the man is identified to Samuel by God as the one to be anointed. Each man is chosen by God. This anointing is also a shared event. For Saul, it was done before the gathered people,
for David, it was among his brothers, in his immediate family (his public ascension
to the throne would come later). But what
marked each situation is what came next.
In each case,
once anointed as king, each man went to make war. For Saul, it was freeing the city of
Jabesh. For David, it would be going up
against the Philistine champion, Goliath.
This was the pattern of leadership from the time of the judges. Sampson, Jephthah, Gideon, all were called to
fight and free the people from invaders.
So it is with Saul and David.
For me,
having my attention drawn to the repeated patterns is what brought me to
this. While Jesus is prophesied as the
king to come, for original readers of this text, for whom the Old Testament is
not simply ‘more’ of the bible, but their own history, it was more plainly
written. The parallels of Jesus being
baptized, anointed by the Holy Spirit, and then going into ‘battle’ against
Satan I believe were not lost on those of the early church.
Neither
should they be lost on us as we seek ever more to understand more wonderfully, more
completely, who our Lord Jesus Christ is to us.
Peter Hofstra
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