Call on the Name of the Lord and be saved

Deuteronomy 26.4-10 The confession of faith of the chosen people.

Romans 10.8-13 The confession of faith of believers in Christ.

Luke 4.1-13 ‘Jesus was led by the Spirit in the wilderness and tempted by the devil’.

 

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Today’s readings set the bearings for this holy season of Lent: holding fast to God and resisting temptation.

 

The first reading from the book of Deuteronomy gives a summary of the Exodus of the people of Israel from their slavery in Egypt, through deliverance by God, who brought them through the wilderness into a promised land flowing with milk and honey.

 

That maps out what we know as the Paschal Mystery, the movement from death to life, slavery to freedom, darkness to light.

 

We enter into that mystery through baptism, which is at the heart of how Easter becomes real in our lives, so that we know the spiritual deliverance from death to life, slavery to freedom, darkness to light.

 

St Paul, writing to the Christians of Rome, our second reading, reminds us that this deliverance is made possible because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. The confession of faith, ‘that Jesus is Lord’ and that belief in one’s heart ‘that God raised Christ from the dead’ is our salvation.

 

And the final verse of each reading gives us the tools to navigate what Jesus faced in the temptations he underwent in the wilderness at the hands of the devil.

 

From the letter to the Romans, ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ And from Deuteronomy, ‘worship before the LORD your God.’

 

Before we look into the gospel reading it’s worth reminding ourselves what the Church says about evil and more specifically about the devil.

 

First evil is not a thing in itself.

 

St Augustine argues that evil is the 'privation of good. ' (Enchiridion 3:11)

 

Evil is good that falls short; extreme evil is an absence of the good.

 

So, an evil action happens when the good in someone’s life retreats.

 

That means we cannot say that a person is evil, but rather that what they have done is evil.

 

In the Bible the devil is the name given to the absence of good. And the devil has a number of titles.

 

He’s the diabolos a Greek word from which we get the word ‘diabolical’.

 

Diabolos means the one who scatters, who divides. This is contrasted with the action of the Holy Spirit which unites, and binds together.

 

The good is the work of unity and drawing together, the diabolical pulls apart.

 

He’s Satan, a Hebrew word which means ‘adversary’, the one who is against us. This is contrasted with the paracletos a Greek word, a title of the holy Spirit, which means ‘advocate’, the one who speaks on our behalf.

 

As the scripture says ‘if God is for us, who can be against us?’ (Romans 8.31b)

 

Jesus also describes the devil as the ‘father of lies.’ (John 8.44)

 

Let’s go to the gospel reading.

 

Jesus, full of the Spirit, goes into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights.

 

So he is filled with the Holy Spirit, ‘the Lord and giver of life’ the Spirit that unites him to the Father in love.

 

He goes into the wilderness, from which the Israelites were delivered, to battle the deprivation of the good, and, as we know, he prevails.

 

The three temptations press this deprivation of the good.

 

In the first temptation the deprivation of food is a possible way in for the one who anti-Christ.

 

The devil knows where to press, how to push the bruise.

 

He says to the famished Jesus, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.’

 

He is the Son of God and his sonship is revealed in his reply, resisting the food his body craves, to state that bread is not what sustains him ultimately: it is every word that comes from the mouth of God.

 

In the second temptation we see the great lie of the father of lies.

 

The devil shows Jesus all the earthly power anyone could possibly want.

 

‘To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will.’ (Luke 4.6)

 

There’s the lie.

 

The devil has been given nothing; the devil has nothing to offer, because the devil’s domain is the deprivation of good, not a thing in itself.

 

If the devil is given authority over anything it is certainly not by God.

 

We give the devil authority when we diminish the good: that’s when Satan enters in.

 

The gospel news is that the good is restored when our lives being flooded with God’s grace, when we remain faithful to the command:

 

‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
    and him only shall you serve.’ (Luke 4.8)

 

The third temptation tests the human desire for physical safety and God’s capacity to save.

 

But again, the devil is not given quarter.

 

The very name Jesus means ‘God saves.’

 

It is God who saves us, not our own merits, schemes or strategies: ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

 

And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Jesus until an opportune time.

 

When is that ‘opportune time’?

 

Surely it is when the good is diminished or absent, for that is the devil’s opportunity.

 

Let us not then give the devil opportunity in our lives.

 

Let us hold to those words from the letter to the Romans, ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

 

And from Deuteronomy, ‘worship before the LORD your God.’

 

May we continue through Lent resisting evil, showing the marks of a true Christian:

 

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honour. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. (Romans 12.9-13)