My word-for-the-year... it appeared... in the quiet reading... of the morning...
As I look back on the three temptations, I see that Satan proposed an enticing improvement. He tempted Jesus toward the good parts of being human without the bad: to savor the taste of bread without being subject to the fixed rules of hunger and of agriculture, to confront risk with no real danger, to enjoy fame and power without the prospect of painful rejection --- in short, to wear a crown but not a cross. (The temptation that Jesus resisted, many of his followers, still long for.)
... The more I get to know Jesus, the more impressed I am by what Ivan Karamazov called "the miracle of restraint." ... God's terrible insistence on human freedom is so absolute that he granted us the power to live as though he did not exist, to spit in his face, to crucify him. All this Jesus must have known as he faced down the tempter in the desert, focusing his mighty power on the energy of restraint.
I believe God insists on such restraint because no pyrotechnic displays of omnipotence will achieve the response he desires. Although power can force obedience, only love can summon a response of love, which is the one thing God wants from us and the reason he created us.
--- Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (emphasis added)
...the miracle of restraint... Jesus refusing shortcuts... refusing to use His power to save Himself... the Creator... refusing to make His creatures... obey...
This truth... the heart of the Word... becoming flesh...
And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands.
As you have heard from the beginning, his command is
that you walk in love.
2 John 6
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