Temptation = Attempted Identity Theft

If you have an email account, you have no doubt received dubious emails asking you to supply bank account or credit card information to the sender under the pretense that they are going to use your information to help you or someone you love. All but the most gullible among us immediately recognize that this is a scam; that the sender is trying to collect personal information about you so that they can steal your identity for their own benefit. But have you ever considered how much temptation is like this? Satan sends each of us thousands of pieces of ‘spam’ every day hoping that we will be suckered into responding and letting him steal our identity in Christ. Temptation is nothing more than the attempt to deceive us into relinquishing our identity to the enemy.

The very first temptation recorded in scripture was of the same nature. The enemy only has one trick up his sleeve, and it’s the one he used on Eve:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1-5)

See what he did there? Adam and Eve were God’s son and daughter. They lived in the presence of a perfectly holy God without fear, sin or shame. They lacked nothing at all. But the crafty serpent issued his first ‘spam’ in the garden and tricked Eve into surrendering her God-given identity to him, resulting in disastrous consequences for all mankind.

The more secure we are in our identification with Christ, the less likely we are to fall for these schemes. Jesus was so secure that the temptations of Satan could not penetrate his identity, though Satan effectively used the same methods with him that he had with Eve. The tempter came to him with the intent to make him doubt his own identity, prefacing his temptations with “If you are the Son of God”. Of course Christ’s identity was rock-solid and he would not fall for it.

Back to our email analogy; how often to I sit at my desk and consider sending my account information to a spammer before I delete the email? Never. How often do I even bother to read email from someone I don’t know and trust before deleting it? Never. How often do I toy with the offers of the tempter before deleting them? How often do I reply, giving up my identity in Christ? Food for thought.

Secular society defines temptation as flirting with a naughty pleasure. I think much of that thinking has seeped into the church. In some cases, I myself view temptation as something with naughty appeal. The problem is that I have adopted society’s view of temptation. Many products have the word ‘temptation’ in their name because it appeals to this desire we have to flirt with sin. But when I redefine temptation as scripture defines it – an attempt to deceive me into giving up my identity in Christ – it seems far less ‘sexy’.

Sin, for the Christian, is always a momentary identity crisis. It is relinquishing our identity in Christ to be identified with something else, whether that be money, career, family, sex, fame or food. Temptation itself is not sin, but the blatant attempts of the enemy to get us to relinquish our true identity in Christ. “If you are a son of God”, he says to us. He attempts to convince us, as he did Eve, that there is something that we need that God has not provided in Christ. In the moment we reply to that spam, we relinquish our identity, and that is sin.

The next time the tempter sends spam to you, don’t bother to open it. Tell the enemy that you know he only wants to deceive you and that there will be no pleasure in the things he is offering. He is nothing more than a liar, albeit a good one. Don’t allow yourself to give up the identity to which God has called you in Christ. That is the gospel truth. 

God Bless