The Temptations of Jesus and Our Justice Work Today

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The Temptations of Jesus and Our Justice Work Today

Herb Montgomery | February 20, 2026

If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:

Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 

The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 

But he answered, 

“It is written,

‘One does not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,’

and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,

so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 

Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,

and serve only him.’”

Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. (Matthew 4:1-11)

This year’s season of Lent begins with Matthew’s version of Jesus’ temptations. I’m grateful to be in the book of Matthew this year. Matthew’s version reminds us that the story of the temptations of Jesus is not about a private spiritual test for Jesus. The story portrays a confrontation with systems of power, scarcity, and domination. In the wilderness, Jesus faces three offers that mirror the injustices of the world: turning stones into bread, gaining political power, and using religion as performance. The problem of scarce resources and the call to turn stones into bread has historically been solved for the few at the top who ignoring the collective hunger of the masses.  Similarly, the powerful have not collectively shared political power but seized it through violence. And religion, too, has often been used to legitimize control. But Matthew’s story is of a Jesus who refuses each temptation. Matthew’s Jesus rejects exploitation, coercive authority, and religious manipulation. His choices reveal a vision of justice rooted in faith, solidarity, and liberation, the kind of liberation that still today has the potential to challenge our contemporary oppressive structures and call Jesus-following communities to pursue economic justice, shared power, and faith expressed through action for the common good of all, even those the present system marginalizes and harms.

Let’s start with the first temptation. Jesus’ temptation to turn stones into bread takes place in a world shaped by the Roman Empire’s economic violence. Roman rule concentrated land and wealth in the hands of elites, while peasants were taxed into hunger. Bread was never a neutral symbol; it represented survival under an extractive system that created scarcity for many to secure abundance for a few. In this context, the temptation is not about personal self-control, but about how to use power in a world of injustice.

The devil invites Jesus to use divine power to meet his immediate physical needs apart from confronting the systems that cause hunger. Had Jesus turned stones into bread, he could have alleviated his own hunger and perhaps even fed others, too, without challenging Rome’s exploitative economy. This would have been a form of charity that left oppressive structures intact. Jesus’ refusal signals rejection of a messiahship that solves symptoms while avoiding the deeper causes of suffering.

By responding, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,” Jesus invokes Israel’s wilderness story, where manna taught the people dependence, resource sharing, mutual aid, and resistance to hoarding (see Exodus 16). The manna story association here for Jesus followers hearing the gospel fo Matthew woule have called for resources sharing as means of resistance to Roman exploitation in their own context. In his own time, Jesus chooses fidelity to creating a world shaped by economic justice (his teachings on “the kingdom”) over a personal, private shortcut that would bypass solidarity with the hungry and oppressed.

For our social justice work today, this temptation warns against substituting band-aid fixes or benevolent charity for structural transformation. Feeding people matters deeply. Jesus will go on to feed crowds in the gospel stories, but never in ways that reinforce domination or distract from confronting injustice. The temptation to “turn stones into bread” reappears whenever we are urged to use power to manage suffering without naming its root causes, or when we seek temporary solutions that still preserve the unjust systems causing the “hunger” in the first place.

Jesus’ refusal calls us to resist unjust-system-preserving solutions and to commit instead to a justice rooted in restored humanity, shared abundance, and collective liberation and thriving. True bread comes not from the shortcut of magical interventions, but from transforming the conditions that make hunger a reality for so many in the first place.

Jesus’ second temptation of being tempted to throw himself down from the pinnacle of the temple so that angels might rescue him takes place at the very heart of Jerusalem’s economic, political and religious system. Remember, there was no separation of religion and state in Jesus’ society. The heart of their religious system functioned much as a state capital does and much the same as Wall Street and our Federal Reserve do in terms of economics. So the Temple was not a random location. It was also the symbolic center of God’s presence, and in Jesus’ time it was deeply entangled with Roman power. The priestly elites collaborated with imperial authorities, benefiting from taxation, land control, and economic systems that extracted wealth from the poor while maintaining an appearance of divine legitimacy. Taking all of this together, this temptation is not simply about personal risk or spectacle; it is about using religion to sanctify religious, political, and economic injustice.

The devil in Matthew quotes Hebrew scripture, and suggests that God will protect Jesus if he leaps. This represents a temptation to perform a dramatic, religiously sanctioned act that would force God’s hand and win public acclaim from those invested in the temple system. Had Jesus accepted, he would have validated the temple’s authority and its claim to mediate God’s favor, even as it participated in exploitation. A miraculous display would have drawn crowds without challenging the structures that oppressed them. Jesus refuses, responding, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” He rejects a faith that demands divine rescue while leaving unjust systems intact.

In the context of Roman occupation, this temptation exposes the danger of religious institutions aligning themselves with empire while claiming God’s protection. Jesus’ refusal signals that God is not impressed by religious spectacle divorced from justice, nor does God endorse institutions simply because they invoke Scripture or tradition.

This affirms what we read in Isaiah:

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?

says the LORD;

I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams

and the fat of fed beasts;

I do not delight in the blood of bulls,

or of lambs, or of goats.

   When you come to appear before me, 

who asked this from your hand?

Trample my courts no more;

  bringing offerings is futile;

incense is an abomination to me.

New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation—

I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.

  Your new moons and your appointed festivals

my soul hates;

they have become a burden to me,

I am weary of bearing them.

  When you stretch out your hands,

I will hide my eyes from you;

even though you make many prayers,

I will not listen;

your hands are full of blood.

  Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;

remove the evil of your doings

from before my eyes;

cease to do evil,

  learn to do good;

seek justice,

rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan,

plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:11-17)

For our justice work today, this temptation warns against relying on performative faith or symbolic gestures that leave systems of exploitation untouched. It also challenges activists and faith communities to resist the urge to seek legitimacy, safety, or influence through proximity to power. Throwing ourselves from the “pinnacle” might look like trusting courts, politicians, or religious branding to save us while avoiding the costly work of solidarity with communities who are presently oppressed and working alongside them for structural change. Jesus’ response calls us instead to grounded, risky solidarity with the marginalized and a faith expressed not in spectacle, but in sustained resistance to injustice, even when there are no angels to intervene.

Finally, the last temptation in Matthew’s version, the temptation in which Jesus is offered “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory,” confronts the deepest allure of power. In this story, the devil presents domination as the fastest path to change: Take control. Wield authority from the top. Enforce justice through coercion. Jesus’ refusal does not reject justice itself, but rejects achieving it through empire’s tools, which often are not even an option for grassroots justice movements on the edges of our societies. Jesus refuses to bow to the logic that says liberation must come through domination, violence, or allegiance to unjust power structures.

In the context of the Roman Empire, this temptation is especially sharp. Rome already claimed the kingdoms of the world through military conquest, economic exploitation, and religious legitimation. To accept this offer would mean becoming a “better Caesar,” ruling more kindly but still ruling through Rome’s way. Jesus instead chooses a different path. This path was one that exposes and undermines empire rather than baptizing it. His response, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him,” is a declaration that political orders built on oppression don’t deserve our loyalty. 

For social justice work today, this temptation remains profoundly relevant. Movements for justice are often tempted to seek change by compromising core values in exchange for proximity to power. They might silence critique to gain access, sacrifice marginalized voices for broader appeal, or adopt the same coercive tactics used by oppressive systems. Jesus’ refusal reminds us that the ends do not justify the means when the means replicate injustice.

In our justice work today, this story calls us to examine whom we stand in solidarity with, whose voices we center, what power we are willing to refuse, and why. True liberation comes from not from obtaining power at the expense of others, but distributing that power among the collective, with the presently marginalized being included, and with love and justice helping us choose justice without our becoming the very things we oppose.

Discussion Group Questions

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s podcast episode with your discussion group.

2. On what areas of social justice are the temptations stories focusing your attention this year during this season? Share and discuss with your group.

3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone? 

Thanks for checking in with us, today.

I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate. 

My latest book Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and also on Audible in audio book format.

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If you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.

Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.

I love each of you dearly,

I’ll see you next week.

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New Episode of The Social Jesus Podcast

A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice. 

This week:

Season 3 Episode 8: Justice Lessons from the Transfiguration

Matthew 17:1-9

For Matthew’s audience, following Jesus meant stepping into a living tradition of liberation and prophetic courage that stretches back through Moses and Elijah and continues in our social justice work today. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Moses represented God’s decisive intervention on behalf of the oppressed. The exodus is not merely a spiritual metaphor; it is a concrete act of liberation from economic exploitation, state violence, and dehumanization. To follow Jesus today, then, is to inherit his commitment to justice and freedom. It is to stand with those trapped in modern Pharaohs, systems of injustice and harm, and to declare that such systems are neither natural nor ordained. Elijah embodies another essential dimension of this tradition: speaking truth to power. Elijah confronts kings, exposes the violence hidden behind religious and political respectability, and refuses to bless unjust arrangements. His prophetic voice in the stories insisted that faithfulness to God cannot be separated from justice for the vulnerable. Jesus stands squarely in this lineage. He’s bringing this ancient struggle to its fullest clarity and urgency. In this sense, Christian social justice work is not a political add-on to faith; it is the faithful continuation of the work begun with Moses, sharpened by Elijah, and embodied in Jesus. Ours is a path that still leads from bondage toward freedom, from silence toward courageous truth, from death-dealing crosses of state violence to triumphant and overturning resurrections. 

Available on all major podcast carriers and at:

https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/the-temptations-of-jesus-and-our-justice-work-today

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Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.

 

by Herb Montgomery

Available now on Amazon!

In Finding Jesus, author Herb Montgomery delves into the profound and often overlooked political dimensions of the gospels. Through meticulous analysis of biblical texts, historical context, and social discourse, this thought-provoking book unveils the gospels’ socio-political, economic teachings as rooted in a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of the marginalized. The book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, presenting a compelling argument for a more socially engaged and transformative Christianity.

Finding Jesus is not just a scholarly exploration; it is a call to action. It challenges readers to reevaluate their understanding of Christianity’s role in public life and to consider how the radical teachings of the gospels can inspire a renewed commitment to justice, equality, and compassion. This book is a must-read for those seeking a deeper understanding of the social implications of Christian faith and a blueprint for building a more just and inclusive society.

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