And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
The same Spirit who rested gently upon Jesus now drives him into the desert. This seems inconsistent, that one acting so gently would, almost in the same instant (note Mark’s use of ‘immediately’), violently expel Jesus into the wilderness. But we recall that gentleness does not preclude conviction, as Jesus himself demonstrates when he drives the sellers from the temple.
Jesus is portrayed here as the obedient one. He does not seek out his own mission, striding into the desert to dance with the devil. He does all things in accord with the will of the Father; thus he is led by the Spirit.
We are not told much about Jesus’ temptations. The other Gospels flesh out the narrative. Mark seems content to present the basic realities: ‘forty days’ locates Jesus in the preparation and salvation narratives of the Old Testament (we think of the Israelites before the promised land, and of Moses on Mt Sinai); Satan is real, dangerous and opposed to the Messiah. Furthermore, the spiritual peril of this episode is reflected in the sheer grimness of Jesus’ actual experience. There are ‘wild beasts’ (presumably dangerous), there is a lack of food and water, and don’t forget that half of this period would have been spent in total darkness.
This is a frightening experience that Jesus obediently endures. We must never imagine that we are any more than mortal human beings. If these things were dangerous to the Son of God – who, we note, needed angelic assistance – then they are dangerous to us. The fact that Jesus returns from the wilderness without stain, despite it all, points already to his sufficiency as the saviour.