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As Christians, we’re continually tempted by the moral compromises common to all people. Believers, however, face the additional temptation to sin as a means of serving Christ. The idea sounds ironic, absurd, and evil in the extreme—and it is. But when the pressures of a fallen world bear down on our service to the kingdom of heaven, sinful compromise can feel irresistible, even righteous.
When we worry that we aren’t equipped for the work that God calls us to, when a kingdom endeavor becomes “too big to fail” and we feel pressure to maintain it by any means necessary, when sin has already occurred and we worry that exposure will ruin reputations and devastate plans whose fruition would bring so much glory to God, we are in those worries so very vulnerable to the enemy’s ironic, absurd, evil suggestions. How, then, can we stand firm against uniquely Christian temptations to compromise? By fortifying our distinctly Christian consciences. Our King shows us how.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives a command and promise that together become the all-encompassing principle of Christian service: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33). Cultivating this principle as unequivocal personal conviction is crucial to avoiding moral compromise in kingdom service. By the time Jesus preached this principle, He’d already practiced it in the wilderness—and sent the devil fleeing (4:1–11).
At Jesus’ baptism, God the Father hailed Him as His beloved Son, the Holy Spirit descended on Him, and He began to walk in public ministry beneath the ever-darkening shadow of the cross (3:13–17). To prove His commitment to His calling, Jesus fasted for more than a calendar month and faced the tempter. Satan applied profound pressure from several angles to coax Jesus into compromise, offering Him a relatively painless path to claim the kingdom that the Father had promised (Ps. 2). The enemy encouraged God’s Son to use His divine power and prerogatives to avoid shameful human deprivations. Why not turn stones into bread instead of starving? Or, in a display of divine daring as the Messiah, leap from the top of the temple to be saved by angels in fulfillment of Scripture (Ps. 91)? But Jesus never exercised His deity to cheat the full experience of His humanity. Jesus loved and trusted the Father. No matter how heavily the felt needs of a fallen world weighed on Him, Jesus would not waver in doing His Father’s will. He proved in the wilderness what He later preached on the hillside: Life is more than food (Matt. 6:25), and the Father will provide everything truly needed to advance the kingdom.
After Jesus teaches us to ask our Father for our daily bread (v. 11), He tells us multiple times not to worry about food and clothing (vv. 25, 31, 34). Jesus’ impoverishment in the wilderness and humiliating death on the cross (27:50) show us that even if we lack these things, we can be content, and vital kingdom work can be done (Phil. 4:11–13). Indeed, through the severest deprivations, we are “more than conquerors” in Him (Rom. 8:35–39). Whatever our stresses, then, our labors for the kingdom must always reflect its righteous character and spiritual nature. Biblically, the spiritual is not opposed to the physical. Prioritizing the spiritual means subordinating the material to the purposes of God’s invisible, but very real, righteous reign over all things. Whether we eat or drink, we do all to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31).
When guided most fundamentally by a hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt. 5:6), we can spot the satanic snare lying behind every excuse to sidestep kingdom standards. It’s easy to feel that in the “real” world, doing everything in a righteous way is ineffective and impractical. But this raises the question of what we think is truly real and therefore effective and practical. Behold here the subtle work of Satan. If we feel an irreconcilable tension between realism and righteousness, we have already endorsed the enemy’s understanding of reality. Satan tempts us to seek first to avoid suffering for righteousness’ sake and to trust him to supply all the things we need for realistic kingdom work. But Jesus warns that it is impossible to serve two masters (6:24). He preaches God’s moral law right down to the secret motions of our souls, providing no room to call evil good or to redefine “good” as anything it takes to get kingdom work done. When we’re tempted to think that godly ends justify ungodly means, we must hear the tempter saying to us, “All this I will give you, if you will just bow down and worship me.” Our Lord steadfastly refused that compromise. Jesus came to beat Satan, not to bow to him. As members of Christ’s body, we must have His mindset (Phil. 2:1–16). Our kingdom work must not give Satan a foothold (Eph. 4:22–27). It must contribute to crushing him under our feet (Rom. 16:20).
Instead of worrying about the consequences of uncompromising obedience, we must remember that Jesus has forever secured for us the only thing we could truly never do without: our Father’s loving care. Satan’s sneering refrain “If you are the Son of God . . .” (Matt. 4:3, 6) insidiously suggested that the Father had lied at Jesus’ baptism (see Gen. 3:4). Surely God would never let His true, beloved Son suffer so. But trusting His Father’s word, Jesus rejected the devil’s lies. Christ’s steadfastness here contributed vitally to His making His followers fellow children of God (1 John 3). The devil wants us to doubt our Father’s loving care. Our Elder Brother, our King, commands us to cultivate that truth as unequivocal personal conviction.
Glorying in the Father’s care for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, Jesus proclaims the Father’s much greater care for us (Matt. 6:26). Jesus Himself is the guarantee and greatest proof of that love (Rom. 8:32–39). Relying fully on Christ, we can refuse all moral compromise. Come what may, we can seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness and know that our heavenly Father will always provide everything we need to make that seeking successful.