The Stealthy Light

The story of Jesus’ temptation in the Gospels offers a fascinating window into the dynamics of the Trinity and more specifically God the Son’s relationship to the other members of it. But it also gives us insight into the devil and the nature of evil. 

At the onset of this story, we can see that Jesus does not ask us to live the kind of life that He didn’t live Himself. Christ asks us to follow Him, and this results in friction with the prevailing spiritual climate around us. This friction includes the possibilities of being allured by the culture of those who are only interested in following their definitions of what it means to be human apart from God's loving rule. Satan hates God’s rule at the core of his personality. As much as Jesus loves His Father's ways, the devil hates them with an equal intensity. We often idolize the rebels, but Satan isn’t opposing a fascist regime or a corrupt system, he is opposing a good Father. He is opposing the crucified heart that birthed the world.

God knew that the possibilities of choice would create a world and the beings that occupy it, a chance to rebel and destroy the good things He wanted to build. Out of love, God built the world anyway. Love gives life unreservedly as well as the freedom of choice: what happened, happened.

It is no surprise then that Satan wants to destroy the promised Messiah and the only chance of redemption. In the temptation narratives we can see that Satan is obsessed with his own empire and power. There is a type of insanity in the devil; he knows that his power is not anywhere near that of God’s own, yet he is driven to usurp the Creator and the only One who never had a beginning. His obsession has caused him to lose all rationality. Satan is a being fixated on his own desires to such a degree that he has lost his own identity in them and has elevated them to the place of Yahweh Himself. In order for his desires to become realized he has to abandon all sense and reason and fight an impossible war against a being who not only is power but also is love. Therefore, Satan becomes a black hole that devours all light because he has no love in his heart. He cannot create, because that is too self-giving; therefore, he can only destroy.

In the first two temptations Satan attacks Jesus’ identity: “If you are the Son of God...”, but in the last temptation the devil offers a short cut to power, he offers Jesus the world:

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God

and him only shall you serve.’” - Matthew 4:8-10 ESV

It seems strange that the devil would offer God Himself power when He is power, yet we can also see that the devil was not completely aware of Jesus’ true nature. For all the power and knowledge the devil had accumulated over his lifetime, he does not fully grasp the nature and being of God Himself. Paul states that Satan and his fallen horde did not comprehend exactly Who Jesus was. He says,

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. -1 Corinthians 2:6-8 ESV

Many scholars posit that Paul is describing spiritual powers, either directly or indirectly behind the scenes of the humans who were pulling the strings to crucify the Lord. Regardless, we see that all created things are still ignorant as to the mind and nature of God, for only God can understand God. This includes Satan himself. The devil is not a yin to God’s yang, he is absolutely nowhere in equality with God in regard to His power, wisdom, might, or anything else. There is simply no contest; the devil is a blip on the radar that has his influence presently but will cease to be in light of eternity.

Therefore, it is out of Satan’s ignorance that he offers Jesus a kingdom without the cross. He does not realize Who Jesus really is and how Jesus intends to conquer. Jesus does not enter into the bloodshed of human and demonic empire building; He lets both nail Him to the tree instead. Out of this comes the true revolution, out of this comes victory over Satan. God proves that the devil’s obsessions with power are sick and malformed, like a tree struck by blight. The cross is the act and symbol of a loving God defying the worship of power and drawing an enslaved humanity into the eternal embrace of the Crucified One.

Let us choose the cross; let us choose the foolishness of God. We cannot hope to change the world unless we refuse the “easy way” of dominating our enemies. We must refuse Satan’s offer; we must not bow our knees to empires and political princes. There is only One that we will bow to, and that One was brought down for our sakes, yet rose in the light of the glory of an eternal God who is wiser than the foolishness of all pretensions of power.