After Jesus fasted 40 days in the desert, the devil dangled the carrot before Christ, offering Him the rule and ownership of all the nations on earth. “God, tempted?” you might ask, “How can God be tempted?” But Jesus was, in one of those supreme mysteries, both fully man and fully God, therefore capable of suffering temptation. The next question is, “If he was fully God, couldn’t he just have waved a finger and saved us?” The best answer might be: what Jesus came to do on earth concerns spiritual realities. Jesus came to accomplish something concerning that reality––a reality we don’t have common access to. We don’t know a lot about the spiritual plane except for what’s described in God’s word. One thing we do know is there are battles. Paul says, “Our struggle is…against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:12). Jesus’ time on earth was concerned with a battle on the spiritual plane as much as it was with the current temporal order. We may not know exactly what was going on in the spiritual and heavenly realms to make Christ’s time and sacrifice on earth necessary, but the important thing to know is Christ did come, and, in his humanness, there were certain things he had to do within a time-bound earth to please and glorify the Father.
When Jesus confronts Satan, the nature of the temptation wasn’t primarily the rule of the earth’s nations, because Jesus was powerful enough to secure that rule for himself. No—what the devil was tempting Jesus with was avoiding the sacrifice it would take to win the nations.
At first, Jesus was tempted to “just wave a finger” by the devil in the desert.
“And the tempter came and said to Him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’
To do this would be to take the simple and easy route to gratifying his desires. It would hardly take a thought. So what was the devil trying to do here? Since Christ was the second Adam––fully human and fully sinless––he had to be tempted like Adam and prevail. The devil had a dilemma, because, after all, what could tempt the son of God? He could just wave a finger and produce bread. The genius of the devil was––with his tempting––he was attempting to throw a wrench in the works between Jesus and the Father. Jesus was put on earth to do the will of the Father, and the devil hoped to disrupt their perfect communion.
Turning rocks into bread was something small and innocuous compared to the things Jesus could do, but––as is true with us––sometimes the small and innocuous sins are the easiest to succumb to. The poisonous pills are usually small and have the slippery coating that makes them easy to swallow. It’s not clear that turning rocks into bread is a sin against God’s law, but apparently doing this thing the devil told Him to do was not the will of God. Jesus replies, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt 4:4). In other words, God’s words are more important to Jesus than eating. He keeps His stomach empty and His mind clear. This is him taking the difficult route.
So, if Satan was trying to undermine Jesus and the Father’s communion with a small temptation, what was the big temptation he was working up to? What trump card did the devil have burning a hole in his sleeve? It had to be something equal or greater than Adams and Eve’s temptation, and Adam and Eve’s temptation was the promise to be like God, knowing both good and evil. Jesus already was God, so what could the devil tempt Him with? The devil could only tempt Jesus with what he had come to earth to accomplish.
In short, Jesus came to earth to conquer the world. For whatever reason, the nations were something God had allowed Satan to have. God, up to this point, did not control the nations of the world.
In Luke’s version of Jesus’ temptation in the desert, the devil shows Jesus all the earth’s kingdoms and says, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus didn’t say, “You’re wrong, devil, you don’t have that authority,” so it would be best to assume that the devil was being honest (for once) and he did actually have the authority to potentially give the nations to Jesus. Jesus came to conquer the nations, and the conquering would result in taking back the authority over the nations from the devil.
Satan is offering Jesus exactly what Jesus came there to accomplish––authority over all the kingdoms of the world. So, the temptation was there: if Jesus accepted the devil’s offer, then he would have gotten the reward without the sacrifice. Accepting the offer would have meant he could have what he wanted without going through the pain and suffering he knew he had to go through, and Jesus’ pain on earth was real. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ said, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matt 26:38). He prayed twice in the garden to God the Father that he wouldn’t have to do what he was about to do. It’s safe to assume from these verses, that He didn’t want to do it.
Wanting the reward without the sacrifice is a common sin––for men in particular. People want sex without the responsibility of marriage or a family. They want money without the work and knowledge it takes to earn it. They want respect without the relational time and investment. We have a great aptitude to abdicate, avoid, and obfuscate.
Unlike us, Jesus was in the unique position of knowing exactly what he needed to do and what it would take to do it. There are lots of things I’m glad I have done, but if I knew what it was really going to take I’m not sure I would have done them.
Once, for example, while on a 6-month hiking trip with my dad, I told him, “If I ever want to do something like this again, kindly punch me in the face.” Now, I’d like to do something like that again, but that’s beside the point. Jesus, on a much greater scale, is being tempted with the opportunity to avoid the pain and suffering he knew he was going to go through, plus the reward of having accomplished what he came to earth to accomplish. The devil was dangling the fruit of Jesus’ reward in front of him, and Jesus could take it, but Jesus could see the fruit wasn’t ripe.
“Be gone, Satan!” he said and overcame his tempter, unlike the first Adam, and more like the true and perfect king he was and is. The temptation to rule the nations was the devil’s most tempting––and yet most obvious––ploy and Jesus could see right through it.
Unlike the first Adam, Jesus became king over all the nations after resurrecting from the dead. This is our hope. The pastor Douglas Wilson wrote in a blog post,
“Jesus Christ came back from the dead, and He is there in the Garden talking to Mary Magdalene. Picture a scroll in His right hand, and if you look at it closely, you will see that it is the title deed to all the nations of men. Anyone who comes back from the dead in this world is necessarily the owner of this world.”
God overcame his temptation in the desert to undo what the first Adam did. By dying on the cross He picked the fully ripe fruit, and that reward was his rule over the hearts and nations of men. Now all nations will one day bow to the one and only good, true, and perfect king.
I see your point. I would make the distinction (and I think Wilson would too, but don’t wish to put words in his mouth) that the others came back to life from the power of Christ, but Christ came back to life by His own power. It’s clear in the scripture Lazarus didn’t bring himself back from the dead, but Christ said “come out”, which makes him the owner of the world, since he has power over death and has authority over nature.
Question regarding the Wilson quote. He says, “Anyone who comes back from the dead in this world is necessarily the owner of this world.” I think this needs more theological nuance. Otherwise, Lazarus would also own the world. And according to one of the Gospel accounts (Matthew?), all the dead of Jerusalem who came to life and walked around the city for days when Jesus resurrected. How do you work these other resurrections into your theology?