Luke 4:5-8

3 d. Luke 4:5-8.

Second Temptation.

The occasion of this fresh trial is not a physical sensation; it is an aspiration of the soul. Man, created in the image of God, aspires to reign. This instinct, the direction of which is perverted by selfishness, is none the less legitimate in its origin. It received in Israel, through the divine promises, a definite aim the supremacy of the elect people over all others; and a very precise form the Messianic hope. The patriotism of Jesus was kindled at this fire (Luke 13:34; Luke 19:41); and He must have known, from what He had heard from the mouth of God at His baptism, that it was He who was destined to realize this magnificent expectation. It is this prospect, open before the gaze of Jesus, of which Satan avails himself in trying to fascinate and seduce Him into a false way.

The words the devil, and into an high mountain, Luke 4:5, are omitted by the Alex. It might be supposed that this omission arises from the confusion of the two syllables ον which terminate the words αὐτόν and ὑψηλόν. But is it not easier to believe there has been an interpolation from Matthew? In this case, the complement understood to taking Him up, in Luke, might doubtless be, as in Matthew, a mountain. Still, where no complement is expressed, it is more natural to explain it as “taking Him into the air. ” It is not impossible that this difference between the two evangelists is connected with the different order in which they arrange the two last temptations. In Luke, Satan, after having taken Jesus up into the air, set Him down on a pinnacle of the temple. This order is natural.

We are asked how Jesus could be given over in this way to the disposal of Satan. Our reply is: Since the Spirit led Him into the wilderness in order that He might be tempted, it is not surprising that He should be given up for a time, body and soul, to the power of the tempter.

It is not said that Jesus really saw all the kingdoms of the earth, which would be absurd; but that Satan showed them to Him. This term may very well signify that he made them appear before the view of Jesus, in instantancous succession, by a diabolical phantasmagoria. He had seen so many great men succumb to a similar mirage, that he might well hope to prevail again by this means.

The Jewish idea of Satan's rule over this visible world, expressed in the words which two of the evangelists put into his mouth, may not be so destitute of foundation as many think. Has not Jesus endorsed it, by calling this mysterious being the prince of this world? Might not Satan, as an archangel, have had assigned to him originally as his domain the earth and the system to which it belongs? In this case, he uttered no falsehood when he said, All this power has been delivered unto me (Luke 4:6). The truth of this assertion appears further from this very expression, in which he does homage to the sovereignty of God, and acknowledges himself His vassal. Neither is it necessary to see imposture in the words: And to whomsoever I will, I give it. God certainly leaves to Satan a certain use of His sovereignty and powers; he reigns over the whole extradivine sphere of human life, and has power to raise to the pinnacle of glory the man whom he favours. The majesty of such language was doubtless sustained by splendour of appearance on the part of him who used it; and if ever Satan put on his form of an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), it was at this moment which decided his empire.

The condition which he attaches to the surrender of his power into the hands of Jesus, Luke 4:7, has often been presented as a snare far too coarse for it ever to have been laid by such a crafty spirit. Would not, indeed, the lowest of the Israelites have rejected such a proposal with horror? But there is a little word in the text to be taken into consideration οὖν, therefore which puts this condition in logical connection with the preceding words. It is not as an individual, it is as the representative of divine authority on this earth, that Satan here claims the homage of Jesus. The act of prostration, in the East, is practised towards every lawful superior, not in virtue of his personal character, but out of regard to the portion of divine power of which he is the depositary. For behind every power is ever seen the power of God, from whom it emanates. As man, Jesus formed part of the domain entrusted to Satan. As called to succeed him, it seemed He could only do it, in so far as Satan himself should transfer to Him the investiture of his office. The words, if thou wilt worship me, are not therefore an appeal to the ambition of Jesus; they express the condition sine quâ non laid down by the ancient Master of the world to the installation of Jesus in the Messianic sovereignty. In speaking thus, Satan deceived himself only in one point; this was, that the kingdom which was about to commence was in any respect a continuation of his own, or depended on a transmission of power from him. It would have been very different, doubtless, had Jesus proposed to realize such a conception of the Messianic kingdom as found expression in the popular prejudice of His age. The Israelitish monarchy, thus understood, would really have been only a new and transient form of the kingdom of Satan on this earth, a kingdom of external force, a kingdom of this world. But what Jesus afterwards expressed in these words, “I am a King; to this end was I born, but my kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:37; John 18:36), was already in His heart. His kingdom was the beginning of a rule of an entirely new nature; or, if this kingdom had an antecedent, it was that established by God in Zion (Psalms 2). Jesus had just at this very time been invested with this at the hands of the divine delegate, John the Baptist. Therefore He had nothing to ask from Satan, and consequently no homage to pay him. This refusal was a serious matter. Jesus thereby renounced all power founded upon material means and social institutions. He broke with the Messianic Jewish ideal under the received form. He confined Himself, in accomplishing the conquest of the world, to spiritual action exerted upon souls; He condemned Himself to gain them one by one, by the labour of conversion and sanctification, a gentle, unostentations progress, contemptible in the eyes of the flesh, of which the end, the visible reign, was only to appear after the lapse of centuries. Further, such an answer was a declaration of war against Satan, and on the most unfavourable conditions. Jesus condemned Himself to struggle, unaided by human power, with an adversary having at his disposal all human powers; to march with ten thousand men against a king who was coming against Him with twenty thousand (Luke 14:31). Death inevitably awaited Him in this path. But He unhesitatingly accepted all this that He might remain faithful to God, from whom alone He determined to receive everything. To render homage to a being who had broken with God, would be to honour him in his guilty usurpation, to associate Himself with his rebellion.

This time again Jesus conveys His refusal in a passage of holy writ, Deuteronomy 6:13; He thereby removes every appearance of answering him on mere human authority. The Hebrew text and the LXX. merely say: “Thou shalt fear the Lord, and thou shalt serve Him. ” But it is obvious that this word serve includes adoration, and therefore the act of προσκυνεῖν, falling down in worship, by which it is expressed. The words, Get thee behind me, Satan, in Luke, are taken from Matthew; so is the for in the next sentence.

But in thus determining to establish His kingdom without any aid from material force, was not Jesus relying so much the more on a free use of the supernatural powers with which He had just been endowed, in order to overcome, by great miraculous efforts, the obstacles and dangers to be encountered in the path He had chosen? This is the point on which Satan puts Jesus to a last proof. The third temptation then refers to the use which He intends to make of divine power in the course of His Messianic career.