The Temptation of Jesus: The Cosmic Scene (Luke 4:1-2)

"Christ in the Wilderness" by Ivan Kramskoi

One more event is left before Luke will begin to recount Jesus’s public ministry, His temptation. Right after the baptism, Luke tells us that Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, is led into the wilderness for forty days of temptation from the devil. This is a cosmic-level event in the life of Christ, a battle on a scale incomprehensible to us. God and the Devil, sparing over Christ’s Sonship and the mission of God to redeem His creation. It is important to note here that—while we will see three specific instances of temptation, it looks like Jesus was being tempted and tried the entire forty days. While the temptation is on an epic scale in the context of salvation history, the sorts of temptations faced by Jesus are those that all humanity has faced.

It is also important to take a moment to understand what the Bible is saying about this conflict, and who it is that is tempting Jesus.

Satan, or as Luke calls this creature here, “the devil” is a mysterious figure in Scripture. He is a real created being, and there is a lot told us about him in the Bible. However, he is also a figure of a lot of confusion, myth, and misinformation. (And he likely likes it like that!)

What does the Bible say about this figure? Less than you would think. He is only mentioned, in various names and guises, about 50-60 times, and most of those mentions are in the New Testament. The Old Testament is far less interested in this figure, and much more confusing in what it has to say about him.

-The serpent in the garden, responsible for the temptation of humanity, was either Satan himself, or controlled by him.

-His names or designations reveal a lot about him: Satan (Hebrew: literally, the adversary), the devil (Greek: accuser, slanderer), Abaddon (Hebrew: destruction, doom), Apollyon (Greek: destroyer), Beelzebul (Philistine, god of flies, used for Satan in Jesus’s time), the great dragon, enemy, evil one, father of lies, the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air, tempter.

-He appears to be a fallen angelic being of great power, and the being in control of the spiritual forces of fallen angels opposed to God.

-In the Old Testament, we see (if the reference really is to the same being) that he still answers to God and is controlled by Him for His purposes. See Job and 2 Chronicles 21. (Although, there is an argument to be made that this could be another angelic being. Numbers 22, for example, calls the Angel of the LORD and adversary (satan) to Balaam.)

-Notably, the “name” Lucifer (Morning Star, Day Star, Venus) is NOT a name of this creature. In Isaiah 14, the name is applied to a king raised up in pride against God. Some in church history have erroneously ascribed this to the devil. In fact, the term is used elsewhere in Job to mean angels in general. In the New Testament, it is exclusively used to refer to Christ.

-He is the “deceiver of the whole world” (Rev. 12:9, but that does not mean that he is behind all sin or evil. Even the army of demons at his disposal do not claim credit for that. Humanity is capable of doing wrong and rebelling against God without their help. While they do tempt people, not all temptation is their doing. And it is probable or at least unlikely that the average person has merited the attention of the big bad of all baddies. Unlike Jesus…

In my mind, after forty days of internal struggle with temptation, Jesus was approached by an apparently kind, harmless looking, older, non-threatening man wanting to help Him in his time of struggle…