Homilies on Luke — Homily 29 (Luke 4:1–4)
Latin source: Origen's Greek homilies on Luke, surviving only in Jerome's Latin translation (c. 391), from the reading text of M. Rauer (ed.), Origenes Werke IX (GCS 35, Leipzig, 1930). This English translation is released into the public domain.On what is written: "But Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned", and on his first temptation.
When you read in the Gospel: "But Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned", and in the Acts of the Apostles, where it is written of them that they were "filled" with "the Holy Spirit", take care not to suppose that the apostles were equal to the Savior; rather, understand that Jesus and the apostles and any other of the saints are full of the Holy Spirit according to the measure of their own vessel. Just as, for example, if you wish to say: these vessels are full of wine or oil, you do not thereby indicate that they are full in equal measure — since one can hold a sextarius, another an urn, another an amphora — in the same way both Jesus and Paul were full of the Holy Spirit; but the vessel of Paul was much smaller than the vessel of Jesus, and yet each was full according to its own measure. And so, having received baptism, the Savior, "full of the Holy Spirit", which had come upon him from the heavens "in the form of a dove", "was led by the Spirit". For since "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God", and he beyond all others was properly the Son of God, therefore he too had to be led by the Holy Spirit. For it is written: "And he was led into the desert by the Spirit for forty days and was tempted by the devil". For forty days Jesus is tempted, and what the temptations were, we do not know; and these were perhaps passed over for the reason that they were too great to be entrusted to writing. And if it is right to say it thus: just as "the world could not contain all the books", if the things which Jesus taught and did had been written down, so the world could not bear the temptations of the forty days, by which the Lord was tempted by the devil, if Scripture had recorded them. It suffices for us to know only this much: that "he was for forty days in the desert and was tempted by the devil and ate nothing in those days"; for he was mortifying the sense of the flesh by continual and unbroken fasting. "And when the days were completed, he hungered. And the devil said to him: If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread". "Tell", he says, "this stone". Which stone? Surely the one the devil was pointing out, the one he wants to be made bread. What sort of temptation is this, that when a son asks his father for bread and the father does not give him a stone, this adversary, crafty and deceitful, should give a stone in place of bread? Is this the whole of what the devil wanted — that a stone should become bread, and that men should feed not on bread but on a stone, which the devil had pointed out in place of bread? I think that even to this day the devil shows a stone and urges each person to say: "tell this stone to become bread". By every temptation with which men were to be tempted, the Lord was tempted first, according to his assumption of the flesh. And he is tempted for this reason, that we too, when he conquers, may conquer. What I say perhaps becomes obscure, unless it is made clearer by an example. If you see heretics eating the lie of their own doctrines in place of bread, know that their teaching is a stone which the devil points out. But do not suppose that he has only one stone; he has many stones, from which he is introduced speaking in Matthew: "tell these stones to become loaves". Marcion spoke, and the devil's stone became bread for him. Valentinus spoke, and another stone was turned into bread for him. Basilides too had bread of this kind, and so did the rest of the heretics. Hence we must anxiously take care, lest perhaps, while eating the devil's stone, we suppose that we are feeding on the bread of God. Otherwise, what temptation was there in a stone becoming bread and being eaten by the Savior? For let us imagine that, at the devil's suggestion, the Lord had turned a stone into bread, and had eaten what he himself had made by his own power, and had satisfied his hunger: what sort of temptation is this, what victory over the devil, if these things were written down in a plain sense? But these things, as we have said, when their reason is discerned, both show that there would have been a temptation, if they had been done, and that the victory came about because they were spurned. And at the same time it is shown that this bread, which comes from a stone, is not the word of God which feeds man, of which it is written: "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which shall proceed through the mouth of God shall man live". I answer you, O crafty and wicked one, who do not fear to tempt me: there is another bread, that of the word of God, which gives life to man. And at the same time let us see that these things are spoken not by the Son of God, but by the man whom the Son of God deigned to assume; for he answers as though concerning a man and says: "It is written: man shall not live by bread alone", from which it is manifest that it was not God, but man, who was tempted. Sifting the sense of the Scripture diligently, I think I find the reason why John did not describe the temptation of the Lord, but only Matthew, Luke, and Mark. For John, because he had made his beginning from God, saying: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word", and could not weave the order of the divine generation, but had only expressed that he was from God and with God, added: "And the Word was made flesh". Furthermore, since God cannot be tempted — and it was of God that his discourse concerned — therefore he does not bring in that one being tempted by the devil. But because "the book of the generation of Jesus Christ" is narrated in Matthew's Gospel concerning that man who had been born of Mary, and in Luke his generation is described, and in Mark it is a man who is tempted, therefore his corresponding answer is reported: "man shall not live by bread alone". If, then, the Son of God, being God, was made man for you and is tempted, you, who are man by nature, ought not to be indignant if perhaps you are tempted. But if, when tempted, you have imitated that man who was tempted for you, and have conquered every temptation, you will have hope together with him who then was a man, but now has ceased to be a man. For he who was once a man, after he was tempted and "the devil departed from him until a time" of death, "rising from the dead dies no more". Every man is subject to death; therefore this one, who in no way dies, is now no longer a man, but is God. But if he is God who was once a man, and you must become like him — when "we shall be like him and shall see him as he is" — it will be necessary that you too become God in Christ Jesus: to whom is glory and dominion unto the ages of ages. Amen.