Homilies on Luke — Homily 30 (Luke 4:5–8)
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 the second temptation of the Savior.
Both the Son of God and the Antichrist have a zeal for reigning. But the Antichrist desires to reign in order to kill those whom he has subjected to himself; Christ reigns for this purpose, that he may save. And each one of us, if he is faithful, is ruled by Christ through the word, wisdom, justice, truth. But if we are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, we are ruled by sin, concerning which the Apostle speaks: "let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body". Two kings, therefore, hasten in rivalry to reign: the king of sin over sinners, the devil; the king of justice over the just, Christ. And the devil, knowing that Christ had come for this purpose, to take away his kingdom, and that those who were under him should begin to be under Christ, "showed him all the kingdoms of the world" and of the men of this age—how some are ruled by fornication, others by avarice, how these are carried off by the breeze of popular favor, those are captivated by the allurements of beauty. Nor indeed is it to be thought that, in showing him the kingdoms of the world, he pointed out, for example, the kingdom of the Persians and of the Indians, but rather "he showed him all the kingdoms of the world"—that is, his own kingdom, how he reigned in the world—so that, urging him to do what he wished, he might begin to have even Christ subject to him. Do you wish, he says, to reign over all these?
He showed the innumerable multitudes of men who were held under his dominion. And in truth, if we are willing simply to confess our misery and unhappiness, the devil is king of almost the whole world; whence too he is called "the prince of this age" by the Savior. What he says, therefore, is this: Do you see these men who are under my kingdom?—and "he showed him in a moment of time", that is, in the present course of the ages, which, in comparison with eternity, holds the place of a point. For the Savior had no need that the affairs of this age should be displayed to him for any length of time: as soon as he turned the keen edge of his eyes to contemplate, he beheld both the sins that reign and those who are ruled by vices, and the very "prince of the age", the devil, exulting and rejoicing to his own ruin, because he held so many under his dominion. The devil therefore says to the Lord: You have come for this, to fight against me and to take from my dominion those whom I now hold subject. I do not wish you to contend, I do not wish you to strive, lest you have any trouble in the struggle. There is one thing that I beg: "falling down, adore me", and receive all the kingdom that I hold. But our Lord and Savior does indeed wish to reign and to have all the nations subject to himself, that they may serve justice, truth, and the other virtues; yet he wishes to reign as justice itself, so that he may reign without sin, so that he may do nothing unseemly, and he does not wish to be crowned without labor by being subject to the devil, nor so to reign over the rest that he himself should be ruled by the devil. Whence he speaks to him: "it is written: You shall adore the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve". All these, he says, I wish for this reason to be subject to me, that they may "adore the Lord God and serve him alone"; this is the desire of my kingdom. But you wish sin to begin from me—sin which I have come here to dissolve, and which I desire to take away from the rest as well. Know and understand that I abide in what I have said, that the Lord God alone should be adored, and that I will bring all these under my power and subject them to my kingdom. To whom we too rejoice to be subject, and let us beseech God that he may put to death "the sin reigning in" our "body" and that Christ Jesus alone may reign in us: to whom is glory and dominion unto the ages of ages. Amen.