8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9“All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

10Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’

Many times when dealing with this passage, Christians tend to shrug it off, thinking that Jesus really didn’t want the kingdoms of the world anyway. After all, didn’t he really come to establish a new religion, or to give us a set of universal truths so we could get to heaven? Jesus only carried about a “spiritual” other-worldly kingdom, right?

This perspective couldn’t be further from the truth.

At the very end of the same book in Matthew 28:18, Jesus himself says:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

In other words, he has been set over the kingdoms of the world.

Notice also in Acts 2:36, Peter says:

“Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.”

Lord and Messiah, or Lord and Savior, were titles commonly attributed to Caesar . So Peter is telling the crowd that yes, the Kingdom has been inaugurated, and God has exalted this Jesus above even Caesar!

So let’s go back to the original text and notice what Jesus doesn’t say.

He doesn’t say “Look, I don’t even want the kingdoms of the earth.” Obviously, he did, or else this wouldn’t have even been a temptation. If the devil is “tempting” Jesus with something Jesus doesn’t really want anyway, then we can safely assume that the devil is much more incompetent than the rest of the Bible has led us to believe.

The whole point of this encounter with the devil is to tempt him. And as we’ve seen, one of the reasons Jesus came was to indeed receive authority over the kingdoms of the world.

Jesus also doesn’t say “Oh come on. You don’t have that power. There is no way you can deliver the kingdoms of the world into my hands.” This is very telling.

If the devil has the power to control the kingdoms of the world, what does that say about the kingdoms of the world? What does it say about government? And if the devil had control over the world governments then, is it reasonable to think he has control of them now? That the current rulers are still his mere puppets?

I would say yes. Nearly every major evil that has been committed in history has been committed by the hands of the State, so it’s not really that big of a leap when you think about it.

If that’s the case, what does that say about Christians who attempt to use government force for their own selfish ends?

Just like Jesus, Satan is tempting you to bow down to an idol. And now, that idol is government itself, in a twisted form of Civil Religion some of us like to call Americanism.

Don’t give in to the temptation.

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