NOTES for Luk 4:1-13

Once again we stand before the scene of our Lord's temptations. And at times the sense of awe and wonder before what is happening leaves us, because it appears to us: what is strange about His defeating the devil, since He is the Lord, the Ruler of the universe? Then the whole scene becomes for us a sporting event whose result everyone already knows. How easily every temptation bounces off Him, like a tennis ball off the world's top-ranked player!

But if this is our perception, we must urgently renew it, because what is taking place before our eyes today is the greatest, perhaps the chief, spiritual event in all human history. Our Lord created the creature without evil, but free to choose between good and evil, and then part of creation used this right and chose evil.

Can the Lord Almighty, Pantocrator, Omnipotens, correct the situation and return the world to its pre-fall state? This is Dmitri Karamazov's question, or the question of theodicy. He can, for Omnipotens means Almighty. But then this would mean that the Strong One deprived the weak one of life (for God's opponents are weak before Him), exercised power over him, and deprived him of the freedom He Himself had given him. That would simply be unfair and base, and the Lord in His perfection is not capable of such a thing.

People sometimes joke that the best cure for a headache is the guillotine. But the Lord did not want to apply that cure; He found another, one that would help not as quickly as the guillotine, perhaps after another hour or so, but after which the head would still be able to think. And this cure was to come down and stand on the same level as His opponents, in order to fight them on equal terms and not settle everything by right of strength.

This is exactly what is happening, and from the moment the Lord overcame His temptations, the countdown of that "hour or so" began. Time is passing.