Origen · a new plain-English translation from the Greek and Latin
Both the Son of God and the Antichrist share a zeal for reigning. But the Antichrist desires to reign in order to kill those 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 word, wisdom, justice, and truth. But if we prize pleasure above God rather than holding God dearer than pleasure, we are ruled by sin, of which the Apostle speaks: ‘Let not sin, then, reign in
your mortal body.’ Two kings, then, hasten to reign: the king of sin over sinners is the devil, the king of righteousness over the righteous is Christ. And the devil, knowing that Christ had come for this purpose—to take away his kingdom, so that those who were under him should begin to be under Christ—‘showed him the kingdoms of the world’ and of the men of this age: how some are ruled by fornication, others by avarice, others by popular
acclaim be swept away, others be captured by the allurements of beauty. Nor indeed should it be thought that, in showing him the kingdoms of the world, he displayed, for example, the kingdom of the Persians and of the Indians; rather ‘he showed him all the kingdoms,’ that is, his own kingdom, and how he reigned in the world, so that, by urging him to do what he wanted, he might come to have Christ too as his subject. ‘Do you wish,’ he says, ‘to reign over all these?’
He showed him the innumerable multitudes of men who were held under his dominion. And indeed, if we wish simply to confess our misery and unhappiness, the devil is king of almost the whole world; hence he is also called by the Savior ‘the prince of this age.’ He says, then, this: Do you see these men, who are under my kingdom?—and ‘he showed him in a moment of time,’ that
is, in passing—which, compared to eternity, holds the place of a mere instant. For the Savior had no need to have the affairs of this age displayed to him at greater length: as soon as he turned the keenness of his eyes to contemplate them, he beheld both the sins that reign and those who are ruled by vices, and the very ‘prince of this age’ himself, swelling with pride and rejoicing to his own ruin, because he held so many under
his dominion. The devil, then, says to the Lord: Have you come for this, to fight against me and take away from my dominion those whom I now hold subject? I do not want you to contend, I do not want you to strive, lest you have any trouble in the contest. There is but one thing I ask: ‘fall down and worship me,’ and the whole kingdom that I hold is yours. But our Lord and Savior does indeed wish
to reign and to have all the nations subject to himself, that they may serve righteousness, truth, and the other virtues; but he wishes to reign as righteousness itself, that he may reign without sin, that he may do nothing unseemly, and he does not wish, without labor, to be crowned by submitting to the devil, nor to reign over others in such a way that he himself is ruled by the devil. Hence he says to him: ‘It is written: You shall worship the Lord your God, and
him only shall you serve.’ All these, he says, I wish for this reason to be subject to me, that they may ‘worship the Lord and serve him alone’; this is the desire of my kingdom. But you wish me to begin sin from myself—sin which I came here to dissolve, and which I desire to take away from others as well. Know, know, and understand that I remain firm in what I have said: that the Lord should be worshiped
I alone am God, and I will bring all these under my power and subject them to my kingdom. We rejoice that we too are subject to him, and let us pray to God that he may put to death the “reigning sin” in our body, and that Christ Jesus alone may reign in us: to whom is glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.