Godet on the significance of Christ's temptation to power

I shared this quotation last Sunday from F. Godet on Jesus' rejection of the devil's second temptation that he would give to him "all the kingdoms of the world" (Luke 4:5):

 

 

This refusal was a serious matter.  Jesus thereby renounced all power founded upon material means and social institutions.  He broke with the Messianic Jewish ideal under the received form.  He confined Himself, in accomplishing the conquest of the world, to spiritual action exerted upon souls; He condemned himself to gain them one by one, by the labor of conversion and sanctification—a gentle, unostentatious progress, contemptible in the eyes of the flesh, of which the end, the visible reign, was only to appear after the lapse of centuries (p. 139).