When we look at Jesus’ forty days and nights in the desert, we see that Satan tries to tempt Jesus via His ego. In other words, Satan wants Jesus to embrace His ego, rather than surrender it to the Father.
The most basic meaning of the word ego is that it refers to the “I” that is capable of referencing the self and making decisions. Another related definition of the ego has to do with being self-centered or egotistical. There are at least two interrelated parts of the ego. One part is the capacity for self-awareness and reflection. The other part is the capacity for self-motivation. This plays a central role in our lives, as a kind of self-defense system, usually in the form of self-justification—a way of maintaining a consistent, justifiable place of one’s self in the world.
In those times when we are under attack, when we find ourselves at our weakest, when we begin to doubt who we are—that is, as people beloved by God (as Jesus was told just prior to entering the wilderness), created by God and called to God’s purpose in the world—we can become compromised. This is at the core of Jesus’ temptations.
What we see in Jesus’ response are ways to surrender our own ego and thus draw closer to God We see that Jesus is able—through fasting, prayer, Scripture, and complete submission to God—to maintain his connection to God, rather than to the material world. Jesus’ experiences here allow us to see the ego for what it really is; how it attaches us to the world and all it offers, and how it skews our perceptions and priorities, producing desire and emotions that can only serve to separate us from God. That is what Satan does.
But, in the end, Jesus had nothing to prove, and neither do we. So ultimately Jesus in this story represents the Christ in each of us that has the power to defeat the ego! As we think about the forty days of Lent—a reminder of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness—think of it as a time (a long time) of introspection.
Here, in the wilderness, the ego would be at its greatest—and its most vulnerable. During this time, Jesus ate nothing, and probably drank very little, perhaps only enough to stay alive, but leaving him in a weakened state—vulnerable in every sense of the word. It forced him to surrender himself and to rely totally on the very Spirit that drove him there in the first place. But doing so was the key to his ability to fight temptation—and see the ego for what it really is.