The kingdom offered by Satan is an earthly one, without the conquest of sin and the curse. Jesus came to, instead, bring a spiritual kingdom (John 18:36). Instead of receiving his rightful worship (Matthew 2:2), Jesus would receive a kingdom, without having to suffer, but by himself committing idolatry, idolatry of the greatest enemy of his people, giving the world, in fact, to the devil. Jesus would thus embrace a purely material kingdom, like the Jews did who followed him to receive earthly bread (John 6:26).
The devil offers Christ the prospect of establishing his authority over the world without having to be put to death. He would, however, receive a world that was still lost in sin and under the curse. Jesus would not be receiving a spiritual but rather an earthly kingdom. He would be receiving lordship over the world, but, in contrast to his calling (John 18:36), it would have been a lordship equivalent to that of an earthly king. In this regard it can be said that the interaction on the mountain constitutes the culmination of the temptation, especially because the price he would have had to pay for this was to worship Satan (see Matthew 2:2). It would have been an easy price to pay, yet it would mean being completely disloyal to his calling. Jesus’ Mediatorship required his sacrifice, and worshiping Satan would mean dishonoring God and being allied with the enemies of God. By worshiping Satan, Jesus would have become worse than an idolater and all of creation would have been permanently lost. The devil would have won the world.1
Satan tries to tempt Jesus with a purely earthly, material kingdom. If Jesus had succumbed to this temptation from Satan, he would have become just like the Jews who came to him not because of what Jesus’ miracles revealed about him, but because he provided them with loaves of bread (John 6:26). In this way Satan was trying to lure Jesus into embracing the role of a purely earthly messiah, in which he would be reduced to a miracle worker or some kind of wizard.2
8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.