The traditional take on this story is to say something like "Yay, Jesus! Way to be pious in the desert and do all that praying and stuff ... Boo, devil! How dare you tempt Jesus in his weakened state? Yay, Jesus! You kicked the devil's butt." Too bad the devil gets such a bum rap. In the great screenplay that is the Bible and the Christian modern interpretation of it, the devil makes a number of cameo appearances, from the original temptation at the tree of knowledge (where he's portrayed as a serpent) to the book of Job where a certain "Satan" ("the accuser/adversary") works out a deal with God to put Job to a trial to a truckload of walk-0n roles in the New Testament.
Seems like wherever the devil shows up, nothing good can follow. Say that in any number of congregations on a Sunday morning, and you're going to see a lot of heads bobbing in agreement. Funny thing about the devil, though. Dude tends to show up, cause trouble for the person he's encountered and it ends in their demise, right? Um, no. In the Genesis story, the serpent shows up, Eve samples the fruits of the knowledge of good and evil, yet another of God's creations, and next thing you know, humanity as we know it comes into being. Eve becomes enlightened. In the Job story, Satan can only make the story unfold with God's permission. While Job does encounter many horrific events through the acts of Satan, Job also has an encounter with God that could not have been in Job's original state.
As another Jewish text written for a Jewish audience, should we expect anything different when Jesus has his personal encounter with the devil than an opportunity to become more than he has been up to that point? The Jesus portrayed in the first chapters of Luke don't exactly show Jesus as a political rabble-rouser who could be considered an enemy of the state. He was a 30-year old guy who doesn't appear to have done anything noteworthy since he was 12 years old and stayed behind on a family trip to Jerusalem. Suddenly, we encounter a newly baptized Jesus who was led by the Holy Spirit to the wilderness (and it appears it may have been a case of a dump and run, as we don't see a reappearance of the Spirit until after the passage is over). It's at this point that the screenwriter seems to have said, "this book is moving pretty slowly, cue the devil."
Only when the devil comes on the scene does it appear there is enough of a kick in the butt for the action to happen. Finally, there's the first dialog between Jesus and anyone other than his parents. (And I thought I was introverted!) So Jesus and the devil have a bit of a conversation in which Jesus draws wisdom from...well, it's not from himself. If nothing else, the scene looks like a couple of second-graders tossing spitballs of scripture back and forth from each other. What does come out of this is that we see that Jesus is rooted in the teachings of his elders. We get a glimpse into the well from which he will draw his ability to speak and act moving ahead. We also see a devil that sticks around long enough show a movement in the protagonist's character to support the next scene, and the devil exits (stage right) until the next time a plot turn is needed in the story. (Which happens to be when an explanation is needed as to why Judas Iscariot would throw Jesus under the bus in Luke 22:3 -- Satan enters Judas.)
Seriously, do you think this story about a 30-year old mama's boy would play in Peoria if there weren't a couple of plot points to keep things interesting? Would the story have been as interesting if instead of naming the character the "devil," the character were named "opportunity" or "change"? C'mon, even back in the first century there had to be at least a couple of different campfires around which people gathered after a long day at the office to hang out. If you're going to draw a crowd when there are competing venues trying to get their attention, you're going to have to have some good plot progression and a decent story to tell. A devil may care attitude doesn't hurt, either.
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