Saint Maximus the Confessor (d. AD 662) does not shy away from a graphic metaphor to teach what Christ accomplished on the cross:
“I am a worm and not a man” (Ps. 21:7lxx). The Lord mounted his flesh on the fish-hook of his divinity as bait for the devil’s deceit – so that the insatiable serpent, the devil, would take his flesh into his mouth and quiver convulsively on the hook of the Lord’s divinity, and, because of the sacred flesh of the Logos, would then completely vomit the Lord’s human nature once he swallowed it.
As a result, just as the devil formerly baited man with the hope of divinity, and swallowed him, so too the devil himself would be baited precisely with humanity’s fleshly garb; and afterward he would vomit man, who had been deceived by the expectation of becoming divine. For the devil himself was deceived by the Lord’s becoming human. The transcendence of God’s power would then manifest itself through the weakness of our inferior human nature, which would vanquish the strength of its conqueror.
And so it would be shown that by using the flesh as bait, ultimately it is God who conquers the devil, rather than the devil conquering man by promising him a divine nature.
— Ad Thalassium 64: On the Prophet Jonah and the Economy of Salvation
