Does God Lead Us into Temptation?

For nineteen years, between 1927 and 1946, Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick conducted a nationwide program entitled “National Vespers.” Each year he received 100,000 letters from members of his vast audience, many of them telling about their religious difficulties. On the basis of that experience he had this to say: “No verse in the Bible puzzles more people than the petition in the Lord’s Prayer ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ ‘Is it not a shocking idea,’ many say, ‘that God leads men into temptation and that we must beg him to stop doing it?’ ” (On Being Fit to Live With, p. 151).

There are three problems with this petition:

1. There is the difficulty of supposing that it is God who leads us—in the sense of inviting and tricking and even seducing us—to quote George Buttrick’s expression—into temptation.

2. There is the difficulty involved in asking God to help us avoid temptation, since it is as clear as crystal that temptation is an inescapable part of human experience.

3. And there is the difficulty of knowing what good purpose would be served by our completely escaping temptation, even if that were possible or conceivable, since Christian character is hammered out only on the anvil of conquered temptation.

The first difficulty may be disposed of quite readily. Although the King James Version gives the rendering “Lead us not into temptation,” the Greek text does not mean to suggest that God actively and deliberately pushes men into situations of temptation. A more accurate translation is this, “Let us not be led into temptation,” or perhaps, “Let us not enter into trial.”

What about the second and third difficulties? Clearly they are bound up together. Two explanations have been offered to resolve them. First, the petition may mean that while of course no one can hope or expect wholly to avoid temptation, and while character is formed not by avoiding temptation but by actively meeting and defeating it, still we are entitled to ask God to spare us from testing as much as possible. The pattern for this interpretation is found in Jesus Christ’s experience in Gethsemane, when he prayed to his Father God, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me”—that is, having to undergo death at the hands of his enemies. This was not possible, and Jesus Christ had to drink the cup of the dregs; but nonetheless he was justified in offering this prayer. Another case for this interpretation is found in Paul’s handling of his thorn in the flesh, as described in Second Corinthians 12:8. “I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me” the Apostle says. The thorn was not removed, but Paul was quite justified in praying this prayer.

Or again, this petition may mean, “Let us not be led into temptation” in the sense of yielding to its demands. This point is insisted upon by Canon Anthony C. Deane in his book Our Father. He contends that there is a mighty difference between being led “into” temptation and being led “unto” temptation. A different word is used for these two expressions in the Greek, and there is clearly a difference in meaning between them. Obviously, it would be foolish and futile for anyone to pray not to be led unto temptation, since temptations abound on every hand. One cannot escape them, any more than he can escape breathing or dying. Jesus never suggested praying against that. What he commanded was that his followers should pray, “Let us not be led into temptation.” By this he meant “into the power of” or “under the sway of.” In bidding his disciples to offer this prayer, Jesus meant: Pray to God that, though you will undoubtedly be led into the presence of temptation, you shall not be overcome by it, you shall not fall victim to its power. Canon Dean illustrates his point thus:

Take the case of a man to whom alcoholic drink is a temptation. Such a man may find that on his way back from work on the day on which he receives his weekly paycheck he will have to pass a tavern. There is no other way in which he can get back to his home, so he has to take this particular route. Obviously, it would be foolish and futile for him to pray “Lead me not unto temptation”; for if he wants to get back home he will have to come into the vicinity of that tavern. But it is very much in order for him to pray “May I not be led into temptation,” which would mean “Though I must need come into the vicinity of this tavern, may I not succumb to its lure and temptation, i.e., may I be given strength to pass it without going inside.”

Both these interpretations have been held by respected New Testament scholars and eminent preachers. They can be combined in some such fashion as this: “O Lord, whatever temptations we have to face, be thou with us and suffer us not to be overcome by evil.”

How can we help God answer this prayer? To begin with, it must be emphasized that though temptation is not sin, there is great wisdom in avoiding it as much as possible. It is wise for Christians not to run deliberately into situations of temptation as if to prove that they can overcome them. In the early days of persecution in the Christian Church there came a kind of frenzy among some of the Christians. They would go and deliver themselves up to the authorities of the Roman Empire and insist upon the honor of martyrdom, as if to say, “Put me to the test and see how boldly I shall pass through the fiery ordeal.” But wiser leaders of the Church were compelled to check this recklessness by threatening heavy spiritual penalties for all who practiced it. Real martyrdom was indeed the highest Christian blessedness, but to seek it in this way, to court it deliberately, made a man not a martyr but a suicide. Alfred Tennyson’s poem “The Northern Cobbler” tells of a man who was a victim of strong drink and who successfully fought down his temptation with a bottle of gin standing day by day before him in the window where he worked. But such a course of action is never wise for Christians. To court temptation is foolish. As far as is honorably possible, it should be avoided. To do this is not cowardice or timidity; it is simply sanctified common sense.

The next point to be made about overcoming temptation is this: It must be carefully watched where it always begins, namely, in the mind, in the realm of thought. Saint Augustine, with his keen insight into human nature, describes the progress of temptation as “a thought, a picture, a fascination, a fall.” All temptation begins in the human mind; only if and when it has been allowed to take root there does it bear fruit in wrong action.

One big help in the struggle against temptation is to fill mind and heart and life with things that are pure, true, lovely, and of good report. Let a man’s life be systematically filled with such earthly interests and he will be able to overcome many temptations to which he might otherwise yield. Dr. Frank W. Boreham tells of a certain small town whose governing body decided to have a canal running down its central street. The bed was dug and the water allowed to flow, and the city fathers thought that they now had their canal. But soon a fungoid weed began to grow profusely in the canal bed, preventing the passage of boats. All sorts of remedies were suggested. Acid was poured in; but the weed, after disappearing for a time, began to grow again more thickly than ever. The attempt was made to hack at the weed and uproot it; but soon it grew back as strong as ever. Then some bright person suggested that willow trees be planted on the banks of the canal, and soon the weed disappeared for good. The reason simply was this, that the nourishment that otherwise would have fed the weed now went to sustain the willow trees.

This incident has its parallel in real life. The story goes that some of the companions of the venerable Bede, at his monastery at Monkwearmouth in northeastern England, came to him one day and said: “Father, we are harassed by many temptations, which appeal to us so often and so strongly that they give us no rest. You seem to live untroubled by these things and we want to know your secret. Don’t those temptations which harass our souls ever appeal to you? Do they never come knocking at the door of your heart?” The old saint listened, smiled, and said: “I do know something of the things of which you speak. The temptations that trouble you do come making their appeal to me. But when those temptations knock at the door of my heart, I always answer, ‘This place is occupied’ and that is the end of it.” John Newton, the well-known hymn-writer of the eighteenth century, used to say that two things kept him out of hell in his early days: his early and lifelong love of Mary Catlett (the woman he subsequently married) and his early and lifelong love of good books.

In the attempt to overcome temptation, any healthful and worthy interest will help—gardening or golfing or some other sport or hobby, or anything else that helps to fill up honorably and usefully the blank spaces of life.

But the strongest help in this fight to overcome temptation is undoubtedly to be found in devotion to God through Jesus Christ. Charles F. Andrews, the English missionary who was so great a Christian worker and servant of humanity in India that it was said his initials stood for Christ’s Faithful Apostle, once told how his conscious, active life as a Christian began when he was eighteen. Though he had been brought up in a godly home, he was becoming indifferent to all religion and falling into sins that would ultimately have wrecked his character. One night, as he knelt to pray, there came upon him an overwhelming realization of the holy presence of Jesus Christ. He struggled with a sense of his own evil life, and at last the voice of Christ seemed to bring forgiveness and love in place of darkness and despair. Andrews wrote later:

Since that time, during more than forty-three years of incessant struggle, journeying to and fro throughout the world, I have never lost the assurance of Christ’s living Presence with me. He is not a mere vision, he is no imaginative dream, but a living Presence who daily inspires me and gives me grace. In Him, quite consciously, I find strength in time of need [quoted by Jack Finegan in Like the Great Mountains, p. 54].

The grace of Jesus Christ that strengthened and empowered C. F. Andrews is equally available to all others who seek him in the struggle with temptation. In him they can be more than conquerors.

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