The Great Temptation

In April 1945, near the end of World War II, the Allies occupied the heavily bombarded city of Stuttgart, Germany. In his first sermon following that Allied occupation, German theologian Helmut Thielicke, also a Lutheran pastor, criticized his nation’s attempt to “gain the whole world” and showed how even the noblest objectives—including our own—can become temptations when we try to “live dangerously.”

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
—1 Corinthians 10:13

Nietzsche’s watchword—Live Dangerously—is a protest against the snug respectability which is content to go on with as little risk as possible—and preferably with a secure pension ahead.

But it has another meaning, namely, the inner attitude of the person who has thrown overboard every higher law and authority and taken the helm in hand, nay more, the inner attitude of one who has even pushed aside the hand of God, in which he might be safe. For he doesn’t want to be “safe”; he wants to live “dangerously.”

This person has to repudiate forgiveness and try to kick down the cross of the Lord, for he wants to answer for his own faults and accept all the consequences here and hereafter. The Last Judgment will be the last great adventure he proposes to achieve.

Thousands of times we have looked into the faces of these scornful despisers. All of them wanted and want to be the heroic adventurers of life, taking the risks of climbing to bold heights and descending to the lowest depths.

The experiment turned out to be more miserable than we all thought possible. We pictured the fall of the heroes more heroically. May not the cause of this frightful and miserable collapse lie in the fact that this talk of “dangerous living” was pure claptrap, that the real dangers of life were not seen at all, that it was possible, for example, for people to think that the only dangers consist in what a nation assumes in its military struggle and what it risks in its gigantic attempt “to gain the whole world”?

The Real Danger

And all the while the one and only danger was, and always will be, that it might “lose its own soul”:

• that its people, for example, could think that they themselves were making history—this was one of the losses the nation’s soul sustained—whereas they are only blind horses led of God;

• that this people should consider itself a chosen people, whereas the fist of God was already raised to dash it to the ground;

• that in its temporal tasks it should disregard the Eternal and in its faith in itself fail to see its guilt and need for forgiveness;

• that it should imagine that it believes in God, whereas it is the victim of the Devil and his shimmering soap bubbles;

• that it should proceed with fanatical energy to solve economic, social, and political problems, and in solving these problems overlook or simply ignore the fact that first and foremost it needs a Redeemer, who would set straight the deepest basis of its personal life.

Are not the real dangers of life right here—those dangers of which our nation was utterly unaware and on which it was so hideously shipwrecked—shipwrecked in the very years when it thought it could play the game of “dangerous living” and carpenter together a world view, which, with all its ridiculous affirmation of life and its befuddlement with “strength through joy,” blinked the real and the most terrible danger: there is a Devil who can lead a man about by the nose in the midst of all his idealism, and there is a God, upon whom we can wreck ourselves, because he will not be mocked.

Can we understand the tremendous catastrophe that has befallen us unless it be from this biblical point of view?

Who could be so deluded as to think that this terrible collapse was caused by the dwindling of our power potential or by the superior strength of the enemy? These are only the external manifestations of a far more basic fact:

• that we did not calculate the factor which is “God” in our plans and therefore fell victims to megalomania;

• that we violated God’s commandments and got tangled in our own unpredictable and brutal instincts;

• that we ignored that monumental call, “I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me,” and hence landed in a giddy ecstasy of power worship, which brought the whole world against us;

• that we ceased to trust ourselves to the miracle of God’s guidance and therefore we put our faith instead in miracle weapons that never came;

• that we no longer knew that God is in heaven and man is on earth and could not help but lose all sense of the proportions of life and consequently were stricken with blindness in purely external political and military relationships.

No Private Matter

These examples make two things clear:

First, that denying God and casting down the cross is never a merely private decision that concerns only my own inner life and my personal salvation, but that this denial immediately brings the most brutal consequences for the whole of historical life and especially for our own people. “God is not mocked.” The history of the world can tell us terrible tales based on that text.

Second, that God and the demons have a degree of reality that far surpasses external historical factors—social, economic, or military. In history, the invisible is mightier and more creative and destructive than the visible. Anybody who still has not grasped that our nation with its program of “dangerous living” was wrecked precisely on this dangerous rock called “God” and nothing else has no eyes to see. Because he sees only individual catastrophes, he no longer sees the basic, cardinal catastrophe behind them all.

It is fearfully easy to say, “I want to live dangerously,” when one has lost one’s sense of the real dangers, when one has no idea that the forest of life is filled with the armed knights of a very dangerous God who is not mocked.

Here we encounter the real, the biblical, meaning of “living dangerously,” which is much deeper than and totally different from what the great adventurers imagine.

The petition “Lead us not into temptation” shows us that life is dangerous, that it can trip us up and ruin us, that we can stake everything on the wrong card.

Luther said, “We are beset before and behind by temptations and cannot throw them off.” Luther saw the world filled with devils who were clutching at him, and he even threw his inkwell at them. Perhaps we may wag our heads over such a view of life and say: What a poor medieval fool! After all, our modern, enlightened world has emancipated us from this superstitious, specter-haunted twilight. Or do the words stick in our throats, because in this apocalyptic hour we are beginning to understand what Luther saw and what we have forgotten how to see? Just because we do not see a thing or have forgotten how to see it does not mean that it no longer exists.

So beset is life by perils that we shall be torn away from God and fall into the hands of the false gods!

Losing Contact

This is exactly what temptation means: To allow oneself to be torn away from God. And here we must not think in terms of peccadilloes; we must not equate temptation with a child’s urge to snitch candy or our temptation to stay late in bed.

No, temptation has to do with something totally different. Through small and great events, little fondnesses and great passions, we can be brought to the point where we lose contact with the Father. We hardly ever sever our relationship to God standing up and shaking our fist at heaven like Prometheus, renouncing God with planned defiance. As a rule this decision against God is made in a far more tepid way; it occurs almost unnoticed by the apostate mind.

For example, radio, the movies, and other factors in our modern life have had far more influence upon the decision against God than anti-Christian ideologies and misguided philosophies. This is not because radio and the movies set people against God, but rather because both take up so much of our lives that we no longer have opportunity to ask the question of eternity or listen to its question to us. Our whole way of life, including the overburden of work and the weekend trips that take people away from any kind of worship, has had far more to do with the dying away of our relationship with the Father than all the ideological programs. This is the tepid, almost unconscious way of deciding against God. Therefore, our way of life must be examined and controlled in the name of eternity.

But the great and noble things, too, can get between the child and the Father. A student who was making the first hesitant attempts to find his way back to Christ once wrote to me when he was ardently at work on a study of Hölderlin:

“For the moment I have no use for the question of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, and all the rest of it. At present my life is so completely absorbed with a great passion to discover Hölderlin for myself that I forget completely what seemed so important to me not long ago when I felt empty, exhausted, and unoccupied and thought I had to come to terms with my sin and my despair over the meaning of life. Now that I am filled to the brim with this great task, all this is quite gone. It seems like a faraway specter, whereas before it had flesh and blood and attacked me with threats and demands.”

Here a secret decision is being made, without this student’s being aware of it. Even great things can get between the child and the Father.

Everything A Temptation

So we can rephrase this petition, “Lead us not into temptation,” and also say, “Let nothing become a temptation to me.” For everything can become a temptation: not only particular urges and addictions which prompt me to put a damper on God’s demanding word or to declare it irrelevant (why should God have anything to say about my vaulting ambition or my sexual desires?), but also the great things in life can become a temptation to me.

What is it, for example, that appears in Luther’s hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” as the most dangerous competitor of the kingdom of God? It is not the sexual urge or envy or hatred or some other vice, but rather the greatest things, the things we love most: goods, and fame, and child, and wife. In other words, the possessions we may lose (or the fear of poverty and dependence); the loss of reputation (or the fear of ostracism and public disapproval); the destitute wife and the hungry child (or the fear that something may happen to those we most love on earth); these are the real competitors.

Have not all of these things, the greatest and most beloved things, often kept you and me from giving our whole loyalty to God, kept us from standing up and leaving a meeting because Christ was being maligned, kept us from going to the party office and saying, “Do with me what you will, but don’t dare to lay hands on the soul of my child”? Has not our fame in the eyes of men kept us from forgoing a promotion or standing up for someone who has been humiliated and defamed? These greatest and most loved things—goods, and fame, and child, and wife—the very things which I did not want to jeopardize—have I not again and again allowed these things to become a temptation, put them higher than the kingdom? Have we not bravely fought the inferior urges within us? And yet, paradoxically, through the most cherished treasures of our hearts, we have come perilously close to the demons. Day by day we sense that the nearness of God has fled from our lives.

That’s how dangerous life is, my friends! For these decisions are by no means trifles. Dangers lurk in unexpected places, and wild wolves lie in wait for us wearing harmless-looking sheep’s clothing. They may even hide themselves behind the faces of the persons we love most.

The positive and great things in our life need to be taken in hand. Jesus did not say, “It is impossible for a harlot to enter the kingdom of heaven.” He did say, “How hard, indeed, impossible, it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” And rich men are not all crude hucksters; they may be people of culture and an ordered way of life, with rich and broad minds, elevated and yet imperiled by all the treasures of culture and education.

The Tempter in the wilderness made nothing but grand and captivating proposals to Jesus. He did not forget to appeal to his idealism, his piety, and even the Word of God. He suggested the fantastic idea of controlling all humanity by offering all the kingdoms of this world. And still there was only one thing the Tempter wanted—to separate him from the Father, with the help of these grand ideas which might intoxicate a human mind.

Success Stories

When we succumb to the temptation to do something without God, this may result at first in great success. The worship of success is generally the form of idol worship the Devil cultivates most assiduously. Here even the most serious men may have a weak spot. We could observe in the first years after 1933 the almost suggestive compulsion that emanates from great successes and how, under the influence of these successes, even Christians stopped asking in whose name and at what price they were achieved. Because success is the greatest narcotic of all, the Devil, the false prophets (Matt. 24:24), the Beast from the depths of the earth (Rev. 13:13) perform great wonders.

At first we may have great success when we succumb to the temptation to live without God. Perhaps the best example of this is fanaticism. To live and fight “fanatically” means to live and fight in such a way that we no longer see anything but our goal, that we refuse to entertain the slightest questioning of our struggle, and that therefore we must also refuse to face the question whether this struggle and this goal are good or bad. For the question of good or bad could immediately upset our enthusiasm and fill us with scruples and misgivings, which might be detrimental to our singlemindedness. It is clear from our own experience that at first this fanatical devotion produces great success and that because of its lack of inhibitions and scruples it possesses an almost incomparable potency. The Tempter not only leads men away from God, but after a brief interval of prosperity, he leads them to the abyss. The Devil must work feverishly because “he knows that his time is short” (Rev. 12:12) and the short-term loans he hands out will soon be called in by God.

Now we understand a little of what “dangerous living” really means. We are beset on every side and tempted by the big and the little things; we are tempted equally by our passions and our ideals. There is nothing the Tempter does not know how to use in order to tear nations and individuals from God’s hand. Outside and inside our hearts, high above our heads, where ideals dwell, and down in the cellars, where the wild wolves of the senses play havoc, everywhere dwell the tempting powers.

That’s why life is dangerous. The greatness of a danger always increases when it is hidden and unknown. Because God knows this about our life, Ephesians speaks of faith in terms of weapons and armor and describes the life of the disciple as a soldier’s existence, a struggle against mortal dangers and deadly temptations.

Knight Errant

In this knowledge, Albrecht Dürer created the famous engraving Knight, Death, and the Devil. For all the tempting powers are there in that picture: not only the toads and salamanders, the symbols of the base powers and instincts that would drag him down; not only the specter of death that would strike terror into him and undermine his faith with dread; but also the homelike castle in the background, the embodiment of goods, and fame, and child, and wife, of all that is loved and familiar, which he must forgo. For even this is a danger to him, now that he is ordained to battle, if it should entice him at the wrong moment and tempt him to rest and rejoice when he should be fighting.

We come to the decisive question: how to cope with this dangerous, seductive life, how to attain to that “blessed man,” of whom James speaks, who endures trial and receives “the crown of life” (1:12).

First, it is important to heed the message in Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer: “I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from evil” (John 17:15). We shall remain in a state of siege and never be free from the dangers of life. Jesus teaches his own to pray, “Let nothing become a temptation to us,” and thus makes it clear that everything can become a temptation, that life itself is one long peril and temptation.

He does not spare us suffering, but he is on our side. He does not free us from burdens, but he helps us carry them. He does not simply banish death; he permits the last enemy to remain. He helps us in our death, and though we must depart, he never departs from us.

And so he deals with temptations too. He does not allow us to immigrate to the islands of the blessed where there is no temptation, but he helps us in the midst of this world which is beset by deadly and devilish highwaymen waiting to waylay us at every step.

How does he do this?

Just as Jesus, by becoming human, comes right down to the front-line trenches and fights with us against the hostile powers of death, suffering, and sin, so he also draws us into his own life. He not only stands beside us, but we also stand beside him.

And where does he stand?

He stands in the wilderness alone. He stands in hell—“He decended into hell”—and he has won the victory over Satan and his spirits. He stands at the right hand of God in kingly sovereignty; and because he stands there, even the satanic powers, the adversaries and antichrists, must serve him, and against their will become the functionaries of his gracious plans.

Where does that leave the Tempter?

Now he must obey a regime which he does not understand. What does the Devil accomplish except to drive Job straight into the arms of the God from whom he was trying to separate him? What can Nero and his modern counterparts do? Instead of destroying the church, they too accomplish nothing except to compel it to achieve maturity in the furnace of suffering.

Don’t we sense this today? Has not the church become more mature in these years of persecution? Have not the talents entrusted to us increased much, despite the unfaithfulness in these years?

Sound And Fury

Because we stand beside Jesus, the Tempter can only bark but not bite. The serpent’s tail may rattle, but his head is already crushed (Gen. 3:15). He has been so stripped of his power that he can no longer separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Nothing can separate us from his fellowship so long as we hold onto his hand.

Jesus teaches us something about the Tempter by telling us to pray against him. In other words, we cannot act against him. How should we be able to stand him off with the strength of our own soul and will when he has already built a bridgehead in this soul? The Pharisees undertook a tremendous, systematic attempt, thought out to the smallest detail, to make themselves acceptable to God through their ethical conduct and thus to combat the power of evil. As they worked at it, it turned out to be something totally different. It became an attempt to cultivate by means of moral struggle a subtle, scarcely visible egoism that made claims upon God by pointing to its good works. Thus it did the very thing the Devil wants to accomplish, to drive us out of the child relationship and force us to become competitors of God with all the presumption and defiance that involves.

We are not contending against flesh and blood—that would be simple!—but rather against “principalities and powers and the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). And there every human arm can but fail.

Therefore Jesus directs us to resort to prayer when we meet the Tempter. Contact with the Father is the chief means by which to challenge the Tempter. Only the Father’s hand, onto which we hold, can ward off the Devil’s onslaught. We are far too ramshackle to keep the Tempter from slipping through the back door of our heart while we march out bravely to do battle with our well-meant ethos and our honest idealism.

So long as we stand within our Lord’s field of power, no power can touch us. Nobody and nothing can break the bond of faith which the Lord has established with his own. He has promised to be with us in temptation, and even those who fall he pursues and raises up again.

So here Jesus is completely positive. The knight makes no to-do whatsoever about fighting death and the Devil; he does not raise his weapons against the fiends that beset his path. If he were to get into a skirmish with every tramp, every desire and appetite, every dirty dog that growls within him, he would soon be so involved that he would be stopped in his tracks. Instead he rides straight on and refuses to allow the tempting powers to dictate his course of action. In the distance he sees his Lord, beckoning in encouragement and preparing to receive him. As long as he keeps his eyes on him the vermin on his path cannot upset him.

This is the positive element in the Christian life: We do not squabble with the demonic powers; we look to our Lord. He does all the rest. Then, mysteriously, everything that would overpower us is banished.

Breaking The Spell

A young man, filled with the exuberance of life and passion, had great difficulty with the temptations of the body. He struggled bravely against the lurid images of his imagination. He suppressed his urges because he wanted to remain clean, and he also prayed. But just because he was so preoccupied with it, he became more and more involved, and inevitably he succumbed time and again. But he was a Christian, and one day he stopped praying, “Lord, help me to fight temptation, help me to conquer my desires,” and ventured to say, “Lord, I thank thee for this great gift of thy creation which thou hast given to me. Help me to use it to thine honor”—and suddenly the spell was broken.

This shows us how positive Jesus wants us to be. We should not fight against temptation, since this only mires us more deeply. We should rather keep our eyes on the Lord, like the knight riding past death and the Devil; we should “look to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2); then we shall ride through our temptation “like those who dream” (Ps. 126:1), like victors.

We can never put too much trust in Jesus, and we can never put too little trust in ourselves.

So when we pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” we should remember that Jesus himself teaches us to pray this petition and therefore assumes the responsibility that this prayer will be heard. It is amazing how he helps those who really venture everything—goods, and fame, and child, and wife—upon him. God never lets us down.

He hears the petition, but something far more than mere hearing happens: he also walks beside us as we go through the fire of temptation, “for we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).

He is not only the Lord who hears but also the Brother who bears our burdens with us.

He is the one who waits for the faithful wayfarer with a crown and also the one who accompanies him through all the fires and dark defiles.

He is the goal toward which we strive and the companion on the way.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.