4 The Fault for Temptation

(James 1:13–17)

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God;” for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. (1:13–17)

As explained in chapter 2 of this volume, peirasmos (the noun form of the verb translated tempted) has the basic meaning of trying, testing, assaying, or proving and can have negative or positive connotations, depending on the context. In 1:12, the word is used in the sense of trials, or testings. But in the present text (vv. 13–14), the idea is clearly that of temptation, of solicitation to evil. James is here dealing with an entirely different concept.

The same word (in noun or verb form) is used for both ideas because the primary difference is not in the peirasmos itself but in a person’s response to it. If a believer responds in faithful obedience to God’s Word, he successfully endures a trial; if he succumbs to it in the flesh, doubting God and disobeying, he is tempted to sin. Right response leads to spiritual endurance, righteousness, wisdom, and other blessings (vv. 2–12). Wrong response leads to sin and death (v. 15).

In his first letter to the church at Corinth, Paul makes clear that temptation is “common to man”(1 Cor. 10:13). No person, including the most spiritual Christian, can escape temptation. Even the Lord in His humanity, who was without sinful flesh, was “tempted by the devil” (Matt. 4:1). An ancient writer quipped that a Christian’s baptism does not drown the flesh.

Just as it is common to man to be tempted, it is also common for him to blame someone or something else, not only for his being tempted but also for his succumbing to it. From the beginning, one of the chief characteristics of sin has been the propensity to pass off blame, and every parent knows that children are born with that very evident propensity.

When God confronted Adam with his sin in the Garden of Eden, Adam’s reply was, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). When the Lord then asked Eve, “What is this you have done?” she replied, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (v. 13). Eve blamed Satan; much worse, Adam blamed God.

James clearly has no patience with a foolish fatalism by which a poor man blames his poverty for turning him into a thief and therefore justifies his stealing, or by which a drunk blames business or domestic problems and pressures for driving him to drink and therefore to the reckless driving that seriously injures or kills someone. Nor does he allow for the notion that “the devil made me do it.”

Even more vehemently, James opposes the intolerable idea of blaming God, declaring, Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God.” Let no one say translates a present active imperative form of the verb legō (Let… say), coupled with the negative imperative mēdeis (no man). The idea is, “Let no person say to himself,” that is, rationalize to himself, “that, when he is tempted, he is being tempted by God.” The very idea is anathema.

By translates the preposition apo, which is sometimes rendered “of,” or “from,” and carries the connotations of remoteness, distance, and indirection. Another preposition (iupö), which is often translated with those same English words (by, of, from), denotes direct agency. What James is saying, therefore, is that no one should say that God is even indirectly responsible for temptation to evil. He is in no way and to no degree responsible, directly or indirectly, for our being tempted.

Robert Burns, the noted Scottish poet, wrote, “Thou knowest Thou hast formed me with passions wild and strong, and listening to their witching voice has often led me wrong.” He claimed that he was “By passion driven: But yet the light that led astray was light from heaven.” Some ancient rabbis taught what was called yetzher ha’ra, which means “evil impulse,” and was considered to be part of man’s original created nature. One rabbinical saying was, “God said, ‘It repents me that I created the evil tendency in man; for had I not done so, he would not have rebelled against me. I created the evil tendency; I created the law as a means of healing.’ If you occupy yourself with the law, you will not fall into the power of it. God placed the good tendency on a man’s right hand, and the evil on his left.” Another ancient Jewish writer, the philosopher Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Christ, had much better understanding. He perceptively wrote, “When the mind has sinned and removed itself far from virtue, it lays the blame on divine causes.” He reflected the truth of Solomon, who said, “The foolishness of man subverts his way, and his heart rages against the Lord” (Prov. 19:3).

In his fierce opposition to the ungodly rationalization of blaming God for sending enticement to evil, James gives four strong proofs that He is not responsible for our temptations and even less responsible, if that were possible, for our succumbing to them in sin. He does so by explaining the nature of evil (1:136), the nature of man (v. 14), the nature of lust (vv. 15–16), and the nature of God (v. 17). In verse 18, he gives a fifth proof, the nature of regeneration, which will be discussed separately in chapter 5 of this commentary.

THE NATURE OF EVIL

for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. (1:13b)

Cannot be tempted translates the adjective apeirastos, which is used only here in the New Testament and carries the idea of being untemptable, without the capacity for temptation. It is the same as being invincible to assaults of evil. In other words, the nature of evil makes it inherently foreign to God (see discussion of v. 17). The two are mutually exclusive in the most complete and profound sense. God and evil exist in two distinct realms that never meet. He has no vulnerability to evil and is utterly impregnable to its onslaughts. He is aware of evil but untouched by it, like a sunbeam shining on a dump is untouched by the trash.

That truth, made plain so often in Scripture about the only true and living God, is not found in other religions. Because they are man-made and demon-inspired, pagan gods always reflect the frailties and shortcomings of those who created them. The gods of Greek and Roman mythology, for instance, are extraordinarily immature, capricious, petty, and even wicked. They are depicted as having supernatural power, but without the supernatural wisdom or virtue that should correspond to such power. They not only themselves commit gross sins but induce their mortal subjects to sin and vice of every sort. Those supposed deities sin against and among themselves and they sin against the human beings over whom they exercise arbitrary, unjust, and immoral control. Because they have been spun out of fallen, corrupted minds, they cannot but manifest the fallen and corrupt characteristics of their sinful creators. A stream cannot rise higher than its source.

While Isaiah stood transfixed before the Lord, one of the seraphim cried out, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory” (Isa. 6:3). Shortly after He instituted the covenant at Sinai, the Lord commanded Moses to remind His people Israel, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2). God repeats that command to the church: “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16). His holiness is eternally unmixed with anything less than pure and perfect righteousness. Fully understanding that God has absolutely no vulnerability to evil, or even temptation to evil, the prophet Habakkuk declared, “Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and You can not look on wickedness with favor” (Hab. 1:13). The Lord Jesus, who was God in human form, is described as “holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners” (Heb. 7:26).

In the second book of Samuel, we read, “Now again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and it incited David against them to say, ‘Go, number Israel and Judah’” (2 Sam. 24:1), a sinful act that betrayed confidence in the nation’s own military resources above God’s divine resources. God actually induced David, “a man after His own heart,” to sin. But in the parallel passage in Chronicles, the Word makes clear that it was “Satan [who] stood up against Israel and moved David to number Israel” (1 Chron. 21 :1). Just as God allowed Satan to afflict and tempt Job, He allowed him to tempt David.

In the testing of Jesus in the wilderness after forty days and nights of fasting, the difference between peirasmos as testing and as temptation can be seen clearly, the same distinction seen in this first chapter of James (between vv. 2–3, 12 and vv. 13–14). Matthew reports that “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matt. 4:1). But the remainder of the account (vv. 2–11) makes clear that, whereas from Satan’s perspective, the experience was intended as temptation (inducement to sin), for Jesus the experience was a test, which He passed without the least wavering. Despite Satan’s clever use of God’s Word, he did not succeed even slightly in penetrating Jesus’ impregnability to sin.

To some Christians, Jesus’ instructions about prayer, commonly called the Lord’s Prayer, suggest that God can, if He wants, “lead us into temptation,” and that we should therefore earnestly beseech Him instead to “deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13). But the idea there is that we should ask our heavenly Father not to lead us into a testing of our faith that, because of our immaturity and weakness, could become unbearable temptation to evil. Reinforcing what James says at the end of James 1:13 (“He [God] Himself does not tempt anyone”), Paul assures believers that “no temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13). God allows the trials in which temptation can occur, not to solicit believers to sin, but to move them to greater endurance (cf. James 1:2–4).

THE NATURE OF MAN

But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. (1:14)

A second evidence that God is not responsible for our temptations to sin is our own nature, that fallen spiritual disposition that makes us susceptible to temptation.

Each one emphasizes the universality of temptation, from which no person is immune. Every human being is tempted; there are no exceptions. The present tense underscores the continuing, repeated, and inescapable reality of the process, which occurs when a person is carried away and enticed by his own lust.

Carried away and enticed both translate participles that describe closely related but different aspects of the temptation process. The first term is from the verb exelkō, which has the meaning of dragging away, as if compelled by an inner desire. It was often used as a hunting term to refer to a baited trap designed to lure an unsuspecting animal into it. The second term (enticed) is from deleazō, which was commonly used as a fishing term to refer to bait, whose purpose was also to lure the prey from safety to capture and death.

Peter uses deleazō, twice in his second letter, first referring to “eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children,” and later to “arrogant words of vanity [by which] they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error” (2 Pet. 2:14, 18).

Animals and fish are successfully lured to traps and hooks because the bait is too attractive for them to resist. It looks good and smells good, appealing strongly to their senses. Their desire for the bait is so intense that it causes them to lose caution and to overlook or ignore the trap or the hook until it is too late.

In exactly the same way, we succumb to temptation when our own lust draws us toward evil things that are appealing to fleshly desire. Although in contemporary use, lust has long been associated almost exclusively with illicit sexual desire, the Greek term epithumia that it translates refers to a deep, strong desire or longing of any kind, good or bad.

Sin can look attractive and pleasurable, and usually is, at least for a while. Otherwise it would have little power over us. Satan tries to make sin as attractive as possible, as do the evil and seductive men and women just described above by Peter. But there would be no attraction of sin were it not for man’s own sinful lust, which makes evil seem more appealing than righteousness, falsehood more appealing than truth, immorality more appealing than moral purity, the things of the world more appealing than the things of God. We cannot blame Satan, his demons, ungodly people, or the world in general for our own lust. Even more certainly, we cannot blame God. The problem is not a tempter from without, but the traitor within.

The preposition that is here rendered by is from hupo, which carries the idea of direct agency. We are not tempted even indirectly “by (apo) God” (v. 13), but we are directly carried away and enticed by (hupo) our own lust. The fault is entirely within us, in our unredeemed flesh.

Speaking of himself as a Christian and as an apostle, Paul confessed for all believers:

I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. (Rom. 7:18–25)

Jeremiah testified, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Jesus said that “the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders” (Matt. 15:18–19). Knowing that His apostles would be subject to temptation to evil because of their remaining unredeemed flesh, He admonished, “Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41).

Although we have been gloriously saved, made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4), and have the Holy Spirit within us, we nevertheless retain an enemy within, in the form of still-sinful and corrupted longings, passions, and lusts. Even that which in itself is good and honorable can be lusted after for sinful reasons. Food and sleep are wonderful and necessary gifts of the Lord, without which we could not live. But when we desire and covet them in extreme ways they become gluttony on the one hand and indolence on the other. Sexual love is the supreme gift God has given to men and women for mutual physical pleasure; but it was designed, with no exception, exclusively for marriage. God’s Word condemns few sins more severely than sexual love apart from marriage.

While we are all vulnerable to the sins Scripture forbids, each person has his or her own set of special desires or lusts. Behavior which is powerful solicitation to one person may have much less appeal to another. For example, religious legalists and sacrilegious libertines have different desires. One is drawn to covert sin and hypocrisy, the other to blatant, overt evil. Just as one type of bait or lure works well with one kind of fish but not with others, so one person’s passion is another person’s repulsion. It is therefore his own lusts that each believer should be most concerned about, because those are where he is vulnerable to temptation. Our commonality is not in the particular lusts but in the fact that we all have them, are susceptible to them, and have sole personal responsibility for responding to them.

THE NATURE OF LUST

Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. (1:15–16)

A third proof that God is not the source of temptation is seen in the nature of lust. Having identified lust in the nature of man, James then discusses it in practical terms. Here is the heart of his teaching about temptation.

Shifting from the metaphors of hunting and fishing, he now uses the process of childbirth to illustrate his point. Lust is depicted as a mother conceiving and bearing a child, which is sin and whose ultimate destiny is death. Through James, the Lord here makes clear that sin is not an isolated act or even a series of isolated acts, but rather the result of a specific process, which is succinctly explained.

To better help us remember the process, we can identify the four basic steps with words that each begin with the letter “d.” The first is desire, an alternate translation for lust. Before salvation all people are slaves to lust (Eph. 2:1–3; 4:17–19; 1 Thess. 4:5). As noted above, epithumia (lust) is itself morally and spiritually neutral, its rightness or wrongness being determined partly by the object that is desired and partly by how and for what purposes it is desired. It begins primarily as an emotion, a feeling, a longing for something that, at first, may be largely subconscious. It develops from somewhere deep within us, expressing a want to acquire, achieve, or possess something that we do not have. It can be sparked by any number of things and types of things. Looking in a jewelry store window can spark an immediate and strong desire for a ring, a watch, a bracelet, or crystal vase. Driving past a model home, we may suddenly feel an intense longing to have one like it. Passing an automobile dealership may just as suddenly spark a desire for a new car, perhaps even a make and model we had never thought much about before. The desire may develop and gain our full attention. Lust to sin comes much in the same way. Something we see or hear about suddenly grabs our attention and draws out a strong desire, or lust, to have it or to do it.

The next step is deception, which is more closely related to the mind than to the emotions. When we think about a desired object, our mind begins to rationalize a justification for getting it. That is virtually an automatic part of the process of temptation. We don’t have to tell our minds to rationalize our lusts, because they are already so predisposed by our fallenness. Like the animal or fish that goes after the bait, the desire to have what we want is so strong that we are inclined to discount possible dangers or harm. Simply wanting it justifies the effort to have it. It is at that point, James says, that lust has conceived. The “life of sin,” as it were, has started to form and grow.

The third step is that of design, when plans start to be made to fulfill the emotional desire that we have rationalized and justified with our minds. This stage involves our will, our conscious decision to pursue the lust until it is satisfied. And because the will is involved, this is the stage where the most guilt lies. What has been longed for and rationalized is now consciously pursued as a matter of choice.

The fourth and final stage is disobedience. If we allow the process to continue, the design inevitably produces disobedience to God’s law, by which it gives birth to sin. That which is desired, rationalized, and willed is actually done, committed, and accomplished. Desire leads to deception, deception to design, and design to disobedience, which is sin.

It should go without saying that the earlier in the process we determine to resist, the greater the likelihood we will avoid the sin. Conversely, the longer we delay resisting, the more likely the actual sin becomes. It is only the Christian who is able to control his emotional responses to temptations when they first appear who will effectively deal with sin in his life. The principle of “nipping it in the bud” has no better application than here. The battle must be fought in the mind, where sin is conceived. The truth of God which activates the conscience, the soul’s warning system, must be heard and not ignored. No one can fight the battle in the mind or imagination except the individual believer. To lose it there moves one into the design stage, in which the actual execution of the sin is planned. (The New Testament has much to say about the importance of the mind.)

But since none of us is successful in resisting every temptation by immediately rejecting wrong desire, we need to understand ways for dealing with sin at every stage. Obviously, we can avoid many temptations simply by avoiding places and situations where we know they are most likely to occur. We don’t read magazines or books, watch movies or TV programs, associate with friends, or go places where we know our emotions will be aroused to any sort of enticement to sin. Instead, we make sure that we are exposed to things that feed our emotions in godly ways. We not only gain positively and directly from the spiritual benefit of those things, but the godly joy we receive from them makes the ungodly things less attractive and even repulsive. For example, sound, uplifting, God-honoring music is one of the greatest emotional blessings—and protections—the Lord provides.

We must also be on guard at the level of our minds. We train our minds to keep watch over our emotional desires. Instead of rationalizing temptations, we prepare in advance to oppose them with God’s Word, just as Jesus did in the wilderness. Paul therefore admonishes, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2). Especially helpful in this regard is the apostle’s advice to the church at Philippi: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things” (Phil. 4:8; cf. Col. 3:2). It is not incidental that the first and greatest commandment includes loving God not only with our hearts and souls but also with our minds (Matt. 22:37). The writer of Psalm 119 memorized the truth of Scripture to strengthen his mind against temptation (vv. 9–11).

If the cycle of temptation is completed, sin is accomplished, and it brings forth death. The “child” conceived by lust is born a murderer, a killer. To use another figure, “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).Sin … brings forth physical death, separating the soul from the body; spiritual death, separating the soul from God; and eternal death, separating both body and soul from God forever.

Through his faith in Jesus Christ, a Christian is saved from spiritual and eternal death. But if he persists in sin, he may pay the penalty of physical death. Because some believers in Corinth were partaking of the Lord’s Supper unworthily, they brought judgment on themselves and “for this reason,” Paul says, “many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep” (1 Cor. 11:30), that is, had died. John also reminds us that, even for believers, “there is a sin leading to death” (1 John 5:16).

In light of those sobering truths, James implores: Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Stop blaming other people, circumstances, or Satan for your temptations and sins, he is saying. Above all, do not blame God. Take full blame on yourselves, where it belongs. Realize that your enemy—your fallenness, your lusts, your weaknesses, your rationalizations, and your sins—are within and have to be dealt with from within. When a believer wins the battle on the inside, he can say with Paul: “For our proud confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you” (2 Cor. 1:12).

THE NATURE OF GOD

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. (1:17)

Finally, James declares that God is not responsible for our temptations to sin because, as he has already made clear (v. 13), His own nature is incompatible with the nature of sin. Because God is wholly righteous and just, by definition He can have no part in sin, in any way or to any degree.

What comes from God is not sin, but only every good thing given and every perfect gift. The perfect, flawless, holy goodness of God results in His doing and giving only what reflects His perfect holiness and truth. His works reflect His character. Negatively, James is saying that, from temptation to execution, God has absolutely no responsibility for sin. Positively, he is saying that God has complete responsibility for every good thing, and that every perfect gift that exists has come down from above.

The Father of lights was an ancient Jewish title for God, referring to Him as Creator, as the great Giver of light, in the form of the sun, moon, and stars (cf. Gen. 1:14–19). Unlike those sources of light, which, magnificent as they are, can nevertheless vary and will eventually fade, God’s character, power, wisdom, and love have no variation or shifting shadow. Through Malachi the Lord declares, “I, the Lord, do not change” (Mal. 3:6); through John, we are told that “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5); and through the writer of Hebrews we are assured that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever” (Heb. 13:8). The celestial bodies God created have various phases of movement and rotation, changing from hour to hour and varying in intensity and shadow. God, however, is changeless.

Our Lord promises:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! (Matt. 7:7–11)

Even more than those things—infinitely more than those things—He promises that our heavenly Father will give us His own Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13).

The implication of this passage is this: When we, as God’s children, are so abundantly and continually showered with the most gracious, valuable, and satisfying blessings our heavenly Father can bestow, why should anything evil have the slightest attraction to us?