BIG IDEA:
TEMPTATIONS CANNOT BE BLAMED ON GOD
INTRODUCTION:
James switches his focus from Trials sourced in our external circumstances to Temptations arising from sin within. These two can easily be related since our response to external Trials can unleash inner bitterness and rebellion that are problems of the heart.
Tony Miano: We’re going to talk about how we can recognize the opportunity for failure before the situation gets to the point that we’re left disappointed, looking back at our mistakes. That opportunity for failure begins with temptation.
Alec Motyer: Between verses 12 and 13 James performs another of his lightning changes of direction. In verse 12 he pronounces a blessing on the one who endures (bears up under, perseveres through) trial (peirasmos). But when we come to the related verb (peirazō), in verse 13, it refers no longer to the outward, circumstantial trial, but to inner enticement to sin: what we speak of as ‘temptation’. Typical of his approach, he does not warn us of this change of meaning; he plunges us into it. In other words he writes to us in exactly the same way as experience comes to us: the same circumstances which are, on the one hand, opportunities to go forward are, on the other hand, temptations to go back. There is no need to illustrate the point. We all know only too many people who have ceased to walk with God under the pressure of trouble or tragedy; the call to endure and mature was abandoned in favour of the suggestion to give up.
Dan McCartney: The reproductive metaphor is carried throughout this paragraph. The metaphor of conceiving and giving birth to evil (1:15) is found elsewhere in the Bible (Ps. 7:14). But in the latter half of the paragraph it is God who is the creative agent. It is indeed God who is personally the “Father,” who uses the seed of the word of truth to give birth to (“bring forth”) believers, who are then a kind of firstfruits, a first harvest of creation. This paragraph is full of contrasts with previous material. Unlike the unstable person, God is unchanging and unshifting. Unlike desire and sin, which produce death, God produces living beings. Unlike the darkness and shadow that sin brings forth, God begets lights.
John MacArthur: 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 (1:13),
- 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
I. (:13A) THE NATURAL EXCUSE (THE EASY WAY OUT) IS TO BLAME GOD
“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God.'”
Man’s natural tendency is to try to shift the blame off on someone else. Cf. Adam in the garden blaming the woman “whom thou gavest to be with me“. Typical excuses:
- “God, you expect too much from me”
- “God, you have made things too difficult for me”
- “God, you have not given me the same grace and power to resist temptation that you have given others; this is just my temperament; I can’t help myself”
- “God, you created me this way”
Dan McCartney: In the context of a strong belief in God’s sovereign disposition of everything, it is easy to slip into the pattern of blaming God for one’s own failure. Adam did it: “The woman whom you gave to be with me . . .” (Gen. 3:12). And the request “Do not lead us into temptation” (Matt. 6:13 NASB; Luke 11:4) could be misconstrued to suggest that God is the agent of temptation to evil. This struggle to maintain the balance between acknowledging God’s total sovereignty and maintaining his non-responsibility for sin is as much a theme of Jewish wisdom literature as it is of modern theological controversy.
II. (:13B) WHY CAN’T YOU BLAME GOD?
THESIS: His Righteous and Holy Character Sets Him Apart from Temptation
A. First Reason: “God cannot be tempted by evil“
Problem: How do you reconcile the temptations of Christ with this statement?
He was fully God and yet perfect man.
The temptations were real … and yet Christ could not sin …
Curtis Vaughan:
- God’s sufficiency means He “has no needs to be supplied” = the main way temptation gets a foothold
- In God’s character there is no “weakness or bias on which evil may lay hold and act”
John MacArthur: 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.
R. Kent Hughes: This assertion that God cannot be tempted is stressed by a rare verbal adjective that means that he is “unable to be tempted”—he is “untemptable.” The sense is that “God is unsusceptible to evil; evil has never had any appeal for Him. It is repugnant and abhorrent to Him.” Evil cannot promote even the slightest appealing tug in the heart of God. Because he cannot be tempted to sin, James’ conclusion follows: “he himself tempts no one” to sin. God has never tempted us to sin because he cannot! It is a moral impossibility. This is extremely important because the human inclination from the Garden of Eden to this day is to consciously, or at least subconsciously, blame God and thus try to palliate our own feelings of guilt.
B. Second Reason: “He Himself does not tempt anyone.”
Problem: What about the Lord’s prayer: “Lead us not into temptation …?”
Tony Miano: God cannot do or be that which is contrary to His character. Likewise, His actions are always consistent with His character. Since He is an untemptable God, He will not tempt anyone.
What we see here is one of God’s characteristics that set the one true God, the God of the Bible, apart from every other god. If we look at the gods of other religions, whether ancient or present, the character of these gods, in many ways, resembles the character of their followers. Take for instance the gods of Greek mythology. They were certainly an unseemly lot. They were prone to all of the sins and vices of common man. They were jealous in an unholy sense of the word. They were vindictive, lustful, and deceitful.
These false gods were temptable and evil.
Douglas Moo: while God may test or prove his servants in order to strengthen their faith, he never seeks to induce sin and destroy their faith.
John MacArthur: 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).
III. (:14) WHOM SHOULD YOU BLAME?
THE SOURCE OF TEMPTATION = OUR OWN POWERFUL, SEDUCING LUST
A. Universal/Personal Problem
“But each one“
Attacks each of us in different ways
Dan McCartney: In the environment of James’s audience this focus on individual responsibility (each one enticed by one’s own desires) was not universally acknowledged. People of pagan background often regarded themselves as pawns in the hands of supernatural forces. Further, the moral focus and unit of responsibility frequently was the family, the tribe, the nation, the community. In the modern West the opposite has been the case, and responsibility has until recently been overly individualized. But now, in the twenty-first century, James’s focus on the individual may again be worth emphasizing. Contemporary enthusiasm for focusing on corporate responsibility should not obscure that individuals, as individuals, are responsible for the consequences of their moral choices, as also for their choices in belief.
B. Reality of Temptation
“is tempted“
Expect temptation and be prepared to combat it.
C. Power and Seductive Nature of Temptation
“when he is carried away and enticed“
Warren Wiersbe: No temptation appears as temptation; it always seems more alluring than it really is. James used two illustrations from the world of sports to prove his point. Drawn away carries with it the idea of the baiting of a trap; and enticed in the original Greek means “to bait a hook.” The hunter and the fisherman have to use bait to attract and catch their prey. No animal is deliberately going to step into a trap and no fish will knowingly bite at a naked hook. The idea is to hide the trap and the hook.
Curtis Vaughan: The suggestion is that man’s lust, like a harlot, entices and seduces him. Man surrenders his will to lust, conception takes place, and lust gives birth to sin.
Chris Vlados: The ptcs. are adv., describing the manner in which the individual is tempted (most EVV; on the adv. ptc. of manner, see T 154-57). The pres. tenses coincide with the gnomic nature of the passage as a whole. Both terms were applied to hunting and fishing. If the metaphor is fully intended, the two ptcs. may be sequential—either the first leading to the second like a creature being drawn out from its safe place to be then enticed by the bait (Mayor 54) or the second leading to the first like a creature taking the bait and then being dragged away (REB), or they may depict independent metaphors, the first denoting fishing, the second hunting (Davids 84; cf. the mixed metaphors of nets and snares in 5:8).
David Nystrom: The expressions have their home in the realms of hunting and fishing. The fact that they appear in an odd order (“dragged off” is placed before “enticed”) is best explained by the predilection of the Old Testament to mesh images of snares and nets. So in Ecclesiastes 9:12 we read, “As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.”
In other words, this verse contains two similar images, not a succession of action within one image. The first pictures the violent action of capture that follows setting a lure, and second the attractive bait that draws an unsuspecting victim. The extraordinary vividness of these images shows how dangerous James believes the evil impulse to be. Evil desire within us acts as both the attractive bait and as the lure. The evil desire is our own, and a bent to be attracted to it is equally our own responsibility.
D. Ultimate Culprit
“by his own lust“
David Platt: After telling us God does not tempt us to sin, we might expect James to say Satan drags us away and entices us, but he doesn’t. Now, that doesn’t mean Satan isn’t involved in the temptations of this world; this will become clear later in this book (4:7). However, the responsibility for temptation and sin lies squarely with us, for our sinful desires within lead us to give in to temptation. We have no one else to blame for our sin.
May God help us understand this in a world where there are efforts at every turn to absolve us from our responsibility for sin. We want to put the fault on others or blame our upbringing, our friends, our family, our government, our condition, or anything else we can think of. This doesn’t mean different factors don’t affect us all in different ways, but the teaching of Scripture is clear: the fault for my sin lies with me. There is a problem at the core of who you are and who I am. In the words of Paul in Romans 7:18, “For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh.”
The anatomy of sin. Having looked at the origin of sin, we also need to consider the anatomy of sin. Sin does not just happen out of the blue. There is a process behind it, and we might think about this in the following four steps:
- Deception. Genesis 3 presents a perfect example of this process with Adam and Eve. The heart of sin is unbelief—not believing God. We don’t believe God when He says something is best for us or another thing is not. Instead, we question Him. This is where sin starts, and we see it in the serpent’s question, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden?’” (Gen 3:1).
- Desire. James says each one is tempted when he is “drawn away and enticed by his own evil desires” (v. 14). The language here carries the idea of baiting a hook. No fish knowingly bites an empty hook. The idea is to hide the hook. Temptation appeals to our desires, attracts us, but hides the fact that it will kill us. This kind of desire drives men to pornography, women into another man’s arms, employees to dishonesty, and people to a number of other sins. Sin starts with disordered thought, which leads to disordered desire, and we begin to want that which will destroy us. When we are enticed and when desire like that is conceived, it gives birth to sin.
- Disobedience. We act on our desire.
- Death. This is the result of disobedience. The imagery of death is vivid and terrifying, and we need to see it for the horror it is.
John MacArthur: 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.
IV. (:15) LUST INITIATES A DEADLY CAUSE AND EFFECT SCENARIO —
LUST HAS THE POWER TO DRAG US DOWN INTO SIN AND DEATH
James develops the entire process of temptation and sin — showing how each stage bears a cause-and-effect relationship to the next stage
David Holwick: The lifecycle of sin
A. Lust is only the Starting Point
“Then when lust has conceived“
Craig Blomberg: Desire does not necessarily equate with lust, although that is one common translation for this word. Rather, it refers here to any intense longing for an improper object, that is, anything that gets in the way of our pursuit of God.
This proves crucial in pastoral ministry: what one person finds as intense temptation another person may never experience as even a faint enticement, and vice-versa. Temptations are tailored to the individual, and so we as believers must never belittle a person for struggling with something we think of as inane. Instead, we must realize that each of us has particular battles nuanced specifically for us, and we need to give both grace and exhortation to one another to stand firm in times of testing. Conversely, we must always flee temptation, regardless of how “little” it may seem to us. These inner longings, James says, busily work to pull us away from our Lord.
B. Sin is its Natural Offspring
“it gives birth to sin“
Bonhoeffer: With irresistible power desire seizes mastery over the flesh. . . . It makes no difference whether it is sexual desire, or ambition, or vanity, or desire for revenge, or love of fame and power, or greed for money. . . . Joy in God is . . . extinguished in us and we seek all our joy in the creature. At this moment God is quite unreal to us, he loses all reality, and only desire for the creature is real . . . Satan does not here fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God. . . . The lust thus aroused envelops the mind and will of man in deepest darkness. The powers of clear discrimination and of decision are taken from us. The questions present themselves: “Is what the flesh desires really sin in this case?” “Is it really not permitted to me, yes—expected of me, now, here, in my particular situation, to appease desire?” . . . It is here that everything within me rises up against the Word of God. (Temptation)
C. Death is the Inevitable Outcome
“and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death“
Daniel Doriani: So there are two potential paths in any test. Testing met with endurance makes us mature and complete; it leads to life (1:3–4, 12). Or testing met with selfish desire leads to sin and death (1:14–15). “Death” is more than the death of the body, tragic as that is. Rather, just as faith and endurance lead to eternal life (1:12; cf. Matt. 10:22), so selfish desire and sin lead to eternal death (Rev. 20:14–15).
V. (:16) DON’T BE FOOLED IN THIS MATTER
“Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.”
Don’t let the temptation entice and defeat you.
Remember God’s harvest principle: “As we sow, so shall we also reap.”
Remember that the Judge is watching all that we do and He is standing at the door ready to return and render judgment.
The foolish think that they can get away with something.
Live life with a healthy fear of the Lord.
Which way does this warning point … to the preceding verses or following verses?
Curtis Vaughan: Applying it to the discussion of verses 13-15, the words may be understood as a warning against trying to excuse ourselves from responsibility for sin. If we see the words as pointing forward to verses 17, 18, they may be understood as a warning against casting suspicion upon the character of God… as the source of all good.
Dan McCartney: The readers are not to be deceived with regard to God’s character by thinking either that he is the source of temptation or that truly good things have a source other than he. And it is precisely the knowledge of God’s character, both what he is not and what he is, and the knowledge that believers are his offspring by the word of truth, that protect one against the deceitfulness of sin.
Alec Motyer: At this point comes the warning call of verse 16: Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Note how the addition of beloved strikes the note of urgency. The rich love which links believer with believer prompts concern for spiritual welfare, and issues in a call to be clear-headed and open-eyed as to the realities of the situation. Present within is the great and inescapable foe of progress with God, the subtle and insinuating power of our sinful and fallen nature.
Douglas Moo: This verse serves as a transition between verses 12–15 and 17–18. The attributing to God of evil intent – tempting people – is a serious matter. James wants to make sure that his readers are not deceived about this. Far from enticing to evil, God is the source of every good gift (v. 17), one of the greatest of which is the new birth (v. 18).