Audio Transcript

We end our week together talking about trials and temptations. It’s a sobering topic, but one relevant to each of us at some point, maybe with some of you right now. We start with what we know for sure. God tests us. He does. That’s clear in texts like James 1:3–4 and 1 Peter 1:7. But then comes the question: Does God ever tempt us? James 1:13 says no, God never tempts us. But what really is the difference between being tested and being tempted? Here’s a sharp Bible question from a listener named Mike: “Dear Pastor John, in APJ 694 you said that the word for ‘temptation’ and the word for ‘test’ are the same word in the Greek, peirasmos. So how are we to understand the differences in meaning of the two words in passages where it talks about God testing us (James 1:3–4; 1 Peter 1:7), and then in James 1:13, where it says, ‘God does not tempt anyone’? How do we put those together?”

That is an utterly crucial question. We so need to get that clear, for God’s honor and for our own peace of mind. So let me set the stage as best I can so that everybody can get on board with what the problem really is as Mike has presented it here.

Trials, Tests, Temptations

In 1 Peter 1:6–7, it says, “Now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials [and the word there, peirasmos in Greek, could be translated ‘temptations’ or ‘testings’], so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

And then, similarly, in James 1:2–4, it says, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet [testings or temptations or] trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” And then in James 1:12, he adds this amazing promise about the outcome of tested faith. He says, “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial [same word], for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.”

Now, all these testings are merciful trials from the hand of God in the way he disciplines and purifies and stabilizes and preserves his children. We know that Jesus tested his disciples (John 6:6). We know that God tested Abraham (Hebrews 11:17). So we set the stage for this problem first by establishing from 1 Peter and James that God does indeed test people. He does. He “tests” people — and the word there, peirasmos or peirazō, is the same as the word for “tempt.” There’s the problem. He puts us through trials.

Double Problem

Now, the second part of setting the stage for the problem is to observe that in James 1:13, James uses the same word for testing, peirazomai, and we translate it “tempt.” He says, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” It’s the same word as the word for “test.” So, that’s the setting of the stage.

Here’s the double problem:

When James says, “God tempts no one,” the word tempt is the very same word in Greek for test, and we know God does test people.
He says that God cannot be tempted, and yet we know that Jesus was tempted (same word) in the Gospels in the wilderness. In Matthew 4:1, the Holy Spirit drove him out to be tempted. And Jesus is God in the flesh.

So, James expects us to make a distinction in the meaning between the testing that God in fact does bring into our lives righteously, and the tempting that God never does, even though he uses the same word for both of them. He expects us to make that same distinction in order to show that God is never tempted himself and yet Jesus, who was God, was in some sense tempted.

Now that’s the challenge that Mike sees in these verses and is asking about, and he’s right to see them. I’ve seen them for years and wrestled over and over again with how to understand this. James is not tripping up here. He knows exactly what he’s doing, since he puts the two words together back-to-back in two sentences. It’s not like he forgot that ten years ago he used the word one way.

Four Steps of Temptation

I think the key to solving both of these problems is found in the next two verses (James 1:14–15) and the way James carefully defines temptation. It’s probably the nearest thing we have to an analysis of temptation in the Bible. He is talking about our experience of it and how God doesn’t experience it and doesn’t perform it. Here’s what he says in James 1:14–15: “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” So, there are four steps in this process of what James is calling temptation.

There’s desire, which may at first be innocent. In fact, I think, at first, most of them are innocent.
There’s the desire becoming an enticement and an allurement across a line into sinfulness and sinful craving and sinful desire: like the desire of hunger, which is innocent, crossing the line into gluttony; or the desire of natural sexual appetite, which is innocent, crossing the line into lust; or the desire of your paycheck — it’s not wrong to want to be paid so you can pay your bill — crossing the line into greed. That’s the second step.
Then there’s the act of sinning itself, in which the sinful desire is put into action.
And then finally, when that pattern of sin goes on without repentance, it results in eternal death.

God Is Not Tempted

Now, I think the reason that James says God is not tempted, even though Jesus was tempted, is that the innocent desires like hunger, or the desire for sex, or the desire for our paycheck are the beginnings of being drawn toward what could be a sinful desire of gluttony, lust, or greed. And in that sense, the awakening of that desire is a kind of temptation, but it has not become a full-blown temptation. For example, in the life of Jesus, he hungered (an objective allurement toward bread) when he was fasting, but it didn’t cross the line into an evil desire of rebellion or disobedience or undue craving for what God had told him not to have. In fact, none of Jesus’s desires in his whole life ever crosses the line into evil desire, and therefore never gives birth to sin.

“None of Jesus’s desires in his whole life ever crosses the line into evil desire, and therefore never gives birth to sin.”

So, we can speak of him being tested or tempted in the sense that he’s presented with objective allurements, like bread when he is hungry, so that he experiences hunger or desire, and in that sense, temptation, but it’s never taking him captive by allurements and enticements that cross the line into sinful desires.

God Does Not Tempt

And in the same way, I would say, God does not tempt, because — now this is really delicate, so listen carefully — at that point in the human life where we cross the line from experiencing objective allurements (say, like food: you smell a steak or see an ice cream cone), at that point of a legitimate desire crossing the line into sinful desire (like the second helping, or something the doctor told you shouldn’t have, or something that’s really part of gluttony or lust), at the point of crossing that line, the Bible ordinarily describes God’s action as handing us over or giving us up (Romans 1:24, 26, 28) — giving us up to our lust, giving us up to a debased mind.

In other words, God is not described as the positive, creative, active agent at the point where our desires become sinful. If you’re going to involve God by providence here, which I do, his action is a negative action, in the sense that he hands us over, he lets us go, he gives us up to our sinning at that point.

Crucial Distinction

So I don’t think James is contradicting himself. I think he expects us to make a distinction between temptation understood, on the one hand, as objective allurement that need not involve sin, and temptation understood, on the other hand, as the movement of that allurement across a line so that the desire becomes sinful. And the line between desire as a thankful, God-dependent desire and desire as an assertive, self-indulgent desire is crossed when the temptation happens, which he is saying God never experiences and God never performs.

“Our faith in God and our love for God are being tested with every temptation.”

And if we step back and ask the question of why the New Testament would use the same word for testing and temptation, perhaps part of the answer is that every test really is a kind of temptation. And every temptation really is a kind of test. Our faith in God and our love for God are being tested with every temptation. And every test, if we do not act in faith, can result in our falling into temptation. So when James says, “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life” (James 1:12), that same promise applies to resisting every temptation as well.

In March, my beloved wife, Nanci, lost her four-year battle with colon cancer. All 54 years I’ve known her, Nanci loved Jesus. But from a front-row seat, I watched a wonderful — and supernatural — change in those last four years.

In 2019, Nanci wrote to a friend and fellow cancer sufferer,

The cancer battle has been tough. However, my time with the Ancient of Days (one of my favorite names for God) has been epic! He has met me in ways I never knew were possible. I have experienced His sovereignty, mercy, and steadfast love in tangible ways. I now trust Him at a level I never knew I could.

I saw Nanci meditate on Scripture daily, read great books about God, and journal — writing out verses, powerful quotations from Spurgeon and many others, and personal reflections. One unforgettable morning, after meditating on Psalm 119:91, “All things are your servants,” she shared with me what she’d just written:

My cancer is God’s servant in my life. He is using it in ways He has revealed to me and in many more I have yet to understand. I can rest knowing my cancer is under the control of a sovereign God who is good and does good.

Brokenhearted and Thankful

Nine months later, at Nanci’s request and on short notice, our daughters and their families gathered to hear her speak final words of overflowing love for us and unswerving trust in her sovereign King.

As one of our grandsons sat beside her, listening to her struggling to speak and to me reading powerful words from her journals, he said, “Grams, if you can trust God in this, I know I can trust Him in whatever I’ll go through.” Another grandson told her, “I will never forget what you said to us today.”

Exactly one week later, I held her hand and watched her take her last breath in this world under the curse.

Every day during those four years, I witnessed God’s sanctifying and happy-making work in my wife: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope . . . because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:3–5).

Nanci and I — and thousands worldwide — prayed daily for her healing. God’s final answer was to rescue her from suffering and bring her into his presence where it’s “better by far” (Philippians 1:23). Through her afflictions, he achieved in her an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all (2 Corinthians 4:17). She praised Jesus for it, and I will forever do the same, though I miss her immensely.

Why God Permits What He Does

When our ministry posted Nanci’s words, “My cancer is God’s servant,” someone responded, “WHAT? God does NOT give people cancer. Jesus bore our sicknesses and carried our pains on the cross.”

“Everything God does flows from his wisdom and ultimately serves both his holiness and love.”

That reader is not alone in trying to distance God from suffering. But by saying sickness comes only from Satan and the fall, not from God, we disconnect him from our suffering and his deeper purposes. God is sovereign. He never permits or uses evil arbitrarily; everything he does flows from his wisdom and ultimately serves both his holiness and love.

Joni Eareckson Tada often shares the words of her friend Steve Estes: “God permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves.” God’s “permitting” something is far stronger than it may sound. After all, whatever God permits actually happens; what he doesn’t permit doesn’t happen.

In the final chapter of Job, God reveals that Job’s family and friends “showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). The author told us from the beginning that Job’s troubles were Satan’s idea and actions. Yet the inspired wording indicates Satan’s efforts were, indirectly by sovereign permission, God’s own doing. Many find this truth disturbing, but properly understood, it should be comforting. What should be profoundly disturbing is the notion that God stands by passively while Satan, evildoers, diseases, and random accidents ruin the lives of his beloved children.

Charles Spurgeon suffered terribly from depression, gout, rheumatism, neuritis, and a burning kidney inflammation. Yet he said, “It would be a very sharp and trying experience for me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me . . . that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.”

Mercy Outstrips Hardship

Nanci and I experienced many glimpses of God’s sovereign purposes for years before her cancer diagnosis. We saw that my becoming an insulin-dependent diabetic 35 years ago was God’s plan to increase my dependence on him. And we saw, 30 years ago, that a lawsuit by an abortion clinic for $8.2 million was his way of moving me from pastoring a church we loved into a ministry that reaches further than we ever imagined.

God’s hands were not tied by my genetic propensity for type-1 diabetes (the result of the curse), or by the vengeance of child-killers (the result of human sin and demonic strategy). He didn’t merely “make the best of bad situations.” He took bad situations and used them for his glory and our highest good. His sovereign grace far outstripped our hardships.

If this were not true, anyone facing a terminal illness would have to believe they experienced bad luck, and that God is either not as powerful or not as loving as he claims to be. Parents who have lost a child would have to believe the death was a meaningless accident, and that it wouldn’t have happened if only the child hadn’t been at that place at that time, or if that man hadn’t been driving drunk, or if a thousand other circumstances had been different.

If onlys and what ifs can rule our lives and drive us crazy. Instead, embracing God’s higher purposes — even when invisible to us in painful and tragic events — affirms God’s greatness. This is not fatalism. It is trust in the character and promises of our faithful, all-wise God.

My friend David O’Brien told me, with his slurred and laboring voice, that God used cerebral palsy to deepen his dependence on Christ. Was he better off? He lived convinced that his 81 years of suffering were no cosmic accident or satanic victory, but a severe mercy from the good hand of almighty God.

Reasons Outside Our Sight Lines

By God’s grace, Nanci fixed her attention on his attributes. Only eight months into her cancer journey, she wrote,

I honestly would not trade this cancer experience to go back to where I was. These last months have been used by God to propel me into a deeper understanding and experience of his sovereignty, wisdom, steadfast love, mercy, grace, faithfulness, immanency, trustworthiness, and omnipotence.

Psalm 119:71 says, “It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.” If affliction was good for the psalmist, then withholding that affliction would have meant withholding good. The universe is first and foremost about the purposes, plans, and glory of God. God sees eternal purposes and plans and knows ultimate good in ways we cannot.

Our sovereign God weaves millions of details into our lives. He may have one big reason, or a thousand little ones, for bringing a certain person or success or failure or disease or accident into our lives. His reasons often fall outside our present lines of sight. If God uses cancer or a car accident to conform us to himself, then regardless of the human, demonic, or natural forces involved, he will be glorified.

“God is at work behind the scenes, and one day we will understand our suffering’s hidden purposes.”

“O great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord of hosts, great in counsel and mighty in deed” (Jeremiah 32:18–19). God is at work behind the scenes, and one day we will understand our suffering’s hidden purposes.

Will You See What She Saw?

Without a doubt, as I saw so clearly even when my tears overflowed, cancer served God’s purposes in Nanci’s life. I said at her service, “The most conspicuous thing about Nanci in her cancer years was her wonderfully big view of God, which she fed from Scripture and great books. The more she contemplated God’s love and grace and sovereignty, the more her trust in him grew.”

So I said to our gathered family, friends, and church members — many of them facing their own painful trials — what I sensed God saying to me: “That huge, beautiful, and transforming view of God is yours for the taking. So why not spend the rest of your life pursuing it?”

After I had my first child, and all the more after I had my second, I wondered if I would be done with ministry until my kids grew up. I wondered how I could possibly fit another task on my to-do list when I could not even find the time to eat properly unless my husband was home.

Then I read about Ann Judson, who gave her life in the early 1800s to reach the people of Burma. Over the course of three pregnancies, often with a baby strapped to her back, she engaged in gospel ministry, translation work, and the discipling of new believers. Even as a young mother, ministry was nonnegotiable, because her Savior gave her a charge to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).

She was no superwoman; she was a jar of clay like the rest of us. But because she loved Christ, his commands were not burdensome, and everything in her life kneeled to his priorities. Disciple-making may have looked different in her different seasons of motherhood, but the demands of motherhood could not hinder her from obeying Christ.

Rather than limiting disciple-making to specific times or spaces, we might find freedom, especially as mothers, to view disciple-making as intentional, Bible-saturated relationships with the people right in front of us, wherever we are. Disciple-making is not bound to any particular place or program; it is bound to relationship. It is “the covenant lifestyle of redeemed women” (Women’s Ministry in the Local Church, 128) as they teach and model life in Christ (Titus 2:3–5).

Make Disciples of Family

In obedience to Christ’s Great Commission, we can begin by seeking to make disciples of those closest to us: our families. We may have unbelieving parents or siblings, or perhaps an unbelieving husband — or they may be believing, but we can continue to love and encourage them to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ. Even if everyone else in the family confesses faith in Christ, however, our children are not born believing, and left to themselves, they do not seek God (Romans 3:10–11).

“Our children will be discipled by us, either in the Lord or according to our choice idols.”

Since we wield significant influence as mothers, our children will be discipled by us, either in Christ or according to our choice idols. We will disciple them toward Jesus, “the fountain of living waters,” or toward false gods, “broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). God has entrusted us with each of our children, whether biological or foster or adopted, whether one or many, that we might make disciples, bringing them up “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). We teach them diligently in the normal, even mundane, rhythms of life (Deuteronomy 6:7), and we also show them what it looks like to follow Jesus in all of life, including our repentance.

Disciple-making does not end when our children or families believe in Jesus. As long as we both live, or until Jesus returns, we pray and labor for their growth and perseverance to the end.

Make Disciples of Church Family

Every believing mother is part of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27). Motherhood does not amputate us from his body, only to be reattached after the children are no longer taking naps or have graduated into adulthood. As mothers, we are still part of the body and contribute to its growth and health as we do the work of ministry (Ephesians 4:11–16).

Discipling one another toward Christlikeness happens not only when the church gathers. We teach one another to observe all that Christ commanded (Matthew 28:20) even when the church scatters, in our eating or drinking or whatever we are doing (1 Corinthians 10:31). For some of us, inviting others into our everyday lives may be one of the hardest challenges of disciple-making. Making disciples on Saturday morning from eight to ten at the local cafe is pretty safe territory; inviting others into the unstructured parts of our lives, especially in our homes, can feel intimidating. But God is able to open our hearts in vulnerability and availability.

For mothers with younger or special-needs children, the thought of another relationship to juggle might feel overwhelming, but you can start really small. Invite another woman over regularly to spend time with you and your children. Let Scripture applied to daily life be your “curriculum.” Talk together as you fold the laundry. Pray together and fellowship over meals, even if your kids are smearing food into their hair. Share life so deeply that you can say, “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me — practice these things” (Philippians 4:9).

When my first two children were both under three years old, I benefited from the regular company of a younger church sister. She helped me laugh at the fact that it was more surprising when our home was picked up and clean than when “kid stuff” carpeted the floor. She blessed my boys with her fresh energy and Lego engineering skills. And when the kids went down for the night, we studied the book of Hebrews and prayed together. She came to be discipled and counseled, but I walked away discipled and counseled too. Her friendship was a lifeline in that season of motherhood, and God used our relationship to make disciples of us both.

Make Disciples of Neighbors

Where mothers are prone to seek only “their own interests,” or the interests of their own homes and families, Christ gives us a better alternative: to seek the interests of him (Philippians 2:21) and others (Philippians 2:4), including others outside the home. Put another way, he calls us to love God and neighbor (Luke 10:27).

“And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). Jesus does not answer with a zip code or the names of people we would naturally like to keep close. Instead, he answers with a parable of a man who “fell among robbers” (Luke 10:30). This man shared the road with a priest and a Levite who both saw his half-dead form, but they valued their own interests over his life (Luke 10:31–32). Were it not for the mercy of a passing Samaritan, he could have died (Luke 10:33–37).

As mothers, we share the road, so to speak, with many different people in our community. We might see a neighbor while we run out to grab the mail, a store cashier might start a conversation with us, electricians or plumbers might pass through our homes, we might meet other caretakers at the park, or we might share a cubicle with a coworker. We can deliberately weave neighbor relationships into everyday life, or like the Samaritan, we can hit pause to show Christlike mercy. If we have young children, we can invite others to walk with us, run errands with us, or accompany us wherever we are going. Whether we have one minute to give or twenty, we can welcome our neighbor’s presence not as an interruption but as an opportunity.

Disciple-making happens at the intersection of love for God and neighbor. Mothers, our neighbors’ proximity to us is no mistake, as God is the one who has determined “allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:26–27). How do we know that the neighbor in our path has not been placed there to find God through us?

Make Disciples of Strangers

We are not limited to the relationships right in front of us; we can look to make disciples beyond our natural realm too, among people who are currently strangers to us. Some mothers might begin looking beyond even while the children are young. God might call some of us to foster and adopt. He might call some of us to go beyond the natural bounds of culture and language to an unreached people. He might call some of us to enter into the world of the prisoner, the refugee, or the recovering addict, that we might make disciples of them as well.

Some of us might seek out the elderly in our community to come alongside one or a few in friendship. Some of us might open our homes to international students. Even mothers with young children can break routine and transplant dinner to someone else’s table or nap their young children in someone else’s home as they read Scripture together. We can pray by name for those being reached and discipled by others, and our husbands and church families can also help us carve out focused time for ministry outside our normal routines. Every mother is different, so we cannot compare schedules, capacities, or individual callings, but all of us can ask God where else we might pursue relationships with gospel intentionality.

“Mothers, we have but a vapor of a life. The trials of motherhood are fleeting, but the souls around us are eternal.”

If self-love rules us, then disciple-making will find no room in our priorities, no matter how many ideas we are given. But if the love of Christ controls us (2 Corinthians 5:14), we will love even those toward whom we have no natural obligation or affinity, and we will make ourselves servants to all to win more to Christ (1 Corinthians 9:19). We will pray, “Lord Jesus, there is nothing I want more in my life than what you bled to obtain.”

Moms Who Make Disciples

Our children will grow up quickly, and eventually, the day-to-day demands of motherhood will ebb. But Christ’s charge to make disciples remains unchanged. Today is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2). Today is the day to exhort one another (Hebrews 3:13).

Ann Judson poured out her life to make disciples because she was convinced that “this life is only temporary, a preparation for eternity” (My Heart in His Hands: Ann Judson of Burma, 203). Mothers, we have but a vapor of a life. The trials of motherhood are fleeting, but the souls around us are eternal.