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.

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a lost child wandering in a wood, who stumbled across a path lined with signposts. Strange and wonderful names adorned these signs, names like Phantastes, Beowulf, Harry Potter, The Odyssey, Pilgrim’s Progress, and The Return of the King. The child, guided by the posts, set out along the path. By way of many adventures, they led him through the Dragon’s Den, into the foggy Foothills of Longing, and finally up to the Peaks of Joy, where he caught a glimpse of a far green country under a swift sunrise. He now lives happily ever after, pursuing that path to the heights he was made to explore.

This is the tale of many men and many women — those who have heeded the signposts of story on the path of life. Followed faithfully, this path can lead to the heights of happiness, what the poet calls “fullness of joy” and “pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). C.S. Lewis perhaps best articulated his adventures on this road. He began the trek as a hardened atheist, but along this path of good stories, God led him to Jesus. And though he has long since passed beyond our vision, happily heeding the invitation of Aslan to come further up and further in, we can glean much from his journey.

Lewis champions all kinds of stories — fairy tales, myths, fantasies, biblical narratives, allegories, even histories — as God-given means of leading men and women Godward. And other Christians, like Tolkien and Chesterton, heartily agree, attesting to the enduring value of stories for both believers and unbelievers. So, how exactly do good stories serve as signposts, guiding us to the God we were made for?

Through the Dragon’s Den

First, good stories can guide us through the dragon’s den. Lewis once said that he wrote fairy tales because they allowed him to steal past the watchful dragons that stand guard over our hearts (On Stories, 70). Tolkien took the image one step further and argued that stories can also steal from those dragons. Tolkien recognized that, often, the more we see things, the less we see them; our eyes become hooded with the film of familiarity. For Tolkien, this leads to a kind of draconic possessiveness. We lay hold of things, claim them as our own, lock them in our hoard, and then cease to look at them. We become unwatchful dragons.

Thus, we need what Tolkien calls recovery — a renewed sense of wonder at the world. We need someone to raid our “hoard and let all the locked things fly away like caged birds” (On Fairy-Stories, 68). As it turns out, stories make excellent burglars. Like the warm breath of Aslan, good stories restore life to things that inattention has long since turned to stone.

Good stories, especially good fiction, create opportunities for us to come to grips with reality. As Chesterton might say, myths parade before us sheep with golden coats to astonish us that ours wear robes of white. Fairy tales brandish wooden wands sprouting magic spells so that they might land on us with wonderful weight that our branches cast leaves. Stories conjure up hoary Ents to remind us that our trees too are giants, telling ancient tales of earth and sky. Good stories signpost the riches of creation.

When all these gigantic treasures are dragged back into the Light, foiled by fantasy, they can awaken in us what Chesterton calls the ancient instinct of astonishment and dazzle us into gratitude. This impulse to give thanks acted as a signpost for the unbelieving Chesterton, causing him to realize that thanks must be given to someone. Gifts need a Giver. Magic needs a Magician. Creation needs a Creator.

“Like the warm breath of Aslan, good stories restore life to things that inattention has long since turned to stone.”

Stories can also recover things from the shadowy prison of abstraction. Through narrative, imagination can incarnate what reason excarnates. When you have stood beside Aragorn before the black gates of Mordor and seen the innumerable hosts of Sauron swarming like ants, good and evil cease to be simply ideas. When you’ve basked in the golden goodness of Aslan, you’ve seen a glimmer of the beauty of Jesus. In this way, stories can be radically iconoclastic, ridding our hoard of the little idols of God that we construct and creating imaginative space for the immense God of the Bible.

In short, stories help undragon us. They enable us to taste and see the goodness of good, and so fuel our desire for the God who is Good.

Into the Hills

Thus, good stories can cultivate holy longing. In his autobiography, Lewis recounts how stories often gave him a stab of desire, and in doing so, they served as signposts and foretastes of something “other and outer” (Surprised by Joy, 238).

Lewis knew by experience that the heart of man is haunted by a sense of homesickness — which Lewis terms Joy symbolized by a Blue Flower. Ultimately, Joy is a longing to home in the triune God, a far-off echo of the enormous bliss lost in Eden. Eternity smolders in our hearts, and though we cannot fully snuff out this longing, we do smother it. Part of the tragedy of modernity is that almost everything is aimed at weeding out the Blue Flower. God planted the seed deep in our souls, but we are poor gardeners. Even though all souls thirst for the living God, few of us are ever quiet enough to identify the ache.

But good stories can remind us of the restlessness that besets our souls. Thus, many find their way into the foggy foothills of desire through the pages of great books. You need look no further than the astonishing success of the Harry Potter series to prove this. Harry proclaims to all who have ears to hear that modernity still yearns for something more — something that even the Room of Requirement cannot satisfy.

The best storytellers know how to fuel this holy longing. Tolkien, the maker of Middle-earth, defines a successful story as one that “awakens desire, satisfying it while also wetting it unbearably” (On Fairy-Stories). Jesus himself, the master storyteller, understood this narrative power and so wielded fantasy to this effect, regaling his listeners with tales of buried treasure and quests for legendary pearls.

Lewis’s imaginative mentor, George MacDonald, armed all of his fiction with the stab of Joy. For MacDonald, the best thing good stories can do for a man is “not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him.” And so, in all his subcreation and storytelling, MacDonald made it his aim to “assail the soul of his reader as the wind assails an aeolian harp. . . . [For] if there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it” (A Dish of Orts, 239–40).

Given this emphasis, it should come as no surprise that when, as an atheist, Lewis first read MacDonald’s enchanting tale Phantastes, he was overwhelmed with a sense of longing, dazzled by what he would later identify as holiness. He recounts, “I saw the bright shadow coming out of the book into the real world and resting there, transforming all common things” (Surprised by Joy, 181). Lewis began to see the meaning of his insatiable longing, the tune of the song of his soul. And MacDonald’s fairy tale served as his alpine guide, leading him ever up.

In good stories, we hear rumors of glory, hints and bright riddles of the Home we were made for. And it is good to be haunted by this yearning, for above the mists of myth and the veil of story lies the goal of all our longing.

Up the Mountain

Finally, when good stories have raided the Dragon’s Den and guided us through the Foothills of Longing, they lead us yet further up. As the horns of elfland sing, for a moment the fog parts, and we are given a stunning vista of happily ever after.

Tolkien names this visionary virtue the Consolation of the Happy Ending, and he held it to be the highest good of good stories. And this happy ending is no mere wish fulfillment. For Tolkien, in a well-told tale, the happy ending echoes the gospel. It does not diminish the reality of sorrow and suffering. In fact, sorrow and suffering set the stage for the story’s most powerful moment.

Precisely here, when the tale turns, when against all odds and all hope evil is overcome, “a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world” breaks through the cloud of story and lights up the breathless reader (On Fairy-Stories, 75). Tolkien calls this moment eucatastrophe — literally a good catastrophe. And for him, every thunderbolt of eucatastrophe in subcreated stories reflects the Great Eucatastrophes of the incarnation and resurrection, giving us a glimpse of the staggering heights of triune joy.

Who, indeed, can be unmoved when Frodo, after facing the fires of Mount Doom, gets his first glimpse of the Undying Lands? “The grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise” (The Return of the King, 1,030). And what attentive reader does not feel the thrill of hope and yearning that jolts the heart at the mere mention of Aslan’s country?

Like Samwise finally returning to the Shire, we may turn the final page of a good story and, with a deep sigh, say, “Well, I’m back.” We may indeed be back, but not all of us. Something remains in the Otherlands. We left a splinter of soul in Lothlorien, a piece of heart in Narnia. We will never be free from Faerie. We carry with us the scent of the Blue Flower. And that homesickness reminds us that we are made for another world.

The magical lands of story can serve as a placeholder for the better country we are bound for (Hebrews 11:16). They can stretch our imaginations further and further in anticipation of our future home — a home that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor heart imagined (1 Corinthians 2:9). But oh, there have been hints. We have heard echoes. We have caught glimpses. We’ve smelled the Blue Flowers of Eden, and now we can never finally be content with the here and now.

Good stories are signposts — alpine guides leading us up the path of life. Like Lewis, we can follow them past dragons, over hills, and high up into the mountains. In the pages and paragraphs of great tales, we can hear the voice of our Aslan echoing off the mountain walls, bidding us to come further up and further in. Will you heed his call?

And Bree now discovered that he had not really been going as fast — not quite as fast — as he could. Shasta felt the change at once. Now they were really going all-out.

The old cliché “God will never give you more than you can handle” has taunted me over the years. I can remember several times in life when it has seemed evident that God was giving more than I could handle.

Would anyone claim the ability to handle the sudden, near-death experience of their son due to life-threatening seizures? What about loved ones walking away from God? Disability? Chronic pain? You likely have much worse trials to add to my list. We endure these circumstances because we have no choice, even as we endeavor to walk through them trusting that God is for us in Christ.

Still, as I was lying facedown on the bathroom floor, drenched in a sweaty fainting spell while paramedics worked on my seizing son in the next room, I certainly didn’t feel like I had been given a situation that was within my ability to handle.

A Lion and Our Limits

“Gallop, Bree, gallop. Remember you’re a war-horse” (The Horse and His Boy, 270). Aravis, a young princess escaping the evils of her country, Calormen, urged the talking horse named Bree to run as fast as he could away from the enemies that pursued them. C.S. Lewis tells us this story in A Horse and His Boy, one of the seven Chronicles of Narnia. Bree and his friend Hwin appear, by their own reckoning, to be running all-out. “And certainly both Horses were doing, if not all they could, all they thought they could; which,” as Lewis tells us, “is not quite the same thing.”

This desperate sprint across the countryside by two talking horses — and the unlikely boy and girl on their backs — would quickly reach a peak of terror none of them could have anticipated. For not only were they chased by a terrible army of Calormene soldiers, but a much nearer and more dangerous enemy roared at their backs: a great lion.

“And Bree now discovered that he had not really been going as fast — not quite as fast — as he could. Shasta felt the change at once. Now they were really going all-out” (271). This simple scene in the midst of a children’s story profoundly changed my perspective in three ways over the past decade and beyond: (1) it has changed how I understand my “limits” in the midst of difficulty, (2) it has reminded me of Who it is that bears down on me in those difficult times, and (3) it has helped me glimpse the goodness of God in how much he chooses to bear down on us.

Applying on the Bathroom Floor

I suppose there is some irony that while Bree found new speed with the Great Lion Aslan at his back, my story involves barely moving at all, having blacked out during a moment when I desperately wanted to be present for my son’s crisis. How is the horrible physiological response to stress (blacking out) in any way parallel to Bree finding a new gear with the Lion at his back?

“When you’re under the pressure of the Great Lion, never, ever let yourself forget: all his paths are steadfast love.”

Well, as unlikely as it sounds, I found my own new gear, facedown on the floor. As I lay there, I cried out to God, asking him to save my son, while I was forced to find a new gear of trust in my Lord. I wasn’t there to watch over my son every second, but God was. I couldn’t make the seizure stop, but God could. I wouldn’t go with him if he died, but God would be there. I, like Bree, found that I had not been trusting as much — not quite as much — as I could. I had not been enduring as much — not quite as much — as I could. There was new speed to discover with the Great Lion in pursuit.

Have you learned this yet? That what you consider your limits aren’t your limits? That you don’t actually know what your limits are because you aren’t the Maker and Sustainer?

Beyond My Limits

We think we’ve given our all, we think the reserves are gone, but actually, we have never had our limits truly tested. When my mind says, I can’t do that; it’s beyond my limits — I can’t endure that loss, I can’t live with that trial, I can’t face that outcome — God is perfectly capable of applying the kind of pressure that will prove me wrong.

Paul tells the Corinthians,

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8–9)

You see, the new gear that we find in the midst of hardship is not a testament to our strong constitution. It is a Spirit-empowered gear that blows faith and hope into the hearts of those who are burdened beyond their own strength. It is a testament to his strength at work in us, even when we are weak and sweaty on the bathroom floor.

Paths of Steadfast Love

God often shows us, then, that we most certainly can do what we think we can’t (by relying on him). And as counterintuitive as it sounds, he doesn’t get us there merely by encouragement or through positive thinking or by pouring on the affirmation, but, as with Bree, by bearing down and increasing the trial that drives us to him.

“When God pushes us past our limits, it is his grace to us. He’s driving us toward his goodness.”

You see, as Bree quickened his pace beyond what he thought he could, the Great Lion was increasing the distance between them and the true enemies that were coming after them. Aslan did terrify them, but for the sake of their own safety and well-being in the end. We can trust that even if we, like Paul, feel we have received the sentence of death, God is subjecting us only to what is right and good in the end, and not a drop more or less. He really does work all things together for the good of those who love him — and in so doing, conforms us to the likeness of his Son (Romans 8:28–29).

When God pushes us past our limits with circumstances that have us sprinting and gasping, it is his grace to us. He’s driving us toward his goodness. He’s pressing us beyond ourselves to new vistas of himself. He’s moving us away from the things that would really harm us by putting distance between us and our old enemies — the world, our flesh, and the devil.

And when you’re under the pressure of the Great Lion, never, ever let yourself forget: all his paths are steadfast love (Psalm 25:10). You can trust him, even facedown on the bathroom floor.