"By His Own Desire."

 “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. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.” (James 11:13-14 ESV)

James is my go-to passage in Scripture when I try to make sense out of what is going on in my life. If you are like me, and I bet you are, many times the events surrounding me aren’t clear, and I struggle with how to respond to them appropriately. But that is precisely what James, the brother of Jesus, was doing when he wrote his letter to the “twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad”; he was explaining to them why things were happening to them. And in verse two, James tells them to “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.” You see, Christians face both trials and temptations, and we must understand the difference between them.  

The Greek word “peirasmos” [Strong’s 3986] literally means “putting to the proof” or putting to the test. In English, we use the context of this word to determine whether it is referring to a trial or a temptation. We translate “peirasmos” as a trial if the event comes from God, and the purpose of “the test” is to increase our fellowship with Him. We translate “peirasmos” as temptation when it comes from Satan for the purpose of trying to separate us from fellowship with God. This is a critical distinction that we make in our translation of the original Greek.

For example, we read in James 1:13, “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.” So, we see that “temptation” is associated with evil and sin, and God cannot be part of that.

Let’s take a quick look at “temptations” and see if we can understand their purpose. We know from 1 Peter 5:8, “… Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”  Jesus said to the self-righteous Jews in John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, …, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” Over and over again, we see that the devil is the author of temptations, and every temptation involves sin and attempts to separate us from fellowship with God.

As believers in the saving power of the blood of Jesus, which washes away all of our sins (past, present, and future) that would separate us from fellowship with God for eternity, we know that the devil has no power over us any longer. We also know that nothing can separate us from the love of God. We read in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

For the believer, the devil can NOT break our fellowship with God for eternity; the devil lost, and Jesus won. It is only because of what Jesus has done that we have eternal life with the Father. However, the devil has not accepted his defeat gracefully; he continues to “tempt” the believer to sin and to separate our fellowship with God while we are still on this earth. Satan has one objective in his temptations: to separate us from the Father of Lights. For the unbeliever, the devil tries to separate them from God for all of eternity. For the believer, the devil goes for plan B, to separate us from fellowship with God while we are still on this earth.

If the devil can steal our joy of salvation, our joy of close fellowship with the Son, our joy of growing in our knowledge of the one who saved us, then he has interrupted our process of becoming more like Christ, or our fellowship. Temptations are always from the devil and always involve sin, which tries to steal our joy of belonging to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

As followers of Jesus in the 21^st Century, we need to remember that the devil’s Plan B is still very much active, and we need to recognize the temptations that he puts in our paths. The devil designs specific temptations for each of us. He knows what I am susceptible to, which wouldn’t interest you, and what would tempt you that would not be a temptation to sin for me.

In 1:14, we read “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.” First, notice that it is by our “own desires”, not someone else's. Also, in Greek, the word we translate as “lured” is used to describe a hunter setting a trap, and the word we translate as “enticed” is used to describe baiting a fishing hook. The devil knows exactly what “bait” to use to get our attention, to get us to look twice, and to get us to desire (to dwell on) the “bait”, and then he pulls the snare trap or sets the hook, and sin is conceived, then born, then grows up and separates us from the fellowship of God.

As we mature in our faith, we become better at recognizing the “bait” that the devil uses, and we can more effectively avoid the traps he sets for us. But don’t be fooled, my friend, the devil never gives up. He’s always working on his Plan B, to cause us to sin and to separate us from our fellowship with God while we are here on this earth.

Now that we know the purpose of the devil’s temptations, we can better fight him; we can call on the Holy Spirit to assist us in avoiding the devil’s temptations, and find the promised “way of escape, that you might be able to endure it.” (1 Cor. 10:13)

"Living in Grace is not about what I can do, but about what Jesus has already done!"