01.09. Bring us not into Temptation, But Deliver
Chapter IX. Bring us not into Temptation but Deliver us from the Evil One THE first part of this clause has caused a certain amount of difficulty to thoughtful Christians. For does not St. James bid us count it all joy when we fall into divers temptations, knowing that the trial of our faith worketh patience? How is it then we pray, Lead us not into temptation? To this question one may give a double answer.
1. It has been noticed that our Lord’s prayers and words in the hour of His agony before the Passion have a close resemblance to some of the clauses of the Lord’s Prayer. Not as I will, but as thou wilt/ Thy will be done. Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. 1 And in the prayer following the Last Supper, Sanctify (hallow) them in the truth. I made known unto them thy name. I pray that thou 1 Matthew 26:39-41. shouldest keep them from the evil one. l This being so, it is natural to interpret this particular clause in the Lord’s Prayer in the sense of Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. Temptation is there treated as the punishment of the carelessness which neglects to watch and pray. And from this point of view we should naturally interpret Lead us not into temptation thus: Suffer us not to live in spiritual carelessness, so that temptation should come upon us as a snare to our overthrow. This is a very necessary prayer. People are very frequently anxious about their spiritual condition when they actually find themselves engulfed in temptation, who have been utterly careless in running into it. If men in general gave real thought to their truest welfare, it would be impossible for them to pay so little attention to possible spiritual results in making their great choices, such as determine largely the future of their lives. Thus men rush into a profession generally from no other point of view than that of whether it is likely to pay. Afterwards they find that their profession subjects their purity or their temperance or their honesty to a strain which is too much for it, and they are full of what is partly complaint and partly horror. But it might all have been foreseen and guarded against, if, before the choice of their profession, they had prayed the prayer, Lead us not into * St. John 17:11; John 17:15; John 17:26. temptation. Exactly the same consideration applies to investing money or to getting married. They are steps which in different degrees involve a man’s life in new conditions; and unless he is spiritually a fool, he will look well before he leaps what bearing his new conditions will have upon his life towards God. Exactly the same truth applies to our reading. It is all very well to determine not to be narrow in the literature we read, all very well to know the ways of the world, and to ascertain what people who are not Christians have to say for themselves and against our Creed; but if there is such a thing as spiritual temptation, and a personal responsibility to preserve our innocence and our faith, it is quite certain that there is a way of embarking in the literature of sin and the literature of unbelief which is precisely like walking into an enemy’s country in time of war unarmed and unprepared. To pray, Lead us not into temptation/ then, involves a corresponding course of action in preparing ourselves against it.
2. But, after all, this explanation of the clause does not exhaust its meaning. It may be God’s will that we should not have our daily bread, and yet we have just prayed for it in a previous clause. Thus also it may be God’s will that we should be tempted and tried, and yet we may pray that it may not be necessary. We may then, perhaps, paraphrase the prayer Father, if it be possible, let the cup of temptation pass from me with out my drinking it. Some temptation is necessary for us, but this or that particular temptation may not be necessary, and it may only need a little prayer to enable us to escape it. The wise man knows that he is weak.
He can fight, indeed, when fighting is required of him, and find his strength in God; but he will not run into temptation if he can avoid it. He will pray, for others as for himself, Lead us not into temptation.
II And all this precaution is necessary because, as St. Paul says, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places. 1 In other words, the temptations that come from visible and tangible sources draw their strength from a source which is unseen.
Behind visible foes there is an invisible; behind the visible opposition of evil men there is an invisible prince of darkness and an unseen host of fallen spirits in truding themselves into the highest things, into the heavenly places. I am quite sure that our Lord speaks so confidently and so frequently of the existence of evil spirits that a sober Christian cannot doubt their reality, 1 Ephesians 6:12.
Prayer, and The Lord’s Prayer and I feel sure also, that their existence interprets a good deal which would otherwise be unintelligible in our spiritual experience. When thoughts of poisonous evil, distinct and vivid, are shot into our mind, like suggestions from a bad companion; when a tempest of pride and rebellion against God surges over our soul; when voices of discouragement and despair tell us that it is no use trying, and that human nature is hopelessly bad; when a sinful course of action presents itself to us in a wholly false aspect until we have committed our selves to it, and then strips off its disguises and shows itself in its true colours, in its ugliness, in its treachery, in its infamy in all such experiences we do well to remember that, besides the weakness or pollution of our own flesh, and besides the solicitations of the world, there is the adversary, the devil/ that is, the slanderer of God and of our human nature and the father of lies/ actually at work to seduce our wills and sophisticate our intelligences. Moral evil, let us never forget, exists nowhere except in rebellious wills, human or diabolic; and however great the mystery which wraps the ultimate destiny of such rebellious wills, at least we know that their power will have an end, that they will be put manifestly and openly under the feet of Christ, and that the power which by prayer we win here and now, suffices on each occasion to give us strength to triumph againt the devil, as well as the world and the flesh, even as Christ triumphed. For The Lord’s Prayer this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? Yes, God will not suffer us on any occasion to be tempted above that we are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it 1 1 1 John 5:4; 1 Corinthians 10:13.