TEMPTATION
‘There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able.’
Even Shakespeare, with his great knowledge of character, can help us here:—
‘ ’Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall.’
It is of the last importance for our soul’s good that we should keep this distinction ever sharp and clear. It belongeth to devils to feel temptation and to sin from very wickedness. It belongeth to angels not to feel temptation and to serve God with perfect service. It belongeth to man to feel temptation and to conquer.
I. Before temptation can become sin a threefold process must take place, not always, perhaps, separable in time and action, but separable in thought.
(a) There comes the temptation properly so called, a suggestion, that is, to do something which the conscience tells us is wrong, in the region of body, soul, or spirit. But temptation does not remain long in its suggestion stage.
(b) The suggestion is pushed. Satan, like a cunning fisherman, parades his attractions, makes his bait more seductive, lays siege to the will by carefully arranged inducements to bring about acquiescence.
(c) The barrier is passed when the will gives way. It is the consent of the will to temptation which marks the advent of sin; and so in cases where no action follows, where action is not possible, or has been hindered, sin remains in the consent of the will. To will to sin is, in God’s sight, to commit sin.
II. It is important that we should recognise that not only has God never promised us immunity from temptation, but that in the nature of things temptation is inevitable, and that no life is so sheltered as to escape from that which seems to be a necessary part of its discipline. This conclusion is forced upon us if we study the inward meaning of our Blessed Lord’s Temptation. If He Who could not sin was tempted by Satan; if He Who on any showing presented no point of weakness to the seductions of the world was tempted in the three well-known regions of temptation—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life—it is not reasonable to suppose that we can escape. Holiness, abhorrence of sin, do not of necessity keep away temptation; they may attract it.
III. The words of St. Paul ought to be full of hope to us all in a real trial.—Do not let us think for a moment that it is a strange and unusual thing which is trying us, or look upon ourselves as an escaped weed among the choice flowers of Christian holiness. ‘There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man.’ We are not engaged in a battle in which we are foredoomed to failure by preliminary unfaithfulness. We might go so far as to say that the very fact that we are tempted proves that we are worth something, that God has something to lose and Satan something to win by our fall. But the consolation which St. Paul gives is even greater than this. There is no temptation too powerful for us if only we are in earnest. This is it: Satan is not going to be driven back by a listless, faithless combatant, who neither believes in God nor in his own God-given strength. David, who trusts in God and is in earnest, can lay low Goliath. A very Samson who forgets God and his duty can be laid low by a woman. Do not despise temptation, you will often have to fight your way step by step to that way of escape. Satan contests every inch. He says you cannot; your nature is weak, your friends have given in, and that it is only a question of time. To repel him now is only to have him back again with renewed force. You cannot. ‘Nevertheless my feet had almost gone, my treadings had well-nigh slipped.’ It is then that an old familiar prayer rises to your lips. Memories of your Confirmation come back to you. Faint and dizzy, you call upon God, and the way of escape seems far away, but gradually the foe falls back. You have won a victory, and to have won a victory means that you have found out your strength.
—Rev. Canon Newbolt.
Illustration
‘When the order comes to go into battle, it may be to defeat and death, but it may also be to glory and victory. Joseph out of the same temptation is brought to ascend the steps of that throne from which David and Solomon after him were thrown down and deposed. The friendless youth who fearlessly can say, “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” finds in the fierceness of his temptation the occasion of his future greatness. David, the man after God’s own heart, and Solomon, the wisest of men, find in the same temptation the occasion of falling from their high estate. God forbid that we should minimise for one moment the fierceness and the stress of the trial. The lives of the saints are full of that struggle in which their enemies sometimes took concrete shape, which, like the devil in the Gospel narrative, rent and bruised them, even while departing from them.’