James 1:13–14

The Apostle passes on to warn us of another character of trial. He has been speaking of the trial of faith that comes from circumstances outside (verses 2, 3). Now he warns us not to confuse this kind of trial with the trials that come from the flesh within. God can try us with outward circumstances, but God cannot be tempted with evil, and He does not tempt anyone to do evil.

Temptations elsewhere mean trials, not inward pulls toward evil... Here, on the other hand, we find the common sense of temptation. Sadly, the fact that it is common shows where people are. They have little to do with God and much in common with the world.

Light cannot change, and God cannot be corrupted or stained. No moral poison can come into His moral nature. No evil, no sin can ever originate or be in Him. What He is in moral nature and character He has always been and must always be. He cannot be deceived; He "cannot be tempted with evil."

While it is clear there can be no limit to His power, we know He is governed by His love, and, in the area of moral truth, there are certain things He cannot do. "He cannot deny Himself" (2 Timothy 2:13). "God cannot be tempted with evil" (James 1:13). "God is not unrighteous" (Hebrews 6:10).

Yet we are also told in the same Scriptures that God tested Abraham when He told him to offer up Isaac (Genesis 22:1). This must have been a different kind of temptation from the one James speaks of. It was certainly not an enticement to do evil. It could not have been. It is as impossible for God to tempt a man that way as it is for Him to lie. It was a testing of what was in Abraham. His faith was put into the crucible, and it came out, as we know, as gold tried by the fire.

The devil tempts us with evil. But he finds in us what he counts on as ready to yield. In fact, anyone is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own lust. This is the only thing that makes him accessible. God is over all in permitting the outward pull, but the inward pull comes from man himself. There he is master of himself, and so responsible for the outcome always being against him.

It is impossible for Him to tempt anyone with evil. But He may permit His people to be tempted with evil, and He knows well how to overrule even that for their ultimate good.

There is no need for a child of God to fail, nor does God in any way tempt to evil. On the contrary, the one who has found Christ and yet fails by sinning is always without excuse. To allow the thought that God's providence has anything to do with this is little short of blasphemy. Even if we have gone wrong, let us beware of adding to it by throwing it on God and excusing ourselves at His cost.

The first of these passages speaks of temptation or trial coming from outside; the second, of desire or lust within. Our Lord faced the first kind throughout His whole life. He was absolutely incapable of the second.

He has been speaking of the trial of faith that comes from circumstances outside us (verses 2, 3). Now he warns us not to confuse that kind of trial with the trials that come from the flesh within. God can try us with outward circumstances, but God cannot be tempted with evil, and He tempts no one to do evil. We, though, can be tempted by evil through lust within, and so be enticed into doing evil. Judas was enticed by the lust for money in his heart. He fell into the devil's temptation and satisfied that lust by betraying the Lord.

"Desire" and "lust" are really the same word... The thing longed for is what gives the feeling its character. If the thing craved is good in God's sight, then it is a holy desire. The Lord Himself uses this same word when He says to His disciples, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." (Luke 22:15.) But when the thing longed for is evil, then the desire for it is "lust." ... "Lust," as James teaches, starts in ourselves (chapter 1:14), but holy "desire" is the fruit of the Spirit of God working in the believer.

The real root of all temptation lies within ourselves, in our own lusts. We may blame the enticing thing which from without was presented to us, but the trouble really lies in the desires of the flesh within.

If Satan were to suggest eating a handful of mud and dirt, would anyone be inclined to do it? If he succeeds in touching us, it is because there is a desire in the sinful nature to which he adapts himself. If we are full of Christ, he will not succeed. But if the suggestion wakes up in our hearts, sin wakes up into active desire, even though we may resist it as we should. If we look to Christ, we shall be victorious.

I know too well that when Satan tempts us there is an echo inside, an answer there. Instead of being suffering to us, it is pleasure.

The Lord was tempted in every way as we are, yet He could not be tempted like this. It would have denied and destroyed His moral glory... He did not have, and could not have, such evil temptations from a corrupt nature, because His nature was holy through and through. There was no lust of His own to draw Him away or attract Him. So He always rejected evil suggestions from outside with indignation.

The difference between these two declarations is this: Paul keeps to the spiritual principles, while James looks at their effects. The one completes the other. The sin which is in the nature produces the lust (Rom. 7); and the lust produces the sin in the conduct of the man. (James 1.)

No force of temptation would be enough to upset or draw away a soul that was finding its strength in God Himself. So a person is really "tempted" — that is, the temptation succeeds with him — when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. What exposes him to the evil is in himself, and not in his surroundings. A soul that fully knows its own helplessness and rests in God for help cannot be broken by any attack. Self-confidence, then, in some form, is the secret of all failure — the root of every sin we actually commit.