Matthew 6:13

So it was right for the disciples, aware of their own powerlessness, to ask not to be led into circumstances that would try them so severely. No such prayer is or could be in the Bible as, Lead us not into sin; for this would be to impute moral evil to God. The temptation here was putting a person fully to the proof. If there were unjudged evil in the heart, it would come out, to his humiliation.

This is not temptation to sin. James 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." Satan tempts man to evil, and we have an evil nature that responds to it... God may lead us into trial, as He did Abraham. But the Lord said to Peter, "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation." If we push into trial on our own, we are bound to fall. But if the Lord leads us into it, He will sustain us.

This cry will always suit us while we are in this world. We feel our utter weakness, and we know we could not stand for one moment in temptation if left to ourselves. There is no conflict between such a prayer and complete confidence in God. We will trust God in the same measure as we have learned that in our flesh there dwells no good thing. Afraid of ourselves, we shall always cry, Lead us not into temptation, and then long to be delivered from evil. This, indeed, was the request of the Lord Himself for His own — "I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one." (John 17:15.)

But deliver us from evil in general, if not from the evil one in particular. This was not the sifting, or temptation, prayed against in the clause before. Grace may put us through that for our good, as we see in Peter. This is the power of the enemy drawing us into sin against God. The proper desire was to be kept from the evil, or, if one fell, to be restored from it. Grace in no case fails, if a disciple sadly did.

Misguided men have sought the wilderness to escape the power of evil. Jesus sought it with the express intention of meeting the evil one. He alone was perfect within. He Himself was led up to meet the tempter, yet He taught His disciples to pray, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil [or, the evil one]."

I will not go into the doxology that ends the prayer in the received text of Matthew. Everybody agrees in leaving it out of Luke, and it is well known that its authority, even in Matthew, is doubtful, to say the least. Probably it was an addition derived from church usage in the fourth century, or perhaps earlier.

It takes into account both the divine interests and human necessities, physical and spiritual. It speaks of the realities of today, while looking onward to the final outcome of all the ways of God in the new heavens and the new earth... It was the Lord's gracious provision for believers who lived before redemption was accomplished, who were therefore not in the blessed condition of having their consciences once for all purged from sins.