Does God tempt us to sin? What about Abraham in Genesis chapter 22?

In most places in the Scriptures to tempt means simply to test, just as a rider will put his horse to a high fence to test its powers. It does not carry in its original idea the thought of outside evil producing a sinful response in an evil nature, so that the person so tempted may fall a victim to temptation.

We get the meaning of the word in its original sense in the commonly used word tempered. We speak of tempered steel, that is, metal heated and cooled, heated and cooled, and standing the test and coming out at the required strength. Athletes, for instance, run again and again in training, tested again and again, so as to fit themselves for the hour of victory. There is no thought of evil in this, but the development of physical powers so as to be supreme in the test.

But the word, temptation (Greek, peirasmos, to try, to prove) like many words in usage by sinful men, has deteriorated in meaning, and generally in ordinary use we think of it as consisting of an appeal from some outside evil source to a craving of our sinful nature, which, if responded to, is sin.

1. "God did tempt Abraham" when He bade him offer up Isaac. Gen. 22:1. God tried him, putting his faith to the test. Paul speaks of his thorn in the flesh as his 'temptation:' it was a trial or test. Gal. 4:14.

2. The Israelites tempted God. "They tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust." Ps. 78:18. They questioned whether God could furnish them a table in the wilderness ... but it is to be noticed that when Israel put God to the proof, they were really proved by Him.

3. Temptation to evil, either by Satan, or by our own lusts. 2 Cor. 11:3; James 1:13-14.

The writer James used it in this sense when he wrote, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempts He any man: but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death" (James 1:13-15). Here James definitely speaks of being tempted with or by evil, and declares that God never does that.

When God tempted Abraham in the matter of offering up his son Isaac, God was not tempting him with evil, for God had a right to ask of him what He asked. God is the Giver of life and he can demand back what He gives. Genesis 22:1 is the very first mention in the Bible of the word tempt (Hebrew, nasah, to try, to prove).

Trial (temptation) may come to us from two sources. It comes from God when the heart or faith is put to the proof. "God did tempt Abraham." It came from the adversary when it came by lust, when the flesh is enticed. How much sweeter it is to have to do with God than with Satan in trial!

God, Who had shown such mercy and forbearance hitherto, now appears to try Abraham. "And God did tempt Abraham, and said, Take now thy son, thine only son whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and offer him for a burnt offering," etc. Tempt may be now limited to solicitation to evil (James 1:13), but the meaning here is try or prove. Try if the earthen vessel will let faith have its perfect work. God tested the man to whom He gives faith.

There was in truth but one way in which he could bring together and harmonise the promise and the command, and that way he took, wonderful as it was and unheard of. It was the way of resurrection. Abraham accounted that God was able to raise Isaac from the dead. No such thing had he heard before, that any one should be raised from the dead. ... every doubt and every fear was hushed by his ready obedience in faith.

Abraham's joy, after his trial must have been like that spoken of long after by James, "Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations, knowing that the proof of your faith worketh patience. And let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing" (James 1:2-4). Temptations in this scripture are outward trials.

These temptations or trials or testings are from God to bring out character and powers suitable to Himself. We could not call ourselves happy when we fall into "divers temptation" if temptation meant an evil appeal from outside to our sinful nature, which if answered to would, on the one hand, be gratifying the flesh, but on the other hand would be the conception of lust — sin — ending in death.

When we think of how God tested His servants to fit them for wonderful work for Him, we may well rejoice if such trials for such a purpose overtake us. There comes to mind Abraham who was tested; Joseph and his thirteen years' bitter experience of prison, fitting him as a young man of thirty, to take a position next to Pharaoh in Egypt; of Moses, forty years at the backside of the desert, learning to be meek and patient so that he should be qualified to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt; of David, hunted by Saul as a partridge on the mountains, being disciplined and fitted to rule over God's people; of Job, stripped and desolated, finding out "the end of the Lord"; of Paul, three years in Arabia, learning of God in secret in view of his wonderful public career as a servant of the Lord.