Is temptation a sin? Is it a sin to be tempted?

A. Your distinctions are deplorably subtle and dangerous. Thus men play with poison. It is in vain that I look for this difference; for the word which you translate desire, is the same Greek word which Paul employs in Romans 7 to express the lust by which he had been convinced of sin. And pray observe, it is there said that sin produced lust (v. 8). It is true that when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin as an act; but it is just as true that sin, which is in our nature, produces all sorts of lusts. With your definition of sin, which it totally anti-scriptural, you may indeed reason on the subject; but you will find yourself constantly in opposition to the declarations of God's word. Temptation may, doubtless, be distinguished from sin. When I abhor the evil, and the new man rejects with indignation that which Satan presents, or, it may be, flattery, it is a temptation and not a sin. But lust in me is always sin. I do not say it will be imputed to me; but that is solely and absolutely because of the blood of Christ. But the "new man" judges it as sin. Woe is me, if I do not judge it!

292 All this flows from the damnable doctrine that lust is not sin. What is it? Is it holiness or righteousness? Where does it come from? It is the fruit of the sinful nature; "sin taking occasion by the commandment wrought in me all manner of lust." Those who rest on fruits in James — and I do not call it a strawy epistle — find no sin till it has conceived and brought forth. Those who go to the root with the word of God know that there is sin in the flesh. If Satan were to suggest to eat a handful of mud and dirt, would any one 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 is awakened in our hearts, sin is awakened into the activity of desire, though we may rightly resist it; and if we look to Christ, we shall be victorious. Was any such suggestion awakened in the blessed One? All this loose insinuation as to Christ, to excuse and cover sin in ourselves, is very bad indeed. Was anything within in Christ which He had to resist? It must not be covered over with loose words, as "temptation or infirmity," which words have professedly in scripture a double meaning. (See James 1.)

When I abhor the evil, and the 'new man' rejects with indignation that which Satan presents, it is a temptation, not a sin. But lust in me is always sin. It will not be imputed to me; but that is solely and absolutely because of the blood of Christ. The new man judges it as sin.

And now as to the word "temptation," to be tempted is another thing from having a lust to sin, the carnal mind. Temptation is used in scripture, not for internal sin at all, nor in connection with it, save where it is the actual giving way to the temptation by reason of the sin — "drawn away of our own lusts, and enticed." This will not be affirmed (I suppose) of Christ; if it be, then let it be said so, and the name of Christian given up; for then He was a sinner indeed. Tempted, there, is the giving way to the trial. But temptation otherwise is just the trial of what is in the person so tried; and this may be very various. God in this sense may be tempted; yet, we know from His very nature and from the word, He cannot be tempted of evil. But "they tempted God in the desert." They tempted and were destroyed of the destroyer. God was put to trial — what He was, which was just their sin. In Him, it need not be said, absolute essential perfection was found. Neither can God tempt any man in the way of evil or lust. Yet God did tempt Abraham; He put Abraham to trial, and proved the grace which He had given him, saying, thereon, "Now I know:" exhibition of grace was the result of the trial of the temptation here. So we pray, "Lead us not into temptation" — clearly not into lust or evil, but into a place of trial of what is in us — we knowing our weakness, and therefore adding, "But deliver us from evil," or the evil one.

29 But the Spirit of God did lead Christ into temptation (we are expressly told in Matt. 4 and Luke 4), not surely into any exercise of a sinful nature, but into Satan's trial of what He was. So the first Adam, confessedly innocent and having no sin (that we may turn to man), yet was tempted, and so tempted that he fell into sin. So that clearly here temptation does not imply existing evil, or a sinful nature; for there may be temptation, so as to fall into sin, where there was no evil nature at all. He was tried and fell; weakness and fallibility being there, though not sin. We are tempted — what is in us is tried; and in our case evil continually is found. The old sinful nature is found. there may be cases where, through divine grace, we get the victory, "are more than conquerors," glorying in tribulations, happy as enduring. The sinful nature is distinct from the temptation, though discovered by it. So Christ was tempted, tried in all points, according to the likeness of His brethren; but the result was, that nothing was found in Him but perfectness. Adam was tried and fell; we are tried, and often evil is found in us, and we are led away and enticed. Christ was tried, and neither fell nor was led away, nor evil found in Him.

If sin was needful to temptation, then would sin be justified in every temptation we were in, for we could not, they say, be tempted without it. Now temptation coming from an enemy without, and sin being needful to this, it is justified if we are so tempted. This is exactly what it is not. "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man" — a human temptation — and God is faithful, who "will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."

How "temptation comes more fiercely than ever" the writer does not explain. It is just as true that the Christian, as such, keeps himself, and that wicked one touches him not, as that, as such, he cannot sin. Temptation is used in two senses in scripture. We are tempted when we are drawn away of our own lusts and enticed, and we are tempted from without by the enemy. The latter the Lord underwent, the former of course never. All this is confounded by Mr. S. He says temptation is not sin. In the sense used by James, it is sin. In the other sense of testing or trying, it is not. It is rather now "from without than from his own heart" (pp. 19, 20). All this is mischievously vague, betrays the consciousness that his own heart after all has something to say to it, yet excuses it as the Lord was tempted. Mr. Smith could not say of and in himself, "The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me"; Christ could. If we held ourselves always absolutely dead, Satan would not touch us; he has nothing for the new man. But all this is vague and mischievous, as confounding inward temptation and lust with outward, and tending to the abominable doctrine that lust is not sin if we do not listen to it. Does it come from the life and Spirit of Christ in us?

The sense given to "perfect" is not given in the chapter, and is wholly excluded by it. Yet, after all, "perfection" is only spiritual infancy, the foundation of a healthy growth. Deliverance, the normal Christian condition, is. But, after all, though we are in moral purity, like Adam before the fall, it is such a state (p. 10) that we 'could not stand for a moment before God, if tried by the law.' Was this Adam's state? And why not? Then we get the abominable doctrine, that 'temptation is not sin.' Temptations from without are not sin: Christ went through everything that could try a holy being, but this is not the point. (See James 1:2, 14.) They are suggestions, and he talks of supposing our hearts to be impure. Had Adam these impure suggestions? And they are 'vile suggestions,' only our 'will rises up in opposition to them,' 'we are in heaviness through them' (this applies to the other kind of temptations, trials which it is our joy to fall into). Had Christ any of these vile suggestions? Did Satan ever succeed in putting them into His mind? Mr. E. avoids the point; but are lusts not sin? James is quoted to prove it; but James speaks of effects, and Paul tells us that sin produced all manner of lusts - goes to the root, the evil nature. It is the ignoring this which is one grand evil of this system.

To fall into temptation is quite different from being tempted. The fact of being tempted is trying; but blessed is he that endures temptation. The Lord Himself knows what sore temptations mean, none so much. For as God cannot be tempted by evil things, and Himself tempts no one, thus neither was the Second Man (however the first was at once to his own ruin and that of the race) unto God's dishonour. But Christ suffered whilst being tempted, instead of weakly yielding to present gratification and lying down afterwards in unavailing sorrow. Temptation in His case, however complete, was apart from sin; whereas Adam was drawn away and enticed by lust with all its bitter results. Christ had no sinful temptations within, as we have. He never fell, never entered into temptation, as He warns us to pray against. To "enter" is fatal, as we see in Peter's case, though through the Lord's intercession his faith did not fail absolutely, and, when turned back or restored, he was used to confirm his brethren.

There are two kinds of temptation. Look at James 1:2: "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations"; this means trials in fact. Lower down, at verse 14, you will find quite another kind of thing: "But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed." This is what is in my own heart. If we confound the two kinds of temptation, we either put Christ into this evil condition, which would be horrible blasphemy, or we take away the bad kind of temptation from ourselves. That is the reason it is said, "but was in all points tempted like as we are, except sin," Heb. 4:13. We are tempted by all trials from without, and by sin within. He was tempted by all, sin excepted. I get by redemption into this totally new place, but I am waiting for the redemption of the body. I am in spirit in heavenly places with Christ; my body is not there yet, it belongs to the old creation; I belong to the new.

Temptation means trial; never in Christ's case, what is in fallen man's inward solicitation to evil. This is what the Holy Spirit expressly denies of Him, and what no one who believed in His person ought to have allowed for a moment. Lustful experience or sin is incompatible with the Holy One of God; and, so far from being in a single instance predicated of Him, it is wholly excluded: χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας could be said of neither Enoch nor Elijah, nor of John and Paul, but of Him only. The blessed endurance of temptation (James 1:2, 12) He knew beyond any; but what James describes in verses 13-15 of his first chapter was foreign to Him, and a blasphemous imputation, as it proves fundamental unbelief of Who and what He is. We are too familiar with the human and selfish argument that He could not sympathise with us adequately if exempt from those internal and evil workings, bemoaned in Rom. 7 and bitterly known by every soul born of God, at least in the early days of his awakening. But if we needed the Lord to be similarly harassed in order to feel fully with us, we should on that ground want Him to have yielded, as we alas! have often done, in order to sympathise with us in our sad failures. No! that ground is wretchedly and absolutely opposed to Christ; and what the word reveals as the remedy for evil within and without in every form and degree is not Christ's sympathy, but His propitiatory suffering for us. He sympathises with us in our holy, not in our unholy, temptations. For our unholiness He died; the cross alone has met it fully in God's sight. Had there been in fact the least inward taint of sin, His sensibility of evil had been impaired, His sufferings diminished, and His sympathy hindered, to say nothing of the deadly wound to His person, unfitted by such an evil nature to be a sacrifice for sin.

"But each is tempted when by his own lust drawn away and enticed." The Lord though tempted in all points similarly could not be in this way, because it would have denied and destroyed His moral glory, and it would have frustrated the purpose of God in saving us to His glory. That the Lord was in like manner tempted in all things has this immense limitation, "sin excepted," not sinning only in fact, which is true of course, but "sin" in the nature from which He was absolutely exempt. He had not and could not have such evil temptations from a corrupt nature, because His was expressly holy. There was no lust of His own to draw away or allure. Evil suggestion from without He therefore uniformly rejected with indignation, even if an honoured apostle, shocked at the suffering before Him as inconsistent to his mind and feeling with His glory, repudiated His death and such a death as an impossibility, and received rebuke stern beyond example. With the believer too often is it likewise, when like Peter his mind is not on the things of God but on those of men. Christ sought His Father's glory, and unrighteousness was not in Him, but He did always the things pleasing to Him. Self-will there was none. He was come to do God's will, and did it perfectly and at all cost.