Why did Jesus instruct us to pray "lead us not into temptation" when God states that He does not tempt us?

Then they were to ask their Father not to lead them into temptation, which cannot therefore mean sin here. With temptation in the sense of lustful evil, as St. James says, God tempteth not any man, as He, of course, cannot be Himself. But scripture uses the word in the same chapter and in other places, from Genesis to Revelation, for a man's trial and sifting in a greater or a less degree.

Take Peter's case in the Gospels. It was no sin that he should be put to the proof, whether he would in the face of shame confess his Master. The Lord had already warned him of his weakness; but the too confident apostle heeded not the word, slept when he should have been praying against the temptation, and consequently, when it came, he fell — fell miserably, repeatedly. It was quite right, therefore, for the disciples, conscious of their own powerlessness, to ask that they might not be led into circumstances so sorely trying. Knowing their liability to fail under its pressure, they ought humbly and earnestly to deprecate such a sifting. 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 the putting a person thoroughly to the proof, and the consequence of it would be that, if there were unjudged evil in the heart, it would come out to his humiliation. The undetected mischief working within would be brought to the surface and the light. The Lord Jesus Himself passed through every kind of temptation, first in the wilderness, and again, at the close, in the garden of Gethsemane, when the power of darkness assailed Him to the uttermost. But He had nothing in Him that could be touched by Satan, as He said, "The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me." In us there is something that is brought out by the temptation, and then, if we do not lean very simply on the Lord, we break down in sin against Him.

Therefore it is added in the next and last clause, "but deliver us from evil [or the evil one];" because the effect of temptation, where the flesh is not judged, is that evil is manifested, and he who is its source and prime mover acquires advantage over the soul.

323 The Lord, possessing His soul in patience, goes as He was wont, acting on the ordinary motives of a life devoted already to God, and, come evil or come good, He could not walk better than to walk always with Him; He was wont to do that. The knowledge of the trouble and sorrow, however deep, changed nothing in this. He walked in the day and did not stumble - not insensible, not unaffected in heart and feeling, on the contrary deeply moved before God, and even before His poor disciples, for at the least there was truth there, but in the simple constancy of One who sought not Himself at all, but to do the will of and glorify Him who sent Him, whose Servant He was, and had made Himself, and the more high and perfect, the more completely and entirely Servant. He passes on His way in holy simplicity; what else had He to do here but to go on in this way? What a blessed example the Lord is here! In vain to say: "Of late the Jews sought to stone thee." A man, as we have said, that walks in the day, does not stumble, and His path and He was the day. His disciples followed Him, ignorant mainly of what was to come, but led by Him and thus far happy, not led intelligently for they were not yet strong enough for that, but led by Him, blessed in being His companions. But it was different from a guidance of the Holy Ghost, because it was not in the intelligence of His ways, but affection through grace and the operation of the Spirit in their hearts, and so led. Being there, His heart, full of instruction from the circumstances He was in, overflows in instruction to His disciples whom He loved. "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation." Then, though the Lord was to have witnesses and companions of His sorrow according to His love to them, He was to be alone with God. He withdraws to commune with, for there alone all could be said and told to Him, for it was between Him and His Father. The Lord does not say: "Enter not into sin," for it was not here the question. Satan presents a certain thing to act upon the flesh; we walk in the Spirit, all effect is lost. Is it by insensibility? No! but by superiority. Christ, in the discernment which watching, and so a life run with God gave (in Himself perfectly even as Man) knows by His communion with the Father, "All things that should come upon him," passes through all these things in communion with the Father. He had thoroughly gone through it in communion with Him, seen His will in it, and therefore when the evil came by man, it was not of man at all to Him; man and his doings was an accident in it, which was all that the flesh in us would see (save to murmur against the Lord), He was accomplishing in patience and in peace, a known will of His Father. Thus instead of entering into a temptation, He was in the highest exercise of spirituality, accomplishing the will of God in the most difficult circumstances, and the most perfect submission when it cost everything. In the presence of the opposition of Satan, of his terrifying from the path of obedience, the danger, meeting it in the strength of the flesh, not in the seductions of what is pleasant in life - then it is that watchfulness which realises our position before God, and prayer which communicates its whole operation on our nature to God, introduces us into the will of God in it; and the force of His known will, in obedience to which we are sustained by communion with Him, saves us from entering into temptation. This separating power of Satan from God, the sifting of the enemy, because the circumstances to us then are the simple occasion of accomplishing a will already known, and so much the more glorious as penible, and not a sifting and discovery of what is in us by the circumstances, for that has already in communion been done before God our Father. Besides, the strength of the Lord is then actually with us. And this is the force to me of: "Lead us not into temptation." It is not: "Lead us not into sin" - nothing so impossible as that our Father which is in heaven should do that; but He can lead us into temptation, i.e., to be sifted by the enemy, into the place where the flesh shall be exposed and crucified, when this is needful, because hardness, or lightness, or inattention to His patient warnings has supervened. He can lead us into temptation as the last and forced necessary means of self-knowledge and discipline, and it is great grace that the Lord will take this pains with us, but yet, seeing our weakness and the terribleness of the conflict with the enemy, and the holy fear, which becomes us, of falling, it well becomes us to pray that we may not be cast into this furnace, that the Lord may have no need with His thus humbled child.

Returning to our chapter, the disciples are here (Matt. 6:13) asking the Father to "Lead us not into temptation." This is not temptation to sin, for James says (James 1:13) "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." Satan tempts man to evil, and we have an evil nature that responds to it. James commences his Epistle with "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations." Here the word means trials. God tempted, that is, tried Abraham. There is all the difference between our entering into temptation and God trying us. God may lead us into trial, as He did Abraham. But the Lord said to Peter, "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation." If we enter presumptuously into trial, we are bound to fall; but if the Lord does lead us into it He will sustain us. Those to whom James wrote were since redemption, and had the Holy Ghost. If it were not so, they could not count it all joy.

The latter clause of Matt. 6:13, as is well known, is an interpolation, and should not be there. The prayer ends with "deliver us from evil." In verse 14 the Lord goes back to ver. 12. It is God's governmental dealings with His children, and so it is "your heavenly Father," and quite different to Col. 2:13. They had life through God's gracious quickening, and as to their standing before. God all trespasses were forgiven; but if in our relationship with our Father we do not cultivate this spirit of forgiveness, we are losers. Contrast Col. 1:12-14 with this prayer, and the simplest soul can surely see that Colossians is far in advance. When God unfolds to me that I have been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, and that I am delivered from Satan's authority and power, it draws out from me that thanksgiving which is due to the Father. The disciples asked for a prayer, and He gave them this form, but to us He has given the Holy Ghost, and we should pray in the Holy Ghost. If we turn to the Psalms, we find there a book of prayer and praise exactly suited to the Jewish remnant in a day that is coming, but not adequately suited to us. We have no set form of prayer and praise given to us Christians, but we profit from every book of the Bible, the whole word of God. Yet while there are many utterances of the Psalms suited to us, yet, if a person used the book without discriminating what is suited to an earthly people they would get into a very unsatisfactory state of soul.

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.

The prayer in chapter 6 will be taken up by the godly remnant in a coming day, and they will enter into the necessity of it with deep feeling and reality because of the conditions in which they will be found. But the spirit of it is ours now, and expresses the necessity of being maintained in constant dependence upon God, kept from Satan's power, and not regarding the testings of the pathway as something to be lightly entered upon. The soul that knows humility would not seek the temptations of an Abraham or of a Job.

We have already remarked upon, And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, so that there only remains, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. This cry will always be suited to us while in this world with the sense of utter weakness, and knowing that we could not stand for one moment in temptation if left to ourselves. Nor is there any incongruity between such a petition and entire confidence in God; for there will be confidence in God just in proportion as we have learned that in our flesh there dwelleth no good thing. Afraid of ourselves, we shall ever cry, Lead us not into temptation, and this will lead to the further desire that we may be delivered from evil. This, indeed, was the request of the Lord Himself for His own — "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." (John 17:15.) Whether the remaining words, the doxology, as it is termed, For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever, Amen, be part of Scripture or not, they undoubtedly express truth that all Christians delight to acknowledge and to turn into praise.

(2) The way of service for John the Baptist brought him into the wilderness to cry to guilty Israel to repent, because the kingdom of heaven was at hand. The way of Jesus, the Servant of Jehovah, led Him into the wilderness to be tempted of Satan forty days. Misguided men have sought the wilderness to evade the power of evil. Jesus sought it with the express intention of meeting the evil one. He alone was perfect within, and while He Himself was led up to meet the tempter, He taught His disciples to pray, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil [or, the evil one]" (Matt. 6:13). And when a self-confident apostle of His was about to venture into the midst of the temptations of the foe He made supplication for him. "Simon, Simon," He said, "behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not" (Luke 22:31-32).

"Lead us not into temptation." Why should God ever lead us into temptation? it may be asked. Sometimes the Lord has need to put us through a certain process to make us learn our weakness. Look at Peter. The Lord saw he needed to be sifted, or He could have prayed for him to be saved from that fall. A soul would always desire that he may not have this sifting. Christ Himself, though it was a different thing for Him, desired to be delivered from it when bearing sin. Paul prayed for the thorn to be removed. But Paul did not get a fourth heaven - that would have made him worse, but a "thorn in the flesh"; something to make him despicable in preaching (otherwise people might have come to him and said, Paul, you must be better than anyone else, for you have been to the third heaven), to prevent his being puffed up, and to keep him even. It was a gracious provision for him, though it is a right thing for the soul to desire not to be led into temptation, but to be delivered from the evil.

We may well pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13). The point of this petition is that knowing we have the fallen nature within and the enemy within the gate, not that we may not be tested, knowing that the test may involve a response from the traitor within, but that we may be delivered from the evil all around us.

It teaches us in distrust of self, fearful that we should fall, to deprecate what puts us to the test, and thus the spirit in which to go through the testing when it comes — the Lord setting us in Luke the perfect example of it: and the prayer closes with "But deliver us from evil" or "the evil one," the doxology being a later though very early addition.