p. 249 | WHAT IS TEMPTATION?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 18, 1906

WHAT IS TEMPTATION?

EVERY man knows that he is constantly, fearfully, tempted, but few men give thought to the eternal, pivotal significance of the great fact that they are tempted at all. Every temptation presents to a man an opportunity for choice, and he is likely to think it a great issue if the supposed gain of wrong-doing seem great, and a small issue if the supposed gains are not really what he longs for passionately. He measures the temptation, and guards against it, in proportion to its intensity and inducements, forgetting that the lightest inclination toward an act which is not wholly clean may be the real pivot on which his whole being turns just then and for all time. As he chooses then, so he may come to be; and no man can presume safely upon that moment when the issue seems hardly worth the cost of a fight with self. Every temptation is worth a fight to the death, simply because it is a temptation.

Man’s notions and Bible truth are not commonly at one on this great fact of life. To most men temptation means allurement. In the Bible its primary meaning is “testing,” “proving.” To most men the problem in the struggle is the comparative attractiveness of a righteous and an unrighteous course, because of the supposed gains or losses of either, in the line of the alluring act, or its overcoming. But the Bible calls men to the highest level of facing every temptation as a test. The vital issue is the break with righteousness, and on that a man stands or falls. So far have men swung out from this central truth that there is even such an utterly-debased attitude toward temptation as that of the thief who measures with his glance the porch pillars and the overhanging eaves, the shadow of the house front, and the glitter of a luxuriously-furnished room beyond the open window, and the high probability of his being able to do the job without being caught. Yet every thief always gets caught in his thieving, not by the police, but by the act itself. It is not the jail that he ought to fear. It is the thieving,—the break with righteousness, and any other attitude toward the problem is unworthy even of a thief.

The Bible is clear on the significance of temptation, and no man need be confused by side-issues in his warfare. The allurements of a temptation are nothing more than the means by which the test is applied. They are never the temptation itself, never the main issue. When God tried, or proved, or tempted Abraham by directing him to offer up Isaac as a burnt-offering, the heavenly messenger, when Abraham had indeed been proved, suspended the dread ending of the test,—“for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me.” Abraham was proved to be on God’s side unreservedly. The test was everything. Failing in that, Abraham could not be the factor that God wanted him to be in His plan.

When Jesus was led up into the wilderness to be tempted, He was led there to be tested. Satan’s purpose, made clear in every form of temptation which he presented, was to draw the Son away from the Father, and this the Son could not tolerate. He would not test God, whose Son He was, and thus imply doubt of Him. He would make no presumptuous exhibit of His power under any inducement. And when Satan suggested to Him a short cut to power, Jesus brings that incident to an abrupt close, utterly repudiating the Satanic suggestion that any service, any power, any glory, might be attained apart from His Father and His true mission. Had He failed in that test, the overwhelming consequences of that failure would not have been in the things that were offered Him, but in the mastery of darkness over light,—in the very failure itself.

And what did Jesus and His schooled followers teach concerning this testing which is a part of life?—The disciple was to pray that he might not be put to the test; he was to be vigilant against the approach of any testing time; he was to be, not like “those on the rock . . . who, when they have heard, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who for awhile believe, and in time of temptation fall away.” In the end it was given to these plain men, even when they were contending with one another over foolish questions of preferment, to hear from the lips of the tempted, sinless Christ, that they, even they, were to be appointed unto a kingdom, because “ye are they that have continued with Me in My temptations.” Troublesome students that they were in the school wherein He taught them, yet they remained with Him in His testings, sharing the contest and many of its victories. Comrades of His in such a warfare were not to be forgotten.

And their testing was to continue. There should be no relief from that. Nor could they promise relief to others, even tho they could promise victory. It was James who would exultingly urge men to “count it all joy when ye fall into manifold temptations; knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience.” And he would leave men in no doubt about the true significance of the testing. “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he hath been approved [has stood the test], he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord promised to them that love Him.” “Even so run,” writes Paul, “that ye may attain. . . . I therefore so run, as not uncertainly; so fight I, as not beating the air; but I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage. . . . There hath no temptation taken you but such as man can bear; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted [tested] above that ye are able; but will with the temptation [the testing] make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it.”

Temptation is no mere allurement to an unworthy act. It is in life and of life, persistent, insidious, never other than dangerous, never trivial, and always pivotal. Every temptation is a test, and no test leaves a man just where it has found him. Thanks be unto God that every test can bring us nearer to Him!—Sunday-School Times.