JESUS AND OUR TEMPTATIONS

'LEAD us not into temptation' is a petition which most of us use every day in reciting the Lord's Prayer, yet perhaps few of us have either under­stood it or stopped to consider what it means. At their face value the words suggest that God is the kind of person who would deliberately lead us into temptation unless we besought Him not to do so. Jesus always taught men to think of ideal human fatherhood if they were puzzled as to any attitude of God; and when we apply this test and try to imagine any good human father deliberately leading his child into temptation, or even having to be asked not to, we see that this cannot be true about God.

The reason why the words seem difficult is that they contain a Jewish thought‑form; an old Jewish way of thinking which is unfamiliar to us, and which we must undersTand if we are going to understand this petition in the Lord's Prayer. Let me try to explain the way in which the Jew's mind worked.

The first thing to notice is that the Jew could not leave God out of anything that happened or out of any process of the mind. Far more than is the case with ourselves, God was thought of as playing a part in the events of every day. Where we
54
should simply say, 'He went into the wilder­ness,' they would say, 'The Spirit led Him into the wilderness.' Where we should say of a man that he decided to leave home and live in another land‑decided it, possibly, in response to his best nature after consulting his friends and using his common sense, or as some great adventure of the spirit of a man who dares all in response to some mighty urge within him, pressing him far beyond the limits of common sense, prudence, or reason ‑they would say, though the mental processes might be the same, 'The Lord spake unto him say­ing, " Get ‑thee from thy kindred . . . into a land that I will show thee." ' Where a poet would say, ' I had a flash of inspiration,' the Jewish seer would say, 'I saw the Lord, high and lifted up'; and where our ideal statesman would say, ' I am sure the honourable thing to do is this or that,' the Jewish prophet‑statesman would say, 'Thus saith the Lord.' God was manifestly at work to the Jew in everything that happened and in every process of thought.

The second point to notice is that this applied even when speaking of evil. The Jew could see quite clearly what we by our language tend to conceal, namely, that ultimately God is responsible for the possibility of evil. If He had made men as machines, moral evil might have been excluded; but men would not have gained character. It is because He gave man a free will that the possibility of moral evil has been admitted to the universe; so that it would be foolish to suggest that in an
35
ultimate sense God is not responsible for the pos­sibility of evil, though we can see clearly that He had to make the universe that way in order to preserve moral values.

Now, supposing that we wanted to link God with a man's wrongdoing, we should have to do it in some such roundabout way as follows. God gave Jones a free will. Jones misused his free will. Jones thus committed sin. The Jew put it more briefly, but in a way that lends itself to misunderstanding. He left out the middle term of the argument, and thus it is written, 'The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart.' The Jew would understand a statement like that, and would not mean to imply by it that Pharaoh was not responsible. To the Jew it is a short way of saying, 'The Lord gavePharaoh a free will. Pharaoh misused his free will. Pharaoh hardened his heart.'

The meaning of the phrase, ' Lead us not into temptation,' which Jesus incorporated, some scholars think, from a much older Jewish prayer, thus be­comes clear. The Jew would not understand it to imply that God was responsible for a man being in temptation. What the petition means in English, I think, is this: 'Thou who hast given us a free will, help us not to misuse it by putting ourselves into the clutch of any circumstances which are likely to test us beyond our power.' Or, more briefly, ' Help us not to environ ourselves with evil.'

The Apostle James has a word which would seem to conflict with this: 'Count it all joy when ye fall
56
into temptation.' There is no real conflict in these two views. It is one thing to fall into temptation and another thing deliberately to get into circum­stances which we know will mean temptation. It is all the difference between the man who is suddenly ambushed as he walks along the road towards his own home, and the man who leaves the road and deliberately wanders in the woods on either side, which he knows are infested with brigands. In the first case, the man may get his back to a rock and, if he be of that temperament, may even enjoy the excitement and tang of battle ; but what a fool he would be to seek it I So if suddenly, without our seeking it, temptation is upon us, it may be well for us to rejoice, saying, 'Now this is a test of what my Christianity is worth. I am going to fight my way through, show the stuff I am made of, and show God that He can depend on me.' But deliberately to surround oneself with any factors in a situation which make it fraught with peril is wrong. 'Help us to keep ourselves out of those circumstances which might mean our downfall.'

Jesus would have us consider carefully before we say, ' I must tread this road.' He is so eager that we should not get into circumstances likely to bring us low that He would have us change our very means of livelihood, and give up many of the things that delight us, if they mean for us con­stant temptation to do wrong. When He says, 'If thine hand offend thee, cut it off,' He may indeed have meant the words literally; for in His judgement
57
it would certainly be better to lose one's hand than to lose one's soul. But what I think He meant by the hand‑and I sit at the feet of Mr. Alec Findlay here­is what the hand finds to do, and His meaning seems more relevantly this , that if your daily job means that you are constantly brought into situations or circumstances which tempt you to do mean and shabby things, it would be better to change your occupation, at whatever cost to yourself, than to continue in a thing so likely to bring the whole character down into ruin. Go down another road!

Similarly, when He says, ' If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out,' He probably does not mean it literally ‑not because it is hard, but because you would be just as big a sinner with one eye, and twice as funny­looking. What He probably means by ' thine eye' is the thing you have got your eye on‑worldly matters, for instance, or the lusts of the eye, or climbing the social ladder, with all its temptation to pride and idleness. Jesus says it is better to tear them out of your heart, and lead what the world would call a narrow‑minded existence, a one‑eyed life, rather than try to lead a full.life and thereby imperil the soul. If what you do or see, or the direction of your life (the foot), becomes a means of peril to the soul, flee from it, cut it out, have nothing to do with it.

Of course, we realize at once that this is employing a very, very hard test. It may be asking a man to throw up his job or a woman to throw up something that she is doing which is of value even to the
58
community. Yet it would be absurd to keep out of Christianity the stem note which characterized Jesus' teaching, though He had the tenderest heart and the gentlest lips in the world. How often in this world we try to soften things down I We soften things down for others because we want them softened down for ourselves. We blink at the com­promises that other people are obviously making with God because of the compromises we have made with God ourselves.

In this matter, therefore, we must sit at the feet, not of each other, but of Jesus. He is uncompro­mising, relentless, inexorable. He will not pat us on the head and say the silly, complacent things we say to one another. He says things like this : ' What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? ' 'He that loveth father and mother, and the kindly, intimate relation­ships of life, more than Me is not worthy of Me.' He speaks to us not so much of cushions as of crosses, and says, ' He that doth not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.' He is calling us to a stem and strenuous battle, and He is not going to pretend that it can be done comfortably and softly. He is far too good a friend to deceive us into suppos­ing that His way of life is anything else but a strenu­ous training. If you were going to play football for England to‑morrow, you would not be up till one o'clock in the morning eating cream tarts and meringues. Not that these things are wrong, but they spoil your fitness.

Many young people ask their minister if they may
59
do this or that and still be Christians. The answer is, Does it steal away your spiritual physique? When men are training to row for their University, the cox turns himself during the last few weeks into a kind of private detective. He will not allow them to do anything, or to run the risk of doing anything, which might steal away their fitness. He watches their food even, and the number of hours they sleep. His point is not that certain things are 'wrong.' He is out to prevent their getting into any circumstances which might spoil their fitness for the great race.

Now, Jesus is not less concerned for us than a cox about his men, and the petition, ' Lead us not into temptation,' must be thought of as our strenuous response to His stem appeal. It means, ' Help us not to get into any set of circumstances which might make us unfit, not for a game or a race, but for the game and the race, namely, life itself.'

Some of us have seen a man under the influence of a drug. Imagine him sitting in a chair with the glass containing the opiate near him. You call his name. You shake him by the shoulder. He rouses for a moment, smiles perhaps, looks at you with something of longing in those heavy eyes. Then you see his hand steal out surreptitiously for his glass. He puts it to his lips. All hope dies out of his eyes. The lids close heavily. The hands are folded. Once more, like an awful, impenetrable mist, the sleep of the drugged closes round him. You still may look at his body, but his soul is beyond you.

Or one may imagine it in a different way. Here
60
is a man in prison. Armed with keys, you unlock door after door. You find him at last. You bring him through gate after gate. You are as elated as you imagine him to be. At last there is no further prison bar to stop him ; only the blue sky and God's fair world, and freedom. But, just when you think he will leap out into that free air, hardly staying to thank you, you see a queer grin on his face, a sidelong glance, and he is shuffling from you, back into a life that has become easier than liberty.

Some of the slaves of early days were like that. The day came near when they could claim their liberty in virtue of the length of their service to their masters. First thoughts would make one imagine them looking forward with tremendous eagerness to the glad day of freedom, when they could pass from their servility as free men. But think further. Many had married during their servitude. They had had children. These still belonged to the master. Small wonder, then, that, as the day came nearer, a man found a woman's white arms round his neck, red lips he had kissed whispering words of love, little fingers clutching at his garments, little brown eyes moist and dim with tears. And so the day of freedom found many a man staying on and staying on, unwilling to break the bonds that held him.

Are not all these illustrations of the way men disappointed Jesus ? He saw men rouse them­selves as He called their names. For one brief moment at least their soul awakened. They knew His way was the way of life. Then a surreptitious sip of the drug, perhaps the drug He once called the
61
'cares of this world' or 'the deceitfulness of riches' ­some illicit love; some easier way‑and the soul is soon asleep again, the mists close round it once more, to sleep perhaps until the kindly angel of death awakens the soul and leads it shuddering, shivering, reluctant to where the winds of the Infinite blow the last effects of the drug away and leave it to face whatever is ordained for it by the mercy of God.

Jesus came to bring liberty to the captives, and, as men heard Him and saw His face, they knew that that greatest of all miracles was possible to them­the breaking of fetters, the throwing open of doors, the freedom that means prison bars behind and the blue sky and the great, open spaces in front. But men slunk back into their cells again, into the prison of hidebound form and~ hoary custom and cramping tradition.

Slaves might have been freed in far greater numbers; but‑if it be permissible so to use the illustration‑the sins men love twined their arms around them, and the fingers of lust clutched at them, held them, would not let go; and men found, as we find, that they loved Him at one moment, but that they loved their sins and easy‑going habits and self‑complacencies better. ' He saw some men rush violently from strong pursuing sins to find peace and a clean mind at His side. He saw others draw away with sidelong looks and take cover from His presence, choosing darkness rather than light.'

Jesus is calling us now as He called men long ago, calling us from certain sins, from certain books,
62
from certain friends, from certain habits, from certain business practices, and as He calls us we look up at Him rather wistfully and our soul is smiling. We know that, more than anything else in the world, we, our best selves, want to throw over the things which bring us down, to have nothing more to do with them at all. Yet something keeps us back; some fear‑fear of what people will,think if we begin to change our ways, fear of what people will say, fear of becoming more than we dare to be­some base love, some unclean lust. These things hold us back. Some of us have compromised to such an extent that we have found comfort of a sort, yet we know, when Jesus speaks to us, that it is the comfort of a soul that, padded round with compromise, has turned its back on Him. Some of us are sick of the whole battle against evil. One man said to me a little while ago, ' I don't feel it matters very much, for no one cares. . . .' The Bishop of Winchester somewhere tells us of two men who were lying badly wounded in a military hospital. Their beds were side by side. One said, ' I don't care whether I come through or not. I am sick of the wax, of the world, of everything and everybody.' ' I feel rather like that myself,' said the other, ' and yet there is a girl somewhere in Scotland 1 she cares.' I know how many are sick of themselves, sick of this endless war against temp­tation, sick of the battle, and half their mind is saying, ' I don't care, and nobody cares.' But there is a Christ standing by us, and He cares. One glance at the Cross convinces us how much He does care.
63
I remember in Mesopotamia some of us were riding fast on horseback in the desert. We had left the track. We were quite unconscious of the fact that in front of us, and, indeed, round us on three sides, were some most terrible quicksands. They suck in a horse and his rider in their relentless way, and there is little hope of escape. An Arab suddenly seemed to lift himself out of the sand almost at our feet, and with outstretched arms and wild eyes besought us to pull up. I have often thought that that is like Christ. He sees us riding, riding fast in these days, surrounded with quicksands of tempta­tion. He calls to us in His urgent way, 'Back, back, on your life ; there is terrible danger all round you.' He knows the way, and knows that all round this complacent, respectable, uncriticized life of ours there are those sinking sands of sin which suck the very substance of the soul. He implores us to go back to the steep, narrow path which is the Way of Life. Steep and narrow, but a road‑the road, where the feet do not slip.

We have a Captain, and the heart Of every private man Hath drunk in valour from His eyes Since first the war began. He is most merciful in fight: And of His wounds a single sight The embers of our failing might Into a flame will fan.

And, unless we turn our back on Him finally, the embers cannot go out, our deep desires cannot be frustrated, our battle cannot be lost.