Lead us not into Temptation

Where do we normally think of our Temptations arising from?

The Devil

Occasionally we see the Devil show up personally unto temptation. In the Garden. In the book of Job. In the fall of Judas and the sifting of Peter but we must understand that the Devil is not omnipresent and most often the Temptations to evil, at their root, though inspired by the Devil, are not directly delivered by the Devil.

Still Scripture teaches that

I Peter 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

And so we remember we wrestle not against flesh and blood but principalities and powers and we all the while pray, “Lead us not into Temptation.”

The World

St. James says that Friendship with the World is enmity towards God.

St. John can say

15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

Of course “World” in the way we are using it means to join in league with the Sons of Adam against the truth and principles laid down by Christ. We are Tempted by the World most normally when our desire to “fit in” rises above our desire to to walk in terms of God’s authority.

The idea of the “World” as a Temptress I think is better translated “this present age,” so that the idea is that Temptation is being driven by a desire that isn’t entirely abnormal to go along to get along. So, when it comes to Temptation, “The World” is not so much things like Alcohol, Smokes, or Theater, but rather it is what we surrender in terms of our identity in order to fit in with a zeitgeist that is opposed to God’s authority.

The Scripture gives us an example of that In Demas. Early on Demas was a valued companion of Paul.

Col. 4:14 Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.
Philemon 24 Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellowlabourers.

But later Paul can write of Demas,

II Timothy 4:10 — For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world,

Apparently, Demas considered the relief of no longer identifying with Paul and his work and message to be more important than what could be gained from that identity.

Concrete example,

The issue of sexuality in the public square. There are many in the Church who are surrendering this teaching inch by inch in order to be able to accommodate this present age,

Horton Quote,

“Although a contractual relationship denies God’s will for human dignity, I could affirm domestic partnerships as a way of protecting people’s legal and economic security. However, the “marriage card” is the demand for something that simply cannot consist in a same-sex relationship….”

“The challenge there is that two Christians who hold the same beliefs about marriage as Christians may appeal to neighbor-love to support or to oppose legalization of same-sex marriage.”

Or another Concrete example of being Tempted by the World

“Instantaneous creation of Adam and Eve is not explicitly required by the text or its subsequent interpretation, but the historicity of a first human couple with whom God entered into covenant is indispensable to theology at significant points in almost every locus.”

Nobody in the Church made these kinds of concessions until this present age insisted that Christianity couldn’t be relevant until it made these kinds of concessions. And so large segments of the Church have become Demas like in their abandonment of the Christian faith in order to avoid being seen as “narrow” as God’s enemies count “narrow.”

So love of the world, in terms of Temptation, can tempt us to abandon our associations with Christians as Demas did or it can cause us to give up doctrinal positions in order to maintain our relevance. And because the Temptations of the World can be so intense at every turn we are taught to pray, regardless of our place or status in life to “Lead us not into Temptation.”

The Self

Temptation often comes through the self as that self still remains besotted with the lineaments of our old Adamic nature. As regenerated we still deal with lusts, envy, self-centeredness, pride, unbelief and a host of other plug uglies that raise their heads all too frequently.

Our Canon’s of Dordt can speak to this issue by noting,

“Those people whom God according to his purpose calls into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord and regenerates by the Holy Spirit, God also sets free from the dominion and slavery of sin, though not entirely from the flesh and from the body of sin as long as they are in this life.

Article 2: The Believer’s Reaction to Sins of Weakness

Hence daily sins of weakness arise, and blemishes cling to even the best works of saints, giving them continual cause to humble themselves before God, to flee for refuge to Christ crucified, to put the flesh to death more and more by the Spirit of supplication and by holy exercises of godliness, and to strain toward the goal of perfection, until they are freed from this body of death and reign with the Lamb of God in heaven.”

True it is a Christian people who are praying this prayer and we pray to God to lead us not into Temptation because as a Christian people we know all too well our weakness and dispositions. The praying then of “lead us not into Temptation but Deliver us from evil” is the prayer of a people who distrust themselves while trusting God.

This 6th petition reminds us thus again that the only place we can go is to the prayer closet and to our Father to secure help as against ourselves.

When we talk about Temptations we would do well to remind ourselves that sometimes the most effective Temptation is the most subtle,

Screw Tape Letters,

“You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

― C.S. Lewis

What may we say of this connection between our Temptations and God?

First if we look back at Mt. Ch. 4:1 we see God ordaining the Temptation of our Lord Christ,

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

Clearly we see here that God is sovereign even as it pertains to our Temptations. And while James teaches that God himself tempts no one, clearly He is sovereign over the coming and goings of Temptations. And even when Temptation does come into our lives as believers we can be confident that

God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. (I Cor. 10:13).

And so it is fitting and proper to pray that we might not be led into Temptation. Who else can calm our sinful appetites so that we are not Tempted except our Father in Heaven?

Now we turn to the prayer for deliverance.

It is likely that the Scripture here should be translated, “Evil one” as opposed to just “Evil,” though it is not wrong to translate it either way.

Mt. 5:37 / Mt. 13:19, 38, / John 17:15 / I John 2:13

I prefer “Evil One” as opposed to just “Evil” because it reminds us that Evil is not just an abstract philosophical concept but Evil is personal.

When we pray to be delivered from this Evil one we are praying not only to be delivered from his agenda but also the agenda of all those who are in league with him and so all those who advocate his agenda. In this prayer we are reminded that those issues that we stand against that are contrary to Christ and His Gospel can not be abstracted from the Evil one. So when we pray to be delivered from the Evil one we at the same time pray that we would be delivered from all that opposes Christ. We pray for deliverance from unjust wars, we pray for deliverance from assaults on the family, we pray for deliverance from being enslaved by unjust rulers because these are all the machinations of the Evil One whom we are praying to be delivered from.

Of course this prayer reminds us also that because of Christ’s finished work on the Cross we have already been delivered from the Evil one. Because of Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension, the Devil no longer has any hold on us. Paul can say in Colossians that God has delivered us from the Dominion of Darkness and translated us to the Kingdom of God’s dear son.

So, we can pray “Deliver us from the Evil One,” precisely because we have been delivered from the Evil One. There is a now, not yet to this prayer.

“O Father, I thank you that you have delivered me from the Devil’s authority and power in the death of Christ. I thank you that sin as a lifestyle and way of life no longer has dominion over me. I thank you that I am more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus. Now, I ask that despite my weakness and frailty you would continue to deliver me from the Evil one.”

So, as Jesus puts this prayer on the lips of His people we see how realistic it is. We are are a forgiven people who are in need of forgiveness, we are a delivered people who have need to ask for deliverance from the Evil one. We are a people who find our beginning with our Father in Heaven and our ending in desiring His Kingdom, Power, and Glory to be seen forever.

Deliver us from Evil

As part of the Church militant our cry is always for relief from the designs of the enemy. And so until we are made secure in the Church triumphant — the church at rest — we constantly cry out for deliverance.

To cry out for deliverance in our Prayer life reminds us that our victory is not in ourselves. We can not deliver ourselves. This petition reminds us then how beholden we are to God for our final deliverance, just as we are beholden to Him for our current deliverance.

And so here we are praying this prayer that has been on the lips of God’s people for millennial. And the more we pray it with earnestness the more we see how dependent we are upon God to traverse all the dangers that we find in the Devil, in the World, and in ourselves. In praying this prayer we communicate to God and to ourselves how much we long to be done with those character flaws, those habits, those crooked desires that are inconsistent with the Christian life. Prayed in earnest and with understanding, this 6th petition throws us off ourselves and on to the mercy of God.

And yet at the same time praying this prayer reminds us that we are praying this as a already delivered people. God has secured us in Christ so that we the delivered ones keep praying for deliverance. And so the prayer, rightly understood, is also a prayer of gratitude.

Let us stand and together pray the Lord’s Prayer

Lead us not into temptation — negative side of the petition (Protection)

Deliver us from evil — positive side of the petition (Triumph)

With these two corresponding petitions the saint is asking for, on the one hand protection and preservation from sin, Satan, and self while at the same time asking not only for protection and preservation but also for much more than that – for outright victory.

The Christian does not merely desire to be kept in this battle against evil and the evil one, the Christian desires to be delivered from it. We see this demonstrated in Romans 7 where the Apostle Paul can say, “O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death.” Paul sees his sin and he desires deliverance from it.

We should say here then that in this prayer for protection and triumph we see the characteristic Christian in prayer and it causes us to ask if our prayer lives are so characterized. Do we long for, not only protection, but do we long for deliverance from evil and the evil one?

This is a prayer that reflect that we have a right estimation of ourselves and of God.

A right estimation of ourselves because we know our own weakness towards Temptation and a right estimation of God as the only one who can deliver us from our enemies. It is a prayer that once again confesses our own lack of sufficiency. We pin our hopes not upon ourselves for overcoming in this battle that rages about us, but we pin our hopes upon God for his protecting and delivering ability.

Of course, as such, this prayer on our lips, bespeaks that character of God that we Reformed Christian, with Scripture, return to over and over again and that is God’s sovereignty. In this prayer we are entrusting ourselves to the one who directs our steps and to the only one who has the power and authority to deliver us from our own weaknesses, and from the onslaughts of the evil one.

We must be careful here though to not make this prayer only personal and individual, though it is that. We remember that the teaching of the prayer begins with the Pronoun “Our,” (Our Father who art in Heaven) and that even here the pronouns are plural. We are praying, “lead US not into temptation, deliver US from the evil one.” So while it is fitting and proper to ask for this individually we would also do well to remember that this is a prayer that God’s people together are to be praying. This is a covenantal prayer. Not only is this “lead me not into temptation and deliver me from evil” as appropriate as that is, but it is also lead us not into temptation and deliver us from the evil one. All of us together are praying that we, as the glorious body of Christ, might not be led into Temptation but be delivered from the evil one.

In this covenantal aspect of the prayer we are reminded again that in a healthy Christianity there is not a Lone Ranger kind of Christian existence. Together we are asking to not be led into temptation and together we are asking to be delivered from the evil one.

Just a brief word here on this score. We live in a time and an environment that so desperately wants to peel away from us every and all of our covenant identity markers. Our current culture wants to produce atomized individuals peeled away from Christian covenantal loyalties of Christian family, Christian church, Christian guild, or Christian school so as to remake people to be conformed to something other than Christ. If our Christian covenantal identity markers are successfully stripped away from us then we are left naked before the various non Christian ideologies which would seek to reorganize our identity — our self understanding — as set against the back drop of a rival theology that serves purposes that are alien to Christ’s purposes.

Christian covenantal categories are monumentally important and in the Lord’s Prayer we find the covenant aspect of the Christian life being subtly set forth again. We pray, “Lead US not into temptation, but deliver US from the evil one.”

As we continue to consider this two sided request of preservation and deliverance that our Lord Christ puts upon the lips of His people, we are mindful of the flow of the Lord’s Prayer. In the previous petition we are crying out for forgiveness of sins, while here we are crying out for deliverance from sin. There is a proper symmetry here. When we are united to Christ the Christian cries out at one and the same time both for forgiveness and for deliverance from the grip and filth of sin.

Logically, we cry out first for forgiveness because there can be no deliverance from the grip and the power of sin until we have first been forgiven for our sin. The cry of forgiveness is the cry for the reckoning of Christ’s righteousness to our account. The cry for preservation and deliverance is the cry that we might increasingly become what we have been freely already declared to be.

All Christians upon being united to Christ long both for forgiveness and release. There is thus an inseparability of justification (forgiveness) and sanctification (deliverance) for the Christian. And we find that here in the Lord’s Prayer. True, the proper ordering is the cry for forgiveness and then the petition for deliverance but never one without the other for they imply one another.

The close relationship between forgiveness and ongoing deliverance from the grip of Sin is seen in a myriad of places in Scripture. Consider Romans 6

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

Calvin can say on this point,

In Romans 6 he (Paul) turns to discuss the sanctification which we obtain in Christ. As soon as the flesh has had a little taste of this grace, it is liable to gratify its vices and desires w/o disturbance, as though grace were now ended. Against this Paul maintains here that we cannot receive righteousness in Christ without at the same time laying hold of sanctification…. It follows therefore, that no one can put on the righteousness of Christ without regeneration.”

Also Romans 8 has this close relationship,

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.[a] 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you[b] free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,[c] he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

You see it here again. No condemnation for those who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

So there is this intimate insoluble relationship between the petition of forgiveness and the petition for perseverance and deliverance. You have the petition for forgiveness and you have the petition for preservation and deliverance. Never one without the other and each presupposing the other.

This insolubility between the two is so true that Calvin can comment elsewhere,

“All those who have been grafted into Christ our Lord by His Spirit are beyond danger or likelihood of condemnation, however burdened they may still be by their sins. In the Second place, if those who remain in the flesh lack the sanctification of the Spirit, none of them has any share in that great blessing.”

So we see here the insolubility between the petition for forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer and the petition for deliverance. We have this union with Christ and so we pray for both ongoing forgiveness that is never anything but final and we pray for ongoing deliverance.

Here we should say a word about “Temptation.” We are praying that we would not be led into Temptation. Obviously the reference is to a Temptation to sin. Well, how can we know what the sin is that we are praying that we might not be led into except for a close and proper understanding of God’s Character as championed in His law-Word?

You see even this prayer for perseverance and deliverance presupposes God’s law. We are praying that we would be delivered from lawlessness. Lead us not into temptation in those aspects of our lives that are considered more individual and private and lead us not into temptation in those aspects of our lives that are considered as belonging more to the public square.

The Temptation that we are praying that we might not be led into might best be understood as that which our first parents went through. They were tempted in the Garden. And what was that Temptation? The Temptation was to ignore God’s authoritative interpretive Word over all reality in favor of their own autonomous authoritative and interpretive word over all reality. All Temptation unto sin is the Temptation to de-God God and en-God one’s self. Temptation is characterized by setting aside God and his legislative Word in favor of our own fiat self word.

But once again at this point we run smack into God’s law. This Temptation that we are praying that we might not be led into is a prayer that is saying “lead us not into our law word over your law word, grant us thy Spirit that we might understand your Character as revealed in your law word that we might delight in it and walk in it routinely.” Deliver us from the evil one who is the Tempter and grant us triumph over him in this life.

Let us end with some concrete examples of the Temptations we might pray that we would not be led into and the corresponding hope to be delivered from the evil one.

1.) Popularity with the wrong group of people — Friendship with the world is enmity towards God
— Bad company corrupts good character

2.) Staying dumbed down — We take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ
Scripture talks about the necessity of the renewing of the mind

All of us live in and among a people who have been purposefully dumbed down. Because this is true it has affected all of us. There is the Temptation thus to want to stay in the dumbed down comfort zone with the rest of the dumbed down oi polloi. There is safety in numbers.

Now some might contend there is a certain arrogance in this but it is not intended that way for I find myself fighting the same Temptation. This Temptation would have us be satisfied with dumbed down versions of Christianity and dumbed down understandings of grace. This Temptation would not allow us to see the in-congruence of being adherents of this pop culture while trying to be adherents of Christ.

3.) Antinomianism and legalism

There are those in the Reformed Church today who would lead us into public square antinomianism where we no longer apply God’s law to our public square interactions. God’s word has nothing explicit to say about public morality. God’s Word has nothing explicit to say about any kulturkampf (cultural struggle) that we may be involved in. To give into this would be to delivered over to the evil one.

On the other hand there are those in the Reformed Church today who forget that Justification is bases solely on Christ’s work for us and who subtly — very subtly — want to introduce our works (our performance) into the foundation of our Justifications.

Whether it is antinomianism which hates God’s law or Legalism which would use God’s law unlawfully we must pray that we would be delivered from the evil one.

Conclusion

And so here we are … weak creatures totally dependent upon God’s grace. If left to ourselves we will get it wrong every time all the time. And so our Lord Christ rightfully puts upon our lips a prayer for preservation and deliverance.