¹³Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. ¹⁴But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.

New believers find help from our passage today; older Christians return repeatedly to reassure themselves of these truths. Temptation and sin are a universal struggle for God-fearing people at all stages of life. We need to go back to the basics to continually remind ourselves.

James continues his terse imperatives; the struggles of the soul must be met with our fiercest discipline. We must be sure of these things, or we will drift into unbelief. We must uncompromisingly confront our doubts about God. The most basic level of doubt comes when we are in the midst of a battle with temptation and begin to question God’s character: How come He is allowing this trial? Why does He bring me into temptation, when Jesus told us to pray that He would not lead us into it? Is He actually trying to cause me to sin?

With our rational minds, we know the above cannot be true, but sometimes our emotions control our minds. James speaks not to the spiritual ascetics or monks, or the self-described super-pious. No, he writes to people living with the realities of life and the honesty of their real-life experiences. He lays out his argument in two assertions: First, it is impossible for God to be tempted, that is, successfully. A temptation is a circumstance or movement in our lives designed to draw us away from God. By definition, God cannot be tempted away from Himself and His purposes. What He does is what He purposes. He is the sovereign Creator over all things, and He is absolutely holy, completely superior to everything else. Satan thought otherwise, and his efforts to tempt Jesus in the wilderness completely failed (Matt. 4). The second assertion follows the first; God therefore cannot possibly tempt anyone, because that would go against His purposes, by definition.

If God is not the source or author of our temptations, then how do we explain our experience? James doesn’t diverge into the philosophical question of the origin of evil but keeps his comments to the mechanics of how temptation works. It begins with the enticement of our hearts. Somehow evil begins there, when we respond to the pressure to stray from God’s ways. As believers we are new creations in Christ, to be sure (2 Cor. 5:17), but we still retain shadows of the old heart. We will never advance in our battle against sin until we come to terms with what Jeremiah said: “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9).

Lord, I confess the times I have blamed You for tempting me. How foolish of me!