And Lead Us Not into Temptation. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matt. 6:9), is the famous beginning of the Lord’s Prayer. It staggers the mind to calculate how many times that prayer has been prayed since Christ’s seismic reordering of practical righteousness in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7; Luke 6, 11). However, the ending of the Lord’s Prayer has been consistently confusing, “And lead us not into temptation” (Matt. 6:13; Luke 11:4). The words themselves are not the confusing part of the prayer, but its theology for navigating temptation. Is God at all complicit in setting us up for moral failure? Absolutely not! We are instructed very clearly that God tempts no one. “Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (James 1:13). We carry the raw ingredients for temptation around with us; sin does not ever originate with God (1 John 1:5). So then, why pray “lead us not into temptation”?
Principally, there are two keywords to interpret and interconnect: “lead” and “temptation.” Yet the definition of temptation unlocks the mystery of God’s lead. Temptation and testing share the same Greek word. Temptation is clearly negative in tone; testing is clearly positive. God doesn’t lead us into a temptation, but into the test where temptation waits. It is a huge distinction! In this sense, the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness “to be tempted by the devil” (Matt. 4:1). God led Jesus into the wilderness, but the tempter brought the temptation to the Son of God. In another similar verse, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41). Temptation comes from the world, the flesh, and the devil, but God declares “the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:3).
A
masterful explanation given by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones ties up the loose pieces.
“We are asking that we should never be led into a situation where we are liable
to be tempted by Satan. It does not mean that we are dictating to God what He
shall or shall not do. God does test His children, and we must never presume to
tell God what He is or is not to do. He knows that we need much training in our
preparation for glory. But though it does not mean that we are to dictate to God,
it does mean that we may request of Him, that if it be in accordance with His
holy will, He should not lead us into positions where we can be so easily
tempted, and where we are liable to fall. It means that we should request Him
to preserve us from this, and not to lead us in this way. This is what our Lord
meant when He said to His disciples at the end, ‘Watch and pray, that ye enter
not into temptation’ (Matt. 26:14)’” (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the
Sermon on the Mount, p. 349).
