10 Sin and Temptation. David B. Calhoun
DAVID B. CALHOUN
When temptation sorely presses,
In the day of Satan’s pow’r,
In our times of deep distresses,
In each dark and trying hour,
By thy mercy, O deliver us,
Good Lord.1
Everyone experiences temptation every day and, perhaps, every hour. It is such a common experience that we get used to it and tell jokes about it, like the one about the man who said he could resist everything but temptation.
Our temptations tell us, or should tell us, a great deal about ourselves. We all are tempted and so should not be judgmental about the sins of each other. When a Christian woman heard the sad story of a person who had stumbled into sin, I heard her say, “I have those weeds in my garden.” If we don’t have the same weeds in our gardens, we have other weeds just as bad. We are not alike, and so we experience different temptations in different ways.
We are alike, however, in trying to explain, at least to ourselves if not to others, why we yield to a temptation. Like Adam and Eve in the garden, we blame everyone but ourselves for our sin. We think that what we did was not so bad, or that everyone is doing it, or that we were in a situation that made it almost inevitable that we do it. Some who are not Christians (and sometimes Christians) may not distinguish temptation from yielding to temptation. They see it as just doing what people do, what they want to do. Other non-Christians, perhaps most, may feel guilty because of things that they have done and regret the trouble that it has caused them and others. But they do not know what to do with that guilt. Temptation comes to us in many ways, Clarence Edward Macartney said in a sermon:
In every circumstance of life, every lot, every association, every labor, every pleasure or hardship, there is a possible temptation. There are temptations for the body, for the mind, for the soul. There are the temptations to the appetite, to selfishness, dishonesty, to the evasion of duty, the disregard of others’ rights, indifference to others’ sorrows; pride, sloth, envy, suspicion, taking up an evil report against our neighbor, and the subtle, but even more dangerous, temptations to doubt, to unbelief.2
Some temptations may seem to us trivial or inconsequential, but all temptations are serious. The Puritan Thomas Manton wrote: “Lesser sticks set the great ones on fire.”3 Lutheran pastor and theologian Helmut Thielicke says that every temptation brings the possibility that we may be “torn away from God. . . . Through small and great events in our life, little fondnesses and great passions, we can be brought to the point where we lose contact with the Father.” 4 In whatever shape it comes—the desire for illicit sex, the love of money, prideful ambition—temptation moves us to reject God’s Word and deny his rule over our lives. Rather than seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, we seek first our kingdom and our own way. Calvin described temptation as the desire to “seek out something of our own that reposes in ourselves rather than in God,” the temptation that came to our first parents from Satan. 5 By the sin that comes when we yield to temptation, we remove God from the throne of our lives. Even a “small” sin, even a “quick” one, tears us away from God.
What Is Temptation?
The Greek noun peirasmos is used twenty-one times in the New Testament and translated in the English Standard Version as “temptation,” “test,” or “trial.” “Tempt” in the King James Version means test in an unrestricted sense, in accord with older English usage. It is only since the seventeenth century that the word’s connotation has been limited to testing with evil intent. We will combine test and trial as similar in English and think of the Greek word as having two distinct meanings—test-trial and temptation. The context often makes clear which of these words is to be used in English translation, but it is sometimes difficult to choose the correct one. The note of testing, however, rather than temptation in the sense of seducing, is uppermost in biblical teaching.
Furthermore, the two different meanings of the word peirasmos usually seem to overlap. Temptation can be a test or a trial; in fact, it always is. Temptation is a test to which a person is subjected by God or by the Devil. Or we may say that temptation is a test that comes from both God and the Devil, because the Devil, who is the tempter, cannot act without God’s permission. J. I. Packer explains: “Temptations are Satan’s work; but Satan is God’s tool as well as his foe, and it is ultimately God himself who leads his servants into temptation, permitting Satan to try to seduce them for beneficent purposes of his own.” 6 In a sermon during the beginnings of the Nazi horror, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said the same thing: “Nothing can happen on earth without the will and permission of God. Satan also is in God’s hands. He must—against his will—serve God.” 7
If temptation, then, is the work of the Devil and, in a sense, also the work of God, so are trials. Trials are testing situations in which the Christian faces new possibilities of both good and evil. God does not tempt anyone, but he tests everyone, and Satan seeks to turn those tests into temptations. Satan tries to influence our response to his own advantage by manipulating circumstances, within the limits that God allows him. God’s purpose in testing us is the strengthening of our spiritual life; but Satan’s purpose is to change that test or trial into a temptation that will lead to spiritual defeat. Joseph said to his brothers, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20). In our trials and tests Satan means evil, but God means good. When viewed from the standpoint of Satan, our own fallen nature, and the appeal of the world, a difficult experience may be a temptation, but when viewed in terms of God’s intention for us, it is a test. By tempting us, the Devil tries to drive us away from God, but sometimes what he actually accomplishes is to drive us “directly into the very hands of God,” as in the case of Job. 8
A test or trial becomes a temptation when a person is moved to disobey God or to doubt or blame God for his or her trouble, as Job’s wife suggested that Job do: “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). A trial is to be endured by God’s grace, as Job did when he replied to his wife: “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil [or disaster in the ESV alternate translation]?” (2:9–10). James wonderfully summed up the whole book of Job in a few words: “You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11). In our times of trial and temptation, God will be compassionate and merciful; we are to endure, to be steadfast, to refuse to be torn away from God.
In a letter of consolation, the Southern Presbyterian theologian James Henley Thornwell prayed for a friend who had lost a son, that God would “preserve her from all temptation to distrust His goodness, or murmur at His ways.” He added: “Our times of trial are times of temptation; and precious is that faith which loses nothing but its dross in the heat of the furnace.” 9
What Does the Bible Say about Temptation?
There are many passages in the Bible that present what we might call “the theology of temptation,” but more often the Bible tells “the story of temptation”—from the temptation of Adam and Eve in the first book of the Bible to the last book in the Bible, where we find the temptations that faced the seven churches of Asia and those that will face God’s people in the end times.
In the Old Testament God tested the people of Israel to see (or actually to show, because God already knows) whether they would be true to him. “God left [Hezekiah] to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart” (2 Chron. 32:31). It was Israel and not the heathen nations whom God put on trial. Such tests of faith and obedience are part of the special relationship between God and his covenant people. “It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons” (Heb. 12:7).
God treated Abraham as a son when he commanded him to sacrifice Isaac. How easily that test could have become a temptation for Abraham to question God, to hate God, and to reject him. But Abraham resisted, and he obeyed God promptly and sincerely (Gen. 22:1–14). When the people of Israel transgressed the covenant, God allowed them to be troubled by the nations still in the land after the death of Joshua. He tested the people, “whether they will take care to walk in the way of the LORD as their fathers did, or not.” The test became a temptation, and the temptation became sin, as the people murmured against God and doubted his covenant promise (Judges 2:20–23).
King David was tempted by the naked body of a beautiful woman, and his yielding led to adultery and complicity in the death of the woman’s husband (2 Sam. 11:1–27). Tempted by lust, David was later tempted by pride. In 2 Samuel 24:1 we read that “the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, ‘Go, number Israel and Judah.’” By numbering the people for military purposes, David showed lack of trust in the Lord and pride in his great army (1 Sam. 24:3, 10). In 1 Chronicles 21:1 it is Satan who “incited David to number Israel.” The Lord allowed Satan to tempt David to number Israel, thus carrying out God’s will.
There are other temptation stories in the Old Testament, but the best known and the most important is the first one—the temptation of Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:1–7). The Westminster Confession of Faith sums up the biblical story and its meaning:
Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. . . . By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.10
By their yielding to the temptation of Satan, Adam and Eve were torn away from God and brought themselves and all their descendants (except Jesus) into “an estate of sin and misery.”11
Think of the many temptation stories in the New Testament. The disciples on the Sea of Galilee were tempted to doubt Jesus’ protection and care for them (Matt. 14:22–33), as was John the Baptist in prison (11:1–6). The disciples questioned Jesus’ provision for the great crowd that had gathered to hear him (14:13–16). Peter was tempted to reject Jesus’ words about his coming death (16:21–23). The rich young man was tempted by “the love of money” (19:16–22). Judas was tempted to betray Jesus (26:14–16), and Peter was tempted to deny him (vv. 69–75). The disciples were tempted to sleep in Gethsemane (vv. 36–46). Ananias and Sapphira were tempted to deceive the church (Acts 5:1–11). Peter was tempted to question God’s plan for the Gentiles (10:1–16). John Mark was tempted to abandon his missionary work (13:13 and 15:36–38). There are other such stories, but by far the most important temptation story in the New Testament, and in the entire Bible, is the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–11).
There Christ, the second Adam, undid what the first Adam had done. There the true Israel, in contrast to the first Israel, remained faithful “in the wilderness.” He refused to doubt God’s care or to put God to the test or to fall into idolatry (vv. 7–10). Jesus quoted three biblical texts, all from Deuteronomy, in resisting the same temptations to which Israel had yielded.
In the language of John Milton, the temptation of Adam and Eve led to “Paradise lost”; the temptation of Jesus to “Paradise regained.” The temptation of Adam and Eve brought about the fall of mankind; the temptation of Christ brought about Satan’s fall. The promise of Genesis 3:15 was realized in the victory of “the Son of Man” over the “ruler of this world” (John 12:31–34).
All other temptations in the Bible and in human history have to do with these two stories. Either we fall like Adam, or we stand and Satan falls, as he did in the temptation of Christ. The fall of Satan is repeated again and again in temptations resisted and in the victories of God’s people over the Devil. When the seventy-two disciples returned with good reports of their mission, Jesus said: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20). Satan’s final fall is described in Revelation 20:10, when he will be “thrown into the lake of fire” to suffer there “forever and ever.”
How Could Jesus Be Tempted?
Was Jesus really tempted? Yes. He was tempted by Satan in three specific ways in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–11). During his earthly life he was tempted “in every respect . . . as we are” (Heb. 4:15). He was tempted, and tempted repeatedly, but he did not sin. How could it be that Christ was really tempted when he could not sin? The Bible does not say that he could not sin but that he did not sin.
Christ did not defeat Satan in the wilderness by calling on his divine power as God (as God he could not sin) but by drawing on the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit (so that as man he did not sin). Jesus was tempted as a human being, and as a human being he felt the force and power of the temptations of Satan. But as a faithful and obedient child of God, he trusted in God and overcame the tempter. The Holy Spirit, who led Christ into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil, stayed with him and provided help in his time of need. Toward the end of his earthly life, Jesus told the disciples that “the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me” (John 14:30–31). The reason that Satan had no claim on Christ was not that Christ was God but that, as a man, he did what the Father commanded.
The New Testament writers do not attempt to explain how Christ as God could be tempted. They simply state that he was tempted like us and that he did not sin. And they tell us how important it was for our salvation that he did not sin. Because he “knew no sin,” he could take our place “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Our salvation hung in the balance in the wilderness when Jesus was tempted, as our fate as sinners was determined when Adam and Eve were tempted in the garden. Christ was tempted like us, and he was tempted for us. “For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Heb. 2:18). “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (4:15–16). The exalted Christ carries with him the memory of his sufferings so that he can help those who are tempted. Because Jesus the Son of God was tempted like we are, we have a sympathetic high priest in heaven; because Jesus was tempted, yet without sin, we have a Savior who ransomed us with his precious blood “like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Pet. 1:19).
Does God Lead Us into Temptation?
“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). “While God may try us,” wrote John Owen, “he never entices us.”12
Why then was Jesus “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matt. 4:1)? The Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, as God leads us throughout our lives. But the Spirit did not tempt Jesus, as God does not tempt us. God is in control of all things, but he is not the author or the source of all things. He rules over all, even the temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden and the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, but he did not tempt Adam and Eve. He did not tempt Jesus, and he does not tempt us.
Why then does the Lord’s Prayer teach us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13)? The petition seems to imply that God may lead us into temptation. If he leads us into temptation, like the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil, it must be for a just and righteous cause, for his glory and our good. If God leads us into temptation, his purpose is not to tempt us to sin. What, then, does the petition mean that God “lead us not into temptation”? There have been a number of interpretations. Calvin, following Augustine, states that the two parts of the petition are not to be separated; they are bound together by the word “but” in the middle. So the prayer should read: “In order that we may not be led into temptation, deliver us from evil. . . . Being conscious of our own weakness, we ask to be defended by God’s protection. . . . Our powers are not adequate to living well, except as far as God supplements them.”13 Very true, but why then do we ask God not to lead us into temptation?
N. T. Wright says that “Gethsemane suggests the deepest meanings of the prayer: ‘Do not let us be led into the Testing, but deliver us from Evil.’”14 The petition, therefore, is not for deliverance from temptation but from testing. But why pray that we not be led into testing when the Bible says that tests and trials are good and profitable for us? G. P. Hugenberger argues that the petition means “Lead us not into trial”—that is, the kind of punishments described in 2 Peter 2:4–8 (the fall of the angels, the flood, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah). Peter assures us that “the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from [such] trials.”15 So we are to pray that we will not be called upon to face such trials, especially those punishments to come in the end times. This petition of the Lord’s Prayer is preceded by two others that are immediate and ongoing—“Give us this day our daily bread” and “Forgive us our debts.” “Lead us not into temptation” would seem to be a similar request for help here and now rather than deliverance from a future trial in the end times.
Clarence Edward Macartney believes that the prayer means, “Do not bring us to hard testing.” It is a prayer to be kept “from the presence of dangerous temptations which may prove too strong for us.”16 We can pray that God not lead us into temptation or permit us to be tempted as God permitted Satan to tempt Job. God, however, does not promise that he will not lead us into hard testing or temptation. He promises that he will not let us be tempted beyond our ability but will, with the temptation, provide a way of escape that we may be able to endure it, as he did for Job (1 Cor. 10:13).
Leon Morris writes that “the worshiper knows his own weakness and in this prayer seeks to be kept far from anything that may bring him to sin.”17 Similarly, Helmut Thielicke reads the prayer as, “Let nothing become a temptation to me.”18 God has not promised, however, that we will not be tempted but that we will not be tempted beyond our ability to endure. D. A. Carson holds an unusual view that “Lead us not into temptation” is “a figure of speech that negates the contrary” (a “litotes,” an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary, as in “not a bad singer”) and so is “just a forceful way of saying ‘lead us into righteousness.’”19
John Stott combines some of the above suggestions when he writes: “The sinner whose evil in the past has been forgiven longs to be delivered from its tyranny in the future. The general sense of the prayer is plain. . . . Perhaps we could paraphrase the whole request as ‘Do not allow us so to be led into temptation that it overwhelms us, but rescue us from the evil one.’”20 Darrell Johnson suggests praying the prayer this way:
Our Father, we cannot stand up under very much pressure. We are not wise enough to recognize and then counter the work of the evil one. When you lead us to the test, when life itself brings us to the test, do not let the test become a temptation, but rescue us. Rescue us from the subtle strategies of the evil one, and help us to trust you.21
The petition “lead us not into temptation” is a prayer that we would be kept in the hour of severe trial; it is an acknowledgment of our spiritual frailty and our need for God’s constant help. It is an important prayer for all of us, and especially for “anyone who thinks that he stands . . . lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). The prayer underscores the reality of evil, our weakness to resist, and the possibility of victory by God’s help. It asks God to keep us from yielding to temptation and to deliver us from the power of Satan, the Evil One.
Martin Luther is reported to have said that he went to bed with the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer—“Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors”—and woke up with the sixth—“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”22 Looking back over the day, we pray for God’s forgiveness; looking ahead to a new day, we pray for God’s help.
What Are the Sources or Causes of Temptation?
On December 14, 1944, C. S. Lewis gave the annual commemoration address at King’s College, University of London. Lewis told his young audience:
Everyone knows what a middle-aged moralist . . . warns his juniors against. He warns them against the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. But one of this trio will be enough to deal with today. The Devil I shall leave strictly alone. The association between him and me in the public mind has gone quite as deep as I wish. . . . As for the Flesh, you must be very abnormal young people if you do not know quite as much about it as I do. But on the World I think I have something to say.23
The desire to do wrong that temptation arouses may come from our environment (“the world”) or our sinful human nature (“the flesh”) or from Satan (“the Devil”)—or, most likely, from a combination of all three. In our temptations, writes John Owen, “we must deal not only with a cunning devil, but also with a cursed world and a corrupt heart.”24
How Does the World Tempt Us?
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:15–17). Poet, playwright, and first president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, wrote that “the alien world into which we are thrown beckons to us and tempts us. . . . We are constantly being exposed to the temptation to . . . adapt ourselves to the world as it presents itself to us, to sink into it . . . and thus to simplify our existence-in-the-world.”25
The aspect of the “world” that C. S. Lewis addressed in his sermon is the deep desire people have to belong to a select circle. We are tempted to surrender or compromise the welfare of other people, justice, compassion, our own sexual purity, and many other things just to be part of an “inner ring.” “Of all passions,” Lewis said, “the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.”26 The world entices us to fit in with, to adjust to, to experiment with, its values—that is, “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life” (1 John 2:16). Magazines, television, the movies, books, the Internet, people we know, and those we don’t know tempt us to become “worldly” in countless ways. The daily temptations of the world we face can tear us away from God because “if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (v. 15).
The world that tempts us is not the world that God made and that we can love even in its broken state but is the world that we made by the rebellion of our first parents and by our own daily reenactments of that scene of rebellion in the garden of Eden.
How Does the Flesh Tempt Us?
In his address at King’s College, C. S. Lewis told the students that he would not speak about the temptations of the flesh. He said: “As for the Flesh, you must be very abnormal young people if you do not know quite as much about it as I do.” Lewis was obviously referring to the matter of sex. Lewis’s friend Dorothy Sayers wrote an essay with the title “The Six Other Deadly Sins” in which she told about a young man who said to her “with perfect simplicity: ‘I did not know there were seven deadly sins: please tell me the names of the other six.’”27 The other six are pride, covetousness, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth. To these seven deadly sins in their almost infinite combinations we are tempted by our fallen flesh.
“Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (James 1:14). It is amazing what dazzling glory one’s imagination can supply for breaking a commandment such as “You shall not steal” or “You shall not commit adultery.” First Timothy 6:9 speaks of “many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.” Our desires transform what is really “senseless and harmful” into something that seems to us smart and fulfilling. John Owen wrote: “In theory we abhor lustful thoughts, but once temptation enters our heart, all contrary reasonings are overcome and silenced.”28 So we reach out again to take the forbidden fruit, not really believing, like Adam and Eve, at least for a time, that what we are doing is “senseless and harmful.”
There are internal causes of sin and external causes. The external causes are as diverse as the world in which we live. The internal causes are as complicated as we are. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Augustine wrote in his Confessions: “Man is a vast deep, whose hairs you, Lord, have numbered . . . yet it is easier to count his hairs than the passions and emotions of his heart.”29 In one of her books, George Eliot refers to “the deep human soul within us, full of unspoken evil and unacted good.”30
The Devil found no opening in Christ’s life through which he could enter. Satan “entered into Judas” (Luke 22:3–4), but he could not enter into Jesus. When Satan comes to us, he finds doors and windows through which he can enter. As Helmut Thielicke put it, “We ourselves are far too ramshackle not to provide the tempter with opportunities to slip through the back door of our heart.”31
According to John Calvin, there still remains in the regenerate “a smoldering cinder of evil” or “a fountain of evil, continually producing desires which allure and stimulate” us to sin. By this Calvin did not mean “those inclinations which God so engraved upon the character of man at his first creation,” but “only those bold and unbridled impulses which contend against God’s control” in fallen but redeemed people.32
How Does the Devil Tempt Us?
In his talk to the King’s College students, C. S. Lewis said that he would leave the Devil strictly alone because “the association between him and me in the public mind has gone quite as deep as I wish.” Lewis was referring to his Screwtape Letters, in which he had given a humorous but true-to-life description of the strategies of Satan.33
The world is all around us, our fallen human nature resides within us, and the Devil and his agents are above and around and sometimes in us. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). Thielicke wrote: “Behind all the dangers in our life and behind all the dark menaces that overshadow it, there is a dark, mysterious, spellbinding figure at work. Behind the temptations stands the tempter, behind the lie stands the liar, behind all the dead and the bloodshed stands the ‘murderer from the beginning.’”34
Satan is a spiritual force of evil.35 Thomas Manton said: “He was cast out of heaven himself, and he is all for casting down.”36 And he is diabolically clever. He “disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14). The “devout” Devil asks seemingly innocent but leading questions (as he did in the garden with Eve) and freely quotes Scripture (as he did in the wilderness with Jesus). Bonhoeffer said, “The voice of the tempter does not come out of an abyss” marked “Hell.” “It completely conceals its origin. It is suddenly near to me and speaks to me.”37 One of the old Puritans said, “The devil is a master fisherman: he baits the hook according to the appetite of the fish.”38 Paul warned the Corinthians not to “be outwitted by Satan” and not to be “ignorant of his designs” (2 Cor. 2:11). Calvin wrote: “If it is the devil’s word that exalts man in himself, let us give no place to it unless we want to take advice from our enemy.”39
Satan won a great victory over Adam and Eve in the garden. He then won unnumbered little victories over the descendants of Adam and Eve, but not always. The Devil suffered many defeats along the way when God’s people obeyed God rather than him. See the long list in Hebrews 11 of those Old Testament saints who by faith overcame Satan. In the wilderness, the Devil came and tried to find a way into Jesus’ mind and heart. He stood at the door and knocked. He knocked three times, and he knocked as loud as he could, but Jesus forced him to stand outside. And then Jesus said, “Be gone, Satan” (Matt. 4:10).
The Devil left him, but he did not stay away. The Devil’s primary purpose was to offer Jesus a way to avoid his redemptive work on the cross. When Jesus did not yield to his direct temptations in the wilderness, Satan changed his strategy. He sometimes was able to work through Jesus’ closest friends. When Jesus began “to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things . . . and be killed,” Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” Knowing where that advice was coming from, Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matt. 16:21–23). Satan knew all too well that Christ’s dying on the cross would not be Satan’s victory but his ruin. He would indeed succeed in bruising the heel of Christ, but on that cross Christ would win the promised victory by bruising the head of the Serpent (Gen. 3:15).
Satan was defeated by the cross of Christ, but he was not finished. He failed to prevent God’s salvation of sinful human beings, but he continues to work tirelessly to do all that he possibly can to create sin in our lives, conflict in the church, and chaos in the world. “There is nothing the tempter does not know how to use in order to tear nations and individuals from God’s hand,” said Thielicke.40 Satan works, and he works feverishly because “he knows his time is short” (Rev. 12:12).
When Does Temptation Become Sin?
John Owen wrote: “Let no one fear sin without also fearing temptation. . . . Satan has put them so close together that it is very hard to separate them.”41 Sin is not only an outward act but also an inward disposition, as shown by the tenth commandment (“You shall not covet,” Ex. 20:17) and by the Sermon on the Mount (“Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” Matt. 5:28). Jesus did not mean that lustful thoughts are the same as lustful acts but that the seventh commandment can be broken in thought as well as in deed. There is value, of course, in stopping with the lustful thought and not doing the sinful act. But embracing the thought breaks the commandment.
The church fathers attempted to distinguish the presence of corrupting thoughts from the harboring of them. Thomas Aquinas, following Augustine and others, defined an evil thought as a “sin of lingering delight.” The sin is not merely because of the length of time (“lingering”) involved but also because of an acceptance (“delight”) that is “not prompt in inhibiting, [but] deliberately holding and turning over what should have been cast aside as soon as it touched the mind, as St Augustine said.”42
In Paradise Lost Milton follows his narration of Eve’s dream of eating the forbidden fruit with Adam’s reassuring comment—“Evil into the mind of god or man / May come and go, so unapproved, and leave / No spot or blame behind.”43 In The Pilgrim’s Progress Christian and Faithful arrived in the town of Vanity, where the Vanity Fair was held all year long. Beelzebub was “the chief lord of the fair” through which pilgrims had to pass on their way to the Celestial City. Even “the Prince of princes” had to come this way, writes Bunyan. Beelzebub invited the Prince to buy of his vanities and promised to make him lord of the fair if he would buy. “But he had no mind to the merchandise, and therefore left the town without laying out so much as one farthing.”44 In Bunyan’s story, Christ indeed faced temptation but did not succumb to it, not even in his mind. In Milton’s poem, the temptation in Eve’s dream left no “spot or blame behind,” but, alas, that was not true when she actually met the Serpent in Genesis 3.
Luther said, “We are bound to suffer temptations, in fact, to be deeply involved in them. . . . There is . . . a great difference between feeling temptation and yielding to it, saying yes to it.” Luther used this famous illustration to explain the difference between temptation and sin: “In the book on the old fathers of the church we read that a young brother wanted to be rid of his evil thoughts. The old father said: ‘Dear brother, you cannot prevent the birds from flying in the air over your head, but you can certainly prevent them from building a nest in your hair.’”45
Jesus told the disciples, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Mark 14:38). This does not mean simply to be tempted; we may encounter temptation without entering into it. “As long as temptation merely knocks outside the door,” John Owen wrote, “we remain free. But when it enters and parleys with the heart, reasons with the mind, and entices and allures the affections . . . then we enter into temptation.”46 Read and ponder Bunyan’s tract A Caution to Stir Up to Watch against Sin (written “to be tacked to the wall of one’s house”):
Sin rather than ’twill out of action be,
Will pray to stay, though but a while with thee;
“One night, one hour, one moment” will it cry,
“Embrace me in thy bosom, else I die:
Time to repent, [saith it], I will allow,
And help, if to repent thou know’st not how.”
But if you give it entrance at the door
It will come in, and may go out no more.47
How Can We Overcome Temptation?
We endure trials by saying yes, as Job did—“The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). We overcome temptations by saying no, as Jesus did—“Be gone, Satan” (Matt. 4:10). The Devil tempts us, using the world and our own sinful flesh as his allies, and he is also clever enough to try to block our ways of escape. In a sermon, “God’s Promise for Our Temptations,” Gardner Calvin Taylor, for forty-two years pastor of the Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn, said:
With the temptation, there comes a way out. God hides the way out inside the temptation. God puts daybreak in the midnight. God puts peace in the confusion. God puts healing in the hurt. It is as if He says to whatever or whoever it is that stands against His child, “You strike and I will protect. You hurt and I will heal. You slander and I will glorify. You embarrass and I will honor. You pull down and I will lift up. You curse and I will bless. You block the path; I will open a highway. You close the door and I will open it. You muddy My child and I will clean him until he stands in the spotlessness of My own righteousness.”48
Victory over temptation is not gained in the moment of temptation. It is won in the daily living of our redeemed lives. It is won as we “make every effort to supplement [our] faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love” (2 Pet. 1:5–7). C. S. Lewis has Screwtape say to Wormwood: “It is funny how mortals always picture us [demons] as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out,” such as Scripture, prayer, and contentment.49 When we find ourselves neglecting Scripture and prayer and losing contentment in our Christian lives, we are opening ourselves up to great danger. The Devil will not miss an opportunity like this.
How can we then overcome temptation?
Trust God
“God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13).
“Though we rightly despair of our weakness,” writes Philip Hughes, “we can never despair of his strength.”50 “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations” (2 Pet. 2:9 KJV). John Owen wrote: “To believe that He will preserve us is, indeed, a means of preservation.”51
In the Confessions, Augustine tells about his student and friend Alypius who, in “the whirlpool of Carthaginian morals,” was sucked into “the folly of the circus games.” Through Augustine’s influence, Alypius was delivered from his enthusiasm for the violent games, holding them “in adversion and detestation.” But one day some of his companions used “friendly violence” to take him to the amphitheater, despite his “energetic refusal and resistance.” Alypius was confident of his power to resist temptation and said: “If you drag my body to that place and sit me down there, do not imagine that you can turn my mind and eyes to those spectacles. I shall be as one not there, and so I shall overcome both you and the games.” At the place of the games he “kept his eyes shut and forbade his mind to think about such fearful evils” that were taking place. But hearing a great roar from the crowd, he was overcome by curiosity. “Supposing himself strong enough to despise whatever he saw and to conquer it, he opened his eyes. He was struck in the soul by a wound graver than the gladiator in his body, whose fall had caused the roar. . . . As soon as he saw the blood, he at once drank in savagery and did not turn away.” He returned to the games, even taking others with him. Later God again delivered him and “taught him to put his confidence not in himself” but in God. “This experience,” Augustine wrote, “rested in his memory to provide a remedy in the future.”52
The memory of God’s deliverance in the past does help us, but we cannot depend on that alone. We sometimes sing, “Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin; each victory will help you some other to win.”53 Victory over temptation does not come solely from our record of past victories but from our moment-by-moment trust in God and his grace to deliver us. “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (Eph. 6:10).
Obey God’s Word
“I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Ps. 119:11).
Timothy Keller points out how Jane Eyre resists the temptation to become Mr. Rochester’s mistress: “She does not look into her heart for strength—there’s nothing there but clamorous conflict. She ignores what her heart says and looks to what God says. The moral laws of God at that very moment made no sense to her heart and mind at all. They did not appear reasonable, and they did not appear fair . . . [but] God’s law is for times of temptation, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour.” It is on God’s Word, then, not on her feelings and passions, that she plants her foot.54
Jesus resisted Satan’s temptations by quoting the Word of God (which he had stored up in his heart). Adam and Eve fell to the Devil’s strategy by misusing the words that God had spoken to them. In Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, the White Witch, like the Devil, “is always attractive, almost irresistible; to resist her takes every ounce of moral fortitude, every device of memory that you can summon to help you recall what was true no matter what deception she now blinds you with.”55 Of one thing we can be sure in the moment of temptation is that God’s Word is true, no matter what the world, the flesh, and the Devil say or imply to the contrary.
Take your stand upon the Word of God and refuse to be moved. Stand on the Ten Commandments. Stand on the Sermon on the Mount. Take your stand with Jesus in the wilderness when he answered Satan, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). Thomas Manton wrote: “Our Saviour fights for himself. Yet he also fights for us, and to teach us how we also must fight in this same warfare.”56
Watch and Pray
“Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41). “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8).
Temptation comes first, then sin. The roaring lion is heard before he devours his prey. Temptation is a warning, a red light, a sign of danger. The normal function of pain is to alert us to disease and injury. The spiritual function of temptation is to put us on guard against the danger of sin. Bonhoeffer wrote:
The heart of man is revealed in temptation. Man knows his sin, which without temptation he could never have known; for in temptation man knows on what he has set his heart. The coming to light of sin is the work of the accuser, who thereby thinks to have won the victory. But it is sin which is become manifest, which can be known and therefore forgiven. Thus the manifestation of sin belongs to the salvation plan of God with man, and Satan must serve this plan.57
Watch for besetting temptations that lead to besetting sins. These temptations reveal to us that on which we are setting our hearts. And they also should teach us what radical discipline is called for in our lives.
Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! And if your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire. (Matt. 18:7–9)
Jesus uses hyperbole (intentional overstatement) to emphasize the necessity for rigorous self-discipline and radical removal of causes of besetting temptation before it leads to sin and finally to judgment.
Watch and pray. “While watching, also pray to the Lord unceasing. He will free thee, be thy stay, strength and faith increasing. O Lord, bless in distress and let nothing swerve me from thy will to serve thee.”58 Luther reminds us that “as [Satan] does not weary of assaulting us, we may not weary of persevering in prayer and in hope until we gain the victory.”59 Bonhoeffer says that “we should never argue with the devil about our sins, but we should speak about our sins only with Jesus.”60 Charles Haddon Spurgeon prayed: “O my Saviour, let me not think myself able to bear the indulgence of any known sin because it seems so insignificant. Keep me from sinful beginnings, lest they lead me on to sorrowful endings.”61
Flee and Fight
The Bible instructs us to flee from temptation. “Flee from sexual immorality” (1 Cor. 6:18). “Flee from idolatry” (10:14). “Flee youthful passions” (2 Tim. 2:22). But the Bible also teaches us to stand and fight. In fact, in one passage we are told both to flee and to fight (1 Tim. 6:11–12). How can this be?
Bonhoeffer wrote: “There is no resistance to Satan other than flight. Every struggle against lust in one’s own strength is doomed to failure. Flee—that can indeed only mean, Flee to the place where you find protection and help, flee to the Crucified.”62 We flee to Christ; then we are ready to “fight the good fight of faith” (1 Tim. 6:12). We come to the Lord; and then we can “put on the whole armor of God, that [we] may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Eph. 6:11). We submit to God—we flee to God—and then we can resist the Devil and he will flee from us (James 4:7). “From heaven the Lord gives to the defenceless the heavenly armour before which, though men’s eyes do not see it, Satan flees.”63
Use Your Time Wisely
“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:15–16). And the Evil One “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). It is important for Christians to use their time wisely, to be about the Lord’s business, lest they give Satan opportunity to lure them into sin. In Nearing Home, Billy Graham gives advice for the elderly that applies equally to the young: “The devil delights in someone who is idle or bored; he knows this leads to temptation or discouragement. But the person who is occupied with worthwhile activities is far less vulnerable. Remember the Bible’s admonition: ‘Do not give the devil a foothold’ (Eph. 4:27).”64
In Jesus’ parable of the talents, a nobleman called ten of his servants, gave them each ten talents, and said, “Engage in business until I come” (Luke 19:13). The wise did what he said; the foolish wasted their time with other things and suffered the consequences. In Paul’s letter to Timothy, he urges that younger widows not become “idlers” but copy the “good works” of the older women and so give Satan “no occasion for slander” (1 Tim. 5:9–14).
It was “the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle. . . . But David remained in Jerusalem.” Something was wrong: the kings went out to battle, but this king did not. Then “late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking on the roof” of his house, he saw a woman bathing and soon found himself involved in adultery and worse (2 Sam. 11:1–5).
John Bunyan said that he wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress in prison to divert himself “from worser thoughts, which make me do amiss.”65 Dorcas was “full of good works and acts of charity” (Acts 9:36). She was busy doing good things. Satan despairs of a woman like that, because he cannot find a foothold (Eph. 4:27).
What Happens When We Confess Our Sins?
“But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared”—that is, worshiped and served (Ps. 130:4). “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). He is faithful because he has promised; he is just because Christ died in our place. All of us are tempted, and all of us sin. Irish writer Sean O’Faolain said that “and” was the most hopeful word in the English language.66 And it is the most hopeful word to a sinner. Our sin is not the end of the story. Adam and Eve were tempted; they sinned; “and they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8). David was tempted; he sinned; “and the Lord sent Nathan to David” (2 Sam. 12:1). Peter was tempted; he sinned; “and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus” (Matt. 26:75).
Christ asked the Christians in Laodicea to “be zealous and repent.” They had torn themselves away from God by their sin, but he came to them. He said: “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). Not only does God invite us to come back to him when we have sinned; he comes to us.
What Are the Results of Temptation?
Temptation leads to sin, and, for the unrepentant, sin leads to spiritual death. “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:14–15). James describes the deadly progression from evil desire, to being dragged away, to enticement, to conception, to birth, and finally to death. This sixfold progression proceeds from the mind, to the affections, to the will, to outward action, and to spiritual death.
But in the wisdom, the love, and the power of God, testing-trial-temptation has a positive result in the life of a Christian. Thomas Howard writes in Narnia and Beyond:
It is often by ordeal that each of the characters is tested in Narnia. The test is twofold . . . first, to find out what a person is made of; and then to teach that person how to be something that he is not (brave or obedient or merciful or generous). . . . But then we discover that there is a third, even more important point to the test: it always seems to be for the sake of another. There is no question of mere pointless testing, temptation, or suffering.67
“To be tempted is to be tested,” writes Philip Hughes. “Each temptation comes to us as a challenge to stand firm and be faithful, as a step to be climbed rather than an occasion for falling, as an opportunity for blessing rather than for surrender to the shame and guilt of defeat. . . . Temptation is an invitation to step downward and backward; but it is also an opportunity to step upward and forward.”68 Temptations present to us a challenge in which we may wither and die or grow and mature.
The psalmist wrote, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (Ps. 119:71). Temptation and testing are the schoolrooms of God where he teaches us. Luther said, “I did not learn my theology all at once, but I had to search deeper for it where my temptations took me.”69 “If I live longer,” Luther said, “I certainly want to write a book on temptations, for without these a man cannot appreciate Holy Scripture, faith, or the fear and love of God; nay, he who has never been in temptations cannot know what it means to have hope.”70
Testing makes us more like Christ. “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). John Owen wrote: “Someone has said, ‘Christ was made like unto us, that He might be tempted; and we are tempted that we may be made like unto Christ.’”71 Through testing and temptation Paul learned humility: “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being conceited” (2 Cor. 12:7).
Testing brings spiritual strength. James wrote: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2–4). Testing renews in our hearts and minds the blessings of the covenant. “I . . . will refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God’” (Zech. 13:9). Temptation and testing enable us to help others. “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31–32).
Trials endured bring praise and glory to God. “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith . . . may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:6–7). And steadfastness in trials will be rewarded. “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him” (James 1:12).
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 24)
1 James J. Cummins, “Jesus, Lord of Life and Glory,” 1839.
2 Clarence Edward Macartney, The Lord’s Prayer (New York: Revell, 1942), 69.
3 Thomas Manton, Temptation of Christ (Fearn, Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus, 1996), 164.
4 Helmut Thielicke, Our Heavenly Father: Sermons on the Lord’s Prayer (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 119–20.
5 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics, 20–21 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 2.2.10.
6 Cited in Derek Thomas, Praying the Saviour’s Way: Praying the Lord’s Prayer (Fearn, Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2002), 114.
7 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall and Temptation (New York: Macmillan, n.d.), 112.
8 Ibid., 113.
9 B. M. Palmer, The Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), 217.
10 Westminster Confession of Faith, 7:1–3.
11 Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 17.
12 John Owen, Sin and Temptation (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1996), 117.
13 John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels: Mattthew, Mark and Luke, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), 212.
14 N. T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 67.
15 G. P. Hugenberger, The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide for the Perplexed (Boston: Park Street Church, 1999), 45.
16 Macartney, The Lord’s Prayer, 70.
17 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), 148.
18 Helmut Thielicke, Our Heavenly Father, 121.
19 D. A. Carson, The Sermon on the Mount: An Evangelical Exposition of Matthew 5–7 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1987), 70–71.
20 John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) (Leicester, UK: Inter-Varsity, 1978), 150.
21 Darrell W. Johnson, Fifty-Seven Words That Change the World: A Journey through the Lord’s Prayer (Vancouver: Regent College Press, 2005), 98.
22 Johnson, Fifty-Seven Words, 91.
23 C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001), 143.
24 Owen, Sin and Temptation, 110.
25 Vaclav Havel, Letters to Olga (New York: Knopf, 1988), 320.
26 Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 154.
27 Dorothy L. Sayers, Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1969), 138.
28 John Owen, The Works of John Owen (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1967), 6:105.
29 Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press), 4.14.
30 George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1988), 252.
31 Thielicke, Between God and Satan (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1958), 127.
32 Calvin, Institutes, 3.3.10–12.
33 C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1976). In Perelandra Lewis uses his imagination and biblical knowledge to describe the temptation of Eve by the Devil as it may have happened in the planet of Venus.
34 Thielicke, Between God and Satan, 132.
35 See the chapter by Sydney Page, 168–85.
36 Manton, Temptation of Christ, 64.
37 Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall and Temptation, 102.
38 “Reflections,” August 2011, C. S. Lewis Institute.
39 Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.10.
40 Thielicke, Between God and Satan, 124.
41 Owen, Sin and Temptation, 122.
42 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a–2ae. 74.6.
43 John Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. 5, 117–19.
44 John Bunyan, Works of John Bunyan (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991), 3:128.
45 Martin Luther, What Luther Says: An Anthology, 3 vols, comp. Ewald M. Plass (St. Louis: Concordia, 1959), 3:1344.
46 Owen, Sin and Temptation, 104.
47 Bunyan, Works, 2:575.
48 Gardner C. Taylor, Chariots Aflame (Nashville: Broadman, 1988), 168.
49 Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 25.
50 Philip E. Hughes, No Cross, No Crown: The Temptation of Jesus (Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow, 1988), 31.
51 Owen, Sin and Temptation, 123.
52 Augustine, Confessions, 6.7–9.
53 Horatio Palmer, “Yield Not to Temptation,” 1868.
54 Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (New York: Dutton, 2011), 223.
55 Thomas Howard, Narnia and Beyond: A Guide to the Fiction of C. S. Lewis (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006), 55.
56 Manton, Temptation of Christ, 13.
57 Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall and Temptation, 112–13.
58 Johann B. Freystein, “Rise, My Soul, to Watch and Pray,” 1694.
59 What Luther Says, 3:1347.
60 Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall and Temptation, 125.
61 Mark Water, ed., The Encyclopedia of Prayer and Praise (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 140.
62 Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall and Temptation, 118.
63 Ibid., 127.
64 Billy Graham, Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011), 47–48.
65 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1977), vi.
66 “The New York Times Book Review,” January 8, 2012.
67 Howard, Narnia and Beyond, 63.
68 Philip E. Hughes, No Cross, No Crown: The Temptation of Jesus (Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow, 1988), viii, 26.
69 Franklin H. Littell, ed., Reformation Studies: Essays in Honor of Roland H. Bainton (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1962), 46.
70 What Luther Says, 3:1351.
71 Owen, Sin and Temptation, 103.