James 1:13

When tempted, no-one should say, God is tempting me. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone(NIV)

It is not unusual in our house for the children to quarrel, to get angry with one another and start fighting. It usually ends in tears from at least one of them, and the one who did the thumping, the pushing, or whatever it was usually says "he/she made me do it". I really do not believe that my daughter made her brother hit her so hard he left a red mark, or that one of my boys forced one of his brothers to push the door into his face. It just doesn't work that way.

In exactly the same way, when we are tempted, it is not God doing the tempting. He is not the one forcing us to chose the wrong path, to make the wrong decision, to give in to the lure of whatever it is in front of us. God gave each one of us choice. He freely allows us to choose to do right or wrong, good or evil, follow Him or the enemy. God does not want his church to be mindless slaves or robots, doing whatever He says just because He has said it, with no thought or mind of their own. We each have freewill, and are able to choose for ourselves what to think, what to believe, how to act and so on.

These verses clearly tell us that God cannot be tempted because He is holy:

You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own (Leviticus 20:26, NIV)

The definition of holy is as follows:

holy adj (holier, holiest) 1 associated with God or gods; religious or sacred. 2 often ironic morally pure and perfect; saintly or sanctimonious. holily adverb.

ETYMOLOGY: Anglo-Saxon halig

Morally pure and perfect. If someone is pure and perfect, they never do, say or think anything wrong. Everything they do is pure and perfect. So God, who is holy, is unable to do anything that is not holy, anything that is not pure and perfect. He is unable to tempt us, because that would be enticing us to do evil, which is unholy, and He himself is unable to be tempted because He is holy. Even the merest hint of temptation would never cross His mind. It’s kind of like mercury, when you pour it out and try to touch it, it rolls away from you. Well, that is like God and temptation, sin, as He cannot be anywhere near sin because He is so pure and holy. Just as He cannot be tempted himself, so He cannot tempt others.

He does, however, allow us to be tempted. You only have to read all that happened to Job to realise that. Job was going along, minding his own business, and wham, he loses sheep, goats, herds, servants, all his children are killed, he ends up with raging sores and boils all over his body and is an object of scorn and ridicule to all around him, including his wife, yet he had done nothing to warrant this. As a result of these trials though, Job's faith and trust in God was strengthened and he is now an example to us all of faith under adversity.

God has promised never to let us be tempted by more than we can endure:

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it (1 Corinthians 10:13, NIV)

This means that when we are tempted, when faced with watching that pornographic film, reading that book, fighting with our siblings, taking what is not ours, gossiping, swearing, sleeping around, taking drugs, whatever it may be, God will provide an escape route, something or someone else that we can do instead. We always have the option to give in or to withstand and take the escape route God has given us.

It is a case of standing strong in our faith, of trusting in God no matter what (which is not always easy) and asking Him for the help we need to overcome temptation when it arises.