Temptation and Its Beneficial Effects

Another thing that was a great revelation to me is that temptation is not sin. What a great liberation! The Lord Jesus was tempted but He never sinned. I thought that every time that I was tempted I was sinning against God and--since no one can go through a day without being tempted--I was always under a cloud of guilt and condemnation. What I didn't recognize is that temptation is part of life, it is part of living in this world. In fact, Satan has a right to tempt us because we're in his domain. When I used to say to myself, "Oh, I shouldn't be having these feelings!" I was really engaging in a hopeless battle with reality, as if life could be changed into something other than what it is! Now I'm learning to acknowledge Satan's right to pull me in an illicit direction because I'm in his sphere of influence and that temptation is part of being human and existing as a person. This is something that I'm learning so I don't find that I really understand it yet. In specific situations, when God illuminates what's really going on, that I'm responding to Satan's pulls on my outer flesh and that these are not my interests, I suddenly walk out into the freedom of the reality of what the Lord Jesus has done on the cross. My focus is fixed back to Him and the temptation loses its influence and its attractive power. It's marvelous and I've never experienced anything like it!

And all of what I go through--including the temptations--is for the benefit of others. That's another piece that I have a hard time getting my arms around--but I'm learning! I don't have to understand it in order to experience it. Hallelujah!

Norman Grubb lived it and does a better job of explaining what is just new to my experience so I'm going to quote him at length from his pinnacle work in book form--the sum of all he learned over his long life--Yes, I Am. May you enter into the experience! Here it is:

This still leaves a major question to be answered. Indeed, it is the chief objection usually raised to such a life as we have now been affirming as ours. It seems, they say, too easy. Life is not a bed of roses. Life is not lived on a Cloud Nine. What about those areas of our daily living which appear to contradict a life which we say is not we living it, but He as us? What about what are certainly temptations, and appear often to be failures and even sins?

Paul and James speak of these aspects of life as temptations and trials (one word covers both concepts in the original Greek). Temptations are enticements to want what we should not; trials are those times when we are faced with what we don’t want, but can’t avoid!

First then, temptations, which until we have them in right focus are the most troublesome to us. (We’ll look at trials in a later chapter.) They are the reason why many people say, “This Christ-in-you life is not livable or workable, because of the way we succumb to so many temptations.” Yet we know that temptations are just as continuous in a perfect human life, because it is said of Jesus that He “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). Therefore temptations and their enticement are part of a perfect, not imperfect life--and are not themselves sin.

So we squarely face constant temptation on this new level of living, just as much as in the former. The question, then, is often asked, “What is it in us which is tempted and responds to temptation, if we are this new man in Christ and say we are dead to sin and have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts?” The answer is simply that, as we have already said, we are human selves, and our oneness with Christ does not alter our two-ness in being He and I. God’s whole purpose is to express Himself through our fully human selves, just as He did with Jesus.

So this human self of ours is just as continually tempted as His was. James explains temptation as being related to the obvious fact that I, as a human, have all the human appetites and faculties of soul and body. In fact, it is by these that God manifests Himself through our selves. Our humanity is responsive to what we might call the “upward temptations” of producing the fruits of the Spirit (see how God “tempted” Abraham to sacrifice his son - Gen. 22:1). So also it is fully open and responsive to all the downward temptations of the flesh, world and devil. This world contains every form of solicitation to the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes and the pride of life, for “the whole world lieth in the wicked one.” To these we in our humanity have responded and lived in all our unsaved days. We have been at home in them. So no wonder that we are constantly assailed by such “drawings.” For James says temptation is when we are “drawn away by our own desires and enticed” (1:14); and enticement makes us really want to do it. So temptation definitely makes us want to do what we should not.

Now the vital point is to recognise that this is not sin. Scripture clearly states that Jesus was tempted at all points (and that covers a great deal) as we are, so temptation is not sin for He was “without sin.” That means He was enticed to do such things and yet never sinned. Therefore, temptation is not sin. We know He was so tempted because we are given one instance when He did temporarily respond to temptation. That was after He had constantly told His disciples that His Father’s will was for Him to die and rise again. Yet when the time came, He plainly said He didn’t want to die. He was “enticed” to want to escape death and live. “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.” That was temptation, and He plainly had it. Of course His victory was, “Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt,” and that took three hours of bloody sweat to have it settled.

This is of great value to us. Just because we are so often tempted, just because we feel the various pulls of soul and body, we should not drag our feet under a sense of guilt and false condemnation. Sin is only when we go a definite further step. When, as James says, “lust has conceived, it brings forth sin.” Conception and birth are the results of a marriage union. In other words, we have gone beyond the “wanting” condition to a deliberate, conscious choice of doing the thing; and we don’t often go that far.

But now in our union life, a total reversal has taken place: not just a change of our spirit joined to His Spirit, but of the control of our whole person-hood, including our soul emotions and body appetites. All are now His property. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. Our members are “instruments of righteousness unto God.” We are slaves of righteousness, whereas we used to be slaves of sin. We are “renewed in the spirit of our minds,” and every thought is being “brought into subjection to the obedience of Christ.” There is now this upward pull on our souls and bodies--upward temptation to respond to Him. Our bodies are living sacrifices. We delight to do His will.

This is a radical reversal from our fear of flesh responses and our constant guarding against them. Even though Christians, we have become so used to seeing ourselves negatively: Sex is so dangerous and so close around the corner that we are captured by illicit desires . . . also by greed and love of material things . . . and by jealousy and hate and resentment. We have been afraid of our flesh, and by no means free to fearlessly use our body faculties and soul emotions for Christ and others.

We therefore, in our new union relationship, take a further step of faith on the soul and body level. We are firm in faith that we are kept, and He does the keeping. “Kept by the power of God through faith,” wrote Peter. “Now unto Him who is able to keep us from falling,” wrote Jude. And said John, “Perfect love casts out fear.” So why be fearful?

So, in this new way, we have our emotions to use to express our love and joys and interests, and our minds to be stretched in daily launches of faith in the God of the impossible; our bodies too, appetites and all, are free to express our love and care for others, without being fearful of their misuse. That is our new boldness of faith, though those appetites and emotions have formerly had such a negative hold on us. But fear not. Have faith in the Keeper.

This also gives us a radical change of outlook on temptation. It used to be something to be fearful of, avoid, and feel greatly guilty about; now we see temptation as an asset, not a liability! Why and in what sense? Because light must have darkness to shine out of. Temptations are pulls back to walk again in darkness. But if we now know who we are, we see all our temptations as what God is meaning us to have, and each exactly suitable to us. We see them all as opportunities to manifest Him through our souls and bodies. Temptation has become opportunity! We understand why James tells us to count all temptations as joy. Christ is manifested by them.

But how can we say that it is Christ who is manifested when we are tempted? Let us look at what we do when we are tempted, and then at the remedy for it.

What happens during temptation is that the human part of us is being drawn away by some solicitation to function just as our old flesh-self used to; and what this means is that we temporarily forget who we are. We forget we are Christ in our human form, and we are pulled to respond as if apart from Him. Instead of being in our normal daily condition of subconsciously recognising that we are in our vine-branch union (which is what Jesus meant by “abiding,” which in the Greek means “remaining”), we are diverted into believing in some attractive flesh-response of body or soul; and what we are believing in at any time holds us in its grasp.

Now in our former self-striving life, trying to combat temptation and sin in our own strength, we would try to resist it even while we responded to it and, as a result, have an inner sense of condemnation because we were even dallying with it. But usually the more we resisted and condemned ourselves, the more the thing gained its hold on us. So we lived a fighting, struggling, supposedly two-nature life--the one striving against the other.

But now, in our new understanding, we don’t deny or fight the temptation. We do not resist or struggle against it. No, we admit and accept it, because we recognise it is not sin but is the normal pull that the outer world, through the flesh, has on us--as it did on Christ--and that God means us to have it. But the importance of accepting, acknowledging, and not resisting is that this “draws the teeth” of the temptation. What you resist, resists you. What you fight, fights you. In this sense I apply Jesus’ words, “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him; lest . . . thou be cast into prison.” In other words, acknowledge that he is your adversary, and that will take the bite out of him.

So the result of my accepting and agreeing is that it takes the heat out of any resistance by me, and loosens me from the grip of my diverted believing in this enticement . . . and as I free the temptation to be a temptation, I equally free myself from being bound to it by my false believing in it. And I am free to do what? To remember and recognise who I really am--Christ in me! Recognition is faith in its completed form. So I recognise that He is peace when I am tempted to worry. He is courage when fear grabs me. He is genuine love for a person I am feeling hatred for. Furthermore, He is other love who can reverse my temptation to an illicit love, and can cause me to love that one for his or her own benefit and not for my self-gratification. Since He is all these to me as me. I am the manifestation of peace, love and power. Christ is the light who uses the darkness as something which, by His swallowing it up, manifests Him as light in a new form. If I wasn’t tempted to hate, I couldn’t experience and manifest His love. If I wasn’t tempted to fear, I couldn’t experience and manifest His courage. If I wasn’t tempted to an illicit love, I couldn’t experience and manifest His other-love for the benefit of that person through me. My temptations are my assets in continually manifesting Him in new forms.

This is the way in which we totally reverse our outlook on our temptations. We used to be frightened of them because, while still thinking we were independent selves, we were afraid of ourselves and how we could be captured by sin . . . so we would pray the beginner’s prayer, “Lead us not into temptation.” But now we see temptation as the adventure of faith! For it is this necessary negative on which the positive of Christ is built. That’s why I can say with James that I “count it all joy” (a strong, total word--count, not feel) when I have my various temptations.