Chapter I. The Nature of Temptation and Entering Into It

Matthew 26:41 Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation.

These words of our Savior are repeated with very little alteration in three Evangelists; only whereas Matthew and Mark have recorded them as above written, Luke reports them thus: arise and pray, that you enter not into temptation; so that the whole of his caution seems to have been; arise, watch and pray that you enter not into temptation.

Solomon tells us of some, that lie down on the top of a mast in the midst of the sea (Proverbs 23:34), men overborne by security in the mouth of destruction. If ever poor souls lay down on the top of a mast in the midst of the sea, these disciples with our Savior in the garden did so. Their Master at a little distance from them, was offering up prayers and supplications with strong cries, and tears (Hebrews 5:4), being then taking into his hand, and beginning to taste that cup that was filled with the curse and wrath due to their sins. The Jews armed for his and their destruction, being but a little more distant from them, on the other hand. Our Savior had a little before, informed them, that that night he should be betrayed, and be delivered up to be slain; they saw that he was sorrowful, and very heavy (verse 37). No, he told them plainly, that his soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death (verse 38), and therefore entreated them to tarry, and watch with him, now he was dying, and that for them. In this condition, leaving them but a little space like men forsaken of all love towards him, or care of themselves, they fall fast asleep. Even the best of saints, being left to themselves, will quickly appear to be less than men, to be nothing. All our own strength is weakness, and all our wisdom, folly. Peter being one of them, who but a little before, had with so much self-confidence, affirmed, that though all men forsook him, yet he never would so do; our Savior expostulates the matter in particular with him (verse 40). He said to Peter, could you not watch with me one hour: as if he should have said; Are you he Peter who but now boasted of your resolution, never to forsake me? Is it likely that you should hold out in that, when you cannot watch with me one hour? Is this your dying for me; to be dead in security, when I am dying for you? And indeed it would be an amazing thing, to consider, that Peter should make so high a promise, and be immediately so careless and remiss in the pursuit of it; but that we find the root of the same treachery abiding and working in our own hearts, and do see the fruit of it brought forth every day. The most noble engagements to obedience, quickly ending in deplorable negligence (Romans 7:18).

In this estate our Savior admonishes them of their condition, their weakness, their danger, and stirs them up to a prevention of that ruin, which lay at the door; said he, arise, watch, and pray, etc.

I shall not insist on the particular aimed at here by our Savior in this caution to them that were then present with him, the great temptation that was coming on them, from the scandal of the cross, was doubtless in his eye; but I shall consider the words as containing a general direction to all the disciples of Christ in their following of him throughout all generations.

There are three things in the words;

1. The evil cautioned against: temptation.

2. The means of its prevalency; by our entering into it.

3. The way of preventing it, watch and pray.

It is not in my thoughts to handle the common place of temptations, but only the danger of them in general, with the means of preventing that danger. Yet that we may know what we affirm, and of what we speak, some concerns of the general nature of temptation, may be premised.

For the general nature of tempting and temptation, it lies among things indifferent; to try, to experiment, to prove, to pierce a vessel, that the liquor that is in it may be known, is as much as is signified by it.

Hence God is said sometimes to tempt; and we are commanded as our duty to tempt or try or search ourselves, to know what is in us; and to pray that God would do so also. So temptation is like a knife, that may either cut the meat, or the throat of a man; it may be his food, or his poison, his exercise, or his destruction.

Temptation in its special nature: as it denotes any evil, is considered, either actively, as it leads to evil, or passively as it has an evil and suffering in it, so temptation is taken for affliction (James 1:2). For in that sense, we are to count it all joy when we fall into temptation, in the other, that we enter not into it.

Again actively considered, it either denotes in the tempter, a design for the bringing about of the special end of temptation, namely a leading into evil; so it is said, that God tempts no man (James 1:13), with a design for sin, as such: or the general nature, and end of temptation which is trial; so God tempted Abraham (Genesis 21:1), and he proves, or tempts by false prophets (Deuteronomy 13:3).

Now as to God's tempting of any, two things are to be considered.

1. The end why he does it.

2. The way by which he does it.

For the first, his general ends are two.

1. He does it to show to man what is in him, that is the man himself: and that either as to his grace, or to his corruption. (I speak not now of it, as it may have a place and bear a part in judicial obduration.) Grace and corruption lie deep in the heart, men oftentimes deceive themselves in the search after the one, or the other of them. When we give vent to the soul, to try what grace is there, corruption comes out: and when we search for corruption, grace appears; so is the soul kept in uncertainty; we fail in our trials. God comes with a gauge, that goes to the bottom. He sends his instruments of trial into the body, and the inmost parts of the soul, and lets man see what is in him, of what metal he is constituted.

Thus he tempted Abraham, to show him his faith. Abraham did not know what faith he had; (I mean what power and vigor was in his faith) until God drew it out by that great trial and temptation; when God says he knew it, he made Abraham know it (Genesis 22:12).

So he tried Hezekiah, to discover his pride: God left him that he might see what was in his heart (2 Chronicles 32:31). He did not know that he had such a proud heart, so apt to be lifted up, as he appeared to have, until God tried him, and so let out his filth, and poured it out before his face. The issues of such discoveries to the saints in thankfulness, humiliation, and treasuring up of experiences, I shall not treat of.

2. God does it to show himself to man, and that

1. In a way of preventing grace; a man shall see that it is God alone who keeps from all sin. Until we are tempted, we think we live on our own strength. Though all men do this or that, we will not. When the trial comes, we quickly see, whence is our preservation by standing, or falling. So was it in the case of Abimelech (Genesis 20:6): I withheld you.

2. In a way of renewing grace. He would have the temptation continue with Paul, that he might reveal himself to him, in the sufficiency of his renewing grace (2 Corinthians 12:9). We do not know the power and strength, that God puts forth on our behalf, nor what is the sufficiency of his grace, until comparing the temptation with our own weakness it appears to us. The efficacy of an antidote is found when poison has been taken, and the preciousness of medicines is made known by diseases. We shall never know what strength there is in grace, if we do not know what strength there is in temptation. We must be tried, that we may be made sensible of being preserved.

And many other good and gracious ends he has, which he accomplishes towards his saints by his trials and temptations, not now to be insisted on.

2. For the ways by which God accomplishes this his search, trial, or temptation, these are some of them.

1. He puts men on great duties, such as they cannot apprehend that they have any strength for, nor indeed have. So he tempted Abraham, by calling him to that duty of sacrificing his son; a thing absurd to reason, bitter to nature, and grievous to him on all accounts whatever. Many men do not know what is in them, or rather what is ready for them, until they are put upon what seems utterly above their strength, indeed upon what is really above their strength. The duties that God in an ordinary way requires at our hands, are not proportioned to what strength we have in ourselves, but to what help and relief is laid up for us in Christ; and we are to address ourselves to the greatest performances, with a settled persuasion that we have not ability for the least. This is the law of grace; but yet when any duty is required, that is extraordinary, that is a secret note often discovered, in the yoke of Christ; it is a trial, a temptation.

2. By putting them upon great sufferings. How many have unexpectedly found strength, to die at a stake, to endure tortures for Christ. Yet their call to it was a trial. This Peter tells us is one way by which we are brought into trying temptations (1 Peter 1:6-7). Our temptations arise from the fiery trial, and yet the end is but the trial of our faith.

3. By his providential disposing of things so, as that occasions to sin will be administered to men, which is the case mentioned (Deuteronomy 13:3), and innumerable other instances may be adjoined.

Now they are not properly the temptations of God, as coming from him, with his end upon them that are here intended: and therefore I shall set these apart from our present consideration, that is then temptation in its special nature, as it denotes an active efficiency towards sinning (as it is managed with evil, to evil) that I intend.

In this sense, temptation may proceed either singly from Satan, or the world, or other men in the world, or from ourselves, or jointly from all, or some of them, in their several combinations.

Satan tempts sometimes singly by himself, without taking advantage from the world, the things, or persons of it, or ourselves. So he deals in his injection of evil and blasphemous thoughts of God, into the hearts of the saints; which is his own work alone, without any advantage from the world or our own hearts. For nature will contribute nothing thereunto, nor anything that is in the world, nor any man of the world; for none can conceive a God, and conceive evil of him.

Herein Satan is alone in the sin and shall be so in the punishment. These fiery darts are prepared in the forge of his own malice, and shall with all their venom and poison, be turned into his own heart forever.

2. Sometimes he makes use of the world, and joins forces against us, without any helps from within. So he tempted our Savior, by showing him the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them (Matthew 4:8). And the variety of the assistances he finds from the world, in persons, and things which I must not insist on, the innumerable instruments and weapons he takes from thence of all sorts, and at all seasons, are inexpressible.

3. Sometimes he takes in assistance from ourselves also. It is not with us, as it was with Christ, when Satan came to tempt him, he declares that he had nothing in him (John 14:30). It is otherwise with us: he has, for the compassing of most of his ends, a sure party within our own breasts (James 1:14-15). Thus he tempted Judas; he was at work himself; he put it into his heart, to betray Christ (Luke 22:3); he entered into him for that purpose, and he sets the world at work, the things of it, providing for him 30 pieces of silver (verse 5), they covenanted to give him money; and the men of it: even the priests and Pharisees; and calls in the assistance of his own corruption; he was covetous, a thief, and had the bag.

I might also show, how the world and our own corruptions do act singly by themselves, and jointly in conjunction with Satan, and one another in this business of temptation.

But the truth is; the principles, ways and means of temptations, the kinds, degrees, efficacy, and causes of them, are so inexpressibly large, and various, the circumstances of them, from providence, natures, conditions, spiritual, and natural, with the particular cases thence arising, so innumerable, and impossible to be comprised, within any bound or order, that to attempt the giving an account of them, would be to undertake that, which would be endless. I shall content myself to give a description of the general nature of that which we are to watch against; which will make way for what I aim at.

Temptation then in general! is any thing, state, way, condition, that upon any account whatever, has a force or efficacy to seduce, to draw the mind, and heart of a man from that obedience which God requires of him, into any sin, in any degree of it whatever.

In particular, that is a temptation to any man, which causes, or occasions him to sin, or in anything to go off from his duty, either by bringing evil into his heart, or drawing out that evil, that is in his heart, or any other way, diverting him from communion with God, and that constant, equal, universal obedience, in matter, and manner, that is required of him.

For the clearing of this description, I shall only observe that, though temptation seems to be of a more active importance, and so to denote only the power of seduction to sin itself, yet in the Scripture it is commonly taken in a neuter sense, and denotes the matter of the temptation, or the thing by which we are tempted.

And this is a ground of the description I have given of it; be it how it will, that from anything whatever, within us, or without us, has advantage to hinder in duty, or to provoke to, or in any way to occasion sin, that is a temptation, and so to be looked on; be it business, employment, course of life, company, affections, nature, or corrupt design, money, relations, delights, name, reputation, esteem, abilities, parts or excellencies of body, or mind, place, dignity, art, so far as they further, or occasion the promotion of the ends before mentioned they are all of them, no less truly temptations, than the most violent solicitations of Satan or allurements of the world; and that soul lies at the brink of ruin, who discerns it not; and this will be further discovered in our progress.

Matthew 26:41 — Watch and pray that you do not enter into temptation.

These words of our Savior are repeated with very little change in three Gospels. Matthew and Mark record them as written above, while Luke reports them this way: "Rise and pray, that you do not enter into temptation." The full force of His caution, then, seems to have been: rise, watch, and pray that you do not enter into temptation.

Solomon speaks of some who lie down on the top of a mast in the middle of the sea (Proverbs 23:34) — men overwhelmed by carelessness at the very mouth of destruction. If ever poor souls lay down on top of a mast in the middle of the sea, these disciples with our Savior in the garden did so. Their Master, at a little distance from them, was offering up prayers and supplications with strong cries and tears (Hebrews 5:7), taking into His hand and beginning to taste the cup filled with the curse and wrath due to their sins. The Jews armed for His destruction — and theirs — were only a little farther away on the other side. Our Savior had told them shortly before that that night He would be betrayed and handed over to be killed. They could see that He was sorrowful and deeply distressed (verse 37). He told them plainly that His soul was overwhelmed with sorrow, even to the point of death (verse 38), and so He asked them to stay and watch with Him — now while He was dying, and dying for them. In this condition, leaving them for a short while, they fell sound asleep, like men who had forgotten all love for Him and all care for themselves. Even the best of saints, left to themselves, will quickly show themselves to be less than men — to be nothing. All our own strength is weakness, and all our wisdom is folly. Since Peter was one of them — the very one who had just moments before boldly declared that though all others forsook Him he never would — our Savior singled him out for a direct word (verse 40). He said to Peter: "Could you not watch with me one hour?" — as if to say: Are you the one, Peter, who just boasted he would never forsake me? Does it seem likely you will hold to that if you cannot even watch with me one hour? Is this your dying for me — to be asleep in carelessness while I am dying for you? It would be astonishing to consider how Peter could make such a high promise and immediately be so careless in following through on it — were it not that we find the root of that same treachery working in our own hearts every day, producing its fruit. The most noble commitments to obedience quickly end in shameful negligence (Romans 7:18).

In this state, our Savior warned them about their condition, their weakness, their danger, and stirred them to prevent the ruin that was right at the door. He said: Rise, watch, and pray.

I will not dwell on the specific situation our Savior had in mind when He gave this caution to those present with Him — the great temptation coming upon them from the scandal of the cross was no doubt in His view. Instead, I will treat these words as containing a general direction for all of Christ's disciples in following Him throughout every generation.

There are three things in these words:

1. The evil to be avoided: temptation.

2. The means by which it gains power: our entering into it.

3. The way to prevent it: watch and pray.

It is not my intention to treat the whole subject of temptations, but only the danger of them in general, along with the means of preventing that danger. Yet so that we may know what we are talking about, it will help to begin with some observations about the general nature of temptation.

In its most basic sense, temptation is a morally neutral concept — to try, to test, to examine, to probe a vessel so that what is inside may be known. That is all the word means at its root.

This is why God is sometimes said to tempt, and why we are commanded as a duty to test or examine ourselves — to know what is in us — and to pray that God would do the same. Temptation, then, is like a knife: it may either cut the meat or cut a man's throat. It may be his nourishment or his poison, his exercise or his destruction.

Temptation in its more specific sense — as denoting something evil — is understood in two ways: either actively, as something that leads to evil, or passively, as something evil and painful that is suffered. In the passive sense, temptation is used to mean affliction (James 1:2). In that sense we are to count it all joy when we fall into temptations; in the active sense, we are to pray that we do not enter into them.

Taken in the active sense, temptation refers either to a tempter whose design is to bring about the specific end of temptation — namely, leading someone into evil. In that sense it is said that God tempts no one (James 1:13) with a design toward sin as such. Or it refers to the general nature and end of temptation, which is trial — in which sense God tempted Abraham (Genesis 22:1), and He also tests through false prophets (Deuteronomy 13:3).

Regarding God's tempting of any person, two things must be considered.

1. The purpose for which He does it.

2. The means by which He does it.

As for the first, His general purposes are two.

1. He does it to show a man what is in him — to reveal the man to himself — whether regarding his grace or his corruption. (I am not speaking here of this in its role in hardening the heart as a judicial act.) Grace and corruption both lie deep in the heart. People often deceive themselves when searching for one or the other. When we open the soul to test what grace is there, corruption comes out; when we look for corruption, grace appears. The soul is left uncertain; our self-tests fail. God comes with a gauge that reaches the bottom. He sends His instruments of trial deep into the soul and lets a man see what is truly in him — what he is really made of.

He did this when He tempted Abraham — to reveal Abraham's faith to him. Abraham did not know what faith he had — I mean, what power and vitality was in his faith — until God drew it out through that great trial. When God said He now knew it, He was making Abraham know it too (Genesis 22:12).

He tried Hezekiah in the same way, to expose his pride. God left him so that He might see what was in his heart (2 Chronicles 32:31). Hezekiah did not know he had such a proud heart — so prone to be lifted up — until God tested him, and his corruption poured out before his face. I will not here treat the good fruit that such discoveries produce in the saints — thankfulness, humility, and the storing up of experience.

2. God also tempts to reveal Himself to man, and He does this in two ways.

1. By preventing grace — so that a man may see it is God alone who keeps him from all sin. Until we are tempted, we think we live on our own strength. Though all others may do this or that, we insist we will not. When the trial comes, we quickly discover where our preservation truly comes from — whether we stand or fall. So it was in the case of Abimelech (Genesis 20:6): "I withheld you."

2. By renewing grace. God allowed Paul's temptation to continue so that He could reveal Himself through the sufficiency of His renewing grace (2 Corinthians 12:9). We do not know the power that God exerts on our behalf, nor how sufficient His grace truly is, until we compare the temptation with our own weakness and see it clearly. The power of an antidote is proven when poison has been taken, and the value of medicine is made known through disease. We will never know the strength that is in grace until we know the strength that is in temptation. We must be tested in order to become aware that we are being preserved.

God has many other good and gracious purposes He accomplishes toward His saints through trials and temptations — these I need not go into here.

2. As for the means by which God carries out His testing, here are some of them.

1. He places men in great duties — duties beyond any strength they imagine themselves to have, and which indeed they do not have. He tested Abraham this way, by calling him to the duty of sacrificing his son — something absurd to reason, bitter to nature, and painful to Abraham in every way imaginable. Many men do not know what is in them — or rather, what is ready for them in Christ — until they are placed under a burden that seems utterly beyond their strength, and in fact is beyond it. The duties God ordinarily requires of us are not proportioned to the strength we have in ourselves, but to the help and support laid up for us in Christ. We are to come to even the greatest tasks with a settled conviction that we have no ability for the smallest one. This is the rule of grace. Yet when an extraordinary duty is required, that is often a signal mark built into the yoke of Christ — it is a trial, a temptation.

2. By placing men in great sufferings. How many have unexpectedly found strength to die at the stake, to endure torture for Christ! Yet their calling to it was a trial. Peter tells us this is one way we are brought into searching temptations (1 Peter 1:6-7). Our temptations arise from the fiery trial, yet the end of it is simply the testing of our faith.

3. By His providential ordering of events so that occasions to sin are brought before men — which is the case described in Deuteronomy 13:3, and to which countless other examples could be added.

These are not properly the temptations of God as coming from Him with His own purposes behind them — and so I will set these aside from our present discussion. What I intend to focus on is temptation in its specific sense as an active drive toward sinning — managed for evil, toward evil.

In this sense, temptation may proceed from Satan alone, or from the world, or from other people, or from ourselves — or from all of them together, or from some combination of them.

Satan sometimes acts alone, without taking advantage of the world, its circumstances or people, or our own inner state. He does this when he injects evil and blasphemous thoughts about God into the hearts of believers — that is his own work, without any assistance from the world or from our own hearts. For human nature contributes nothing to such thoughts, nor does anything in the world, nor any person in it — since no one can conceive of God and at the same time naturally produce evil thoughts about Him.

In this, Satan is alone in the sin and will be alone in the punishment. These fiery darts are forged in the furnace of his own malice, and together with all their venom and poison they will be turned back into his own heart forever.

2. Sometimes he makes use of the world and joins forces against us, without any help from within us. He did this when he tempted our Savior by showing Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory (Matthew 4:8). The countless resources he draws from the world — its people and its things — along with the weapons he takes from it in every variety and at every season, are beyond description.

3. Sometimes he also draws in help from within us. We are not as Christ was — when Satan came to tempt Him, Christ declared that Satan had no part in Him (John 14:30). It is otherwise with us. For most of his purposes, Satan has a willing party inside our own hearts (James 1:14-15). So he tempted Judas: he was at work himself — he put it into Judas's heart to betray Christ (Luke 22:3). He entered into him for that purpose. Then he set the world to work — its material resources, providing thirty pieces of silver (verse 5), the priests covenanting to pay him money. Then the people of the world — the very chief priests and Pharisees. And he enlisted the help of Judas's own corruption: Judas was covetous, a thief, and held the money bag.

I could also show how the world and our own corruptions act alone by themselves and jointly together with Satan and with each other in this work of temptation.

But the truth is that the sources, methods, and means of temptations — their kinds, degrees, power, and causes — are so vast and varied, and the circumstances surrounding them from providence, from our natures, from our spiritual and natural conditions, along with the particular cases arising from all these, are so countless that any attempt to give a full account of them would be endless. I will content myself with describing the general nature of what we are to watch against — which will clear the way for what I am aiming at.

Temptation, then, in general: it is anything — any state, way, or condition — that has any kind of force or power to seduce and draw the mind and heart of a person away from the obedience God requires, toward sin in any degree whatsoever.

More specifically: anything is a temptation to a particular person that causes or occasions him to sin or to fall short of his duty in any way — whether by bringing evil into his heart, or drawing out the evil already there, or by any other means diverting him from communion with God and from that constant, consistent, whole-hearted obedience in both substance and manner that God requires of him.

To clarify this description, I simply note that while temptation may seem in its most active sense to refer only to the power that seduces us toward sin itself, in Scripture it is commonly used in a more neutral sense to describe the material or occasion of the temptation — the thing by which we are tempted.

This is the basis of the description I have given. Whatever it may be — anything within us or outside us that has the capacity to hinder duty, to provoke sin, or in any way to occasion it — that is a temptation, and is to be treated as such. Whether it is business, employment, a way of life, company, affections, temperament, corrupt desire, money, relationships, pleasures, reputation, esteem, abilities, bodily or mental gifts, position, status, skill — insofar as any of these furthers or occasions the ends described above, each is just as truly a temptation as the most violent attacks of Satan or the most alluring enticements of the world. The soul that does not see this stands at the edge of ruin — and this will become clearer as we proceed.