When it comes to the sin in our lives, for many of us our first reaction is to blame someone else, perhaps even something like this.
[“The Devil Made Me Do It” video]
In a lot of ways, things haven’t changed a whole lot since Adam and Eve in the Garden. Let’s look at how they respond to God after they both sin by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. First let’s see Adam’s response:
The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”
(Genesis 3:12 ESV)
At first glance, it seems like Adam is blaming Eve for his sin, But a closer look reveals that he is actually blaming God, because God is the one who brought Eve into his life. After all, Adam went to sleep one day and when he woke up there was this woman next to him – a woman he never asked for. So his sin must be God’s fault.
How about Eve’s response?
Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
(Genesis 3:13 ESV)
Once again, at first glance, Eve seems to be blaming the serpent. But who made the serpent? That’s right, God created him. So therefore, in Eve’s mind, God is ultimately responsible for her sin as well.
By the time that James writes his letter thousands of years later, not a whole lot has changed. Apparently a lot of the Jewish believers in the early church were also blaming God for their sin as well. So let’s see how James addresses that kind of thinking. Open your Bibles and follow along as I read in James chapter 1 beginning in verse 13:
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 ESV)
Let’s skip down to verse 16 right now and then we’ll come back in a moment and look at the verses in between these two “bookends”.
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
(James 1:16-18 ESV)
James begins and ends this section of his letter by pointing out that anyone who believes that God is the source of temptation in his or her life, and therefore ultimately the cause of his or her sin, is deceived. Since these verses provide us with some important principles that will help us to make sense of the practical teaching that is contained within the “envelope” they provide, let’s begin with…
Some general observations
1. Everyone is subject to temptation
Just as he did in verse 2 that we looked at last week, James chooses to use the word “when” and not “if” when describing those who face temptation. And when we get to verse 14 in a moment, we’re also going to see that James refers to “each person”. When we put those two ideas together the unmistakable conclusion is that everyone is subject to temptation in their lives.
As I mentioned last week, the word that James uses here that is translated “tempted” is the verb form of the same Greek word that was translated “trials” in verses 2-12. As we discovered then the word simply means “testing” and it has neither a positive or negative connotation. In verses 2-12, the trials that James described were clearly being used by God in a positive way to demonstrate the genuineness of our faith and help us to become more mature disciples of Jesus.
But in the passage we’re looking at this morning, we’ll see that the testing is more of an inner attraction to do wrong. Ultimately, the difference between a “trial” that God can use for our good and a ‘temptation” that draws us away from God depends on how we respond to our circumstances. When I respond to my circumstances by living my life according to the principles in God’s Word, God uses those circumstances as a means for my spiritual growth. But if I choose to disobey those principles, those same circumstances can become a temptation that pulls me away from God.
2. God cannot be the source of temptation because of who He is
This is the essence of James’ argument. Because of who God is – holy and good – He cannot violate His own character and have anything to do with evil. And He is certainly not going to do anything to cause someone else to be drawn to evil since that would violate who He is.
James further underscores that idea when he points out that God gives only good gifts. In fact, in verse 17, the verb “coming down” is a present tense verb which emphasizes that God is continually showering His children with gifts that are good and perfect.
So clearly anyone who in any way suggests that God is the cause of their temptation to evil is deceived because that would be completely contrary to the very character of God.
3. God cannot be the source of temptation because of who He has made us to be
In verse 18, James reminds his audience that it is because of God’s own will and not anything that they have done, that they have been brought into a relationship with God.
James makes it clear that it was by God’s original design that He chose to bring us into a relationship with Him through trusting in what His Son, Jesus, did for us on the cross. And by doing that for us, God has made us to be His firstfruits. At a minimum, the concept of us being God’s firstfruits reinforces the idea that God has called us to be His ambassadors here on earth. And because of that, God would obviously never do anything that might cause us to sin and damage our ability to fulfill His plan for our lives.
With that essential background in mind let’s read the rest of the passage in verses 14 and 15:
But 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 ESV)
We tend to think of sin as a single act. But James very accurately shows us that sin is the result of a process. In these two verses, he lays out for us the four steps in that process. That is really helpful to us because it enables us to identify where we are in that process and to then take the appropriate steps to make sure that we don’t succumb to our temptation and enter into sin. So let’s take some time to understand…
THE PROCESS OF TEMPTATION AND SIN AND HOW TO DEAL WITH IT
1. Desire – an act of my emotions
The first step in the process is “desire”. The Greek word that James uses is compound word that describes a strong passion of the soul. In fact, many of our English translations translate that word “lust”. While that is certainly an accurate translation, we tend to think of lust only in terms of sexual desires, but the word can describe any kind of strong desire.
This kind of desire begins with a feeling, with our emotions. We want something that we think will satisfy us or give us happiness or make life easier. Often the underlying desires themselves are neither good nor bad. In fact many of these desires actually arise out of the way that God designed us. I have a desire to eat and drink because I need food and drink to sustain my body. I have a desire to sleep because my body needs rest. I have sexual desires because God designed me to multiply and fill the earth.
But what often happens is that we take these good and perfect gifts that God has given to us and we pervert them. As we’ll see more in a moment, we often take these God-given desires and we try to satisfy them in a manner that is not consistent with God’s plan for our lives.
Advertisers are very good at exploiting us here. They understand if they can just tug at our emotions, they can manipulate our desires. And once they do that they can convince us that we need to buy that new car, or buy a certain brand of clothing or drink a certain brand of beer because of how that is going to satisfy the desires that helped create in the first place.
It’s important to note that desire alone is not sin. In most cases, the emotional feelings themselves are not sin. But since we know from this passage that those desires are the first step in the process of sin, we also understand that we can stop the process right at this point before it progresses any further if we can get a handle on our desires. So how do I do that?
• I deal with temptation at this point by knowing God
The most effective way to evaluate whether my desires are from God or from someone or something else is to know God better. The more I get to know God, the better I am able to evaluate my desires and make sure they are consistent with who He is.
Although David may have learned this lesson too late in his life to avoid some of his greatest sins, he eventually understood this principle, which he conveyed with these familiar words.
Delight yourself in the LORD,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
(Psalm 37:4 ESV)
According to verse 25 of this Psalm, David wrote these words when he was an old man. Too bad he didn’t understand this principle much earlier in life.
We’ve certainly looked at this verse previously and emphasized consistently that David is not claiming here that if we delight in God, that He is like a genie who is obligated to grant us our every wish. Instead what he is saying is that if we’ll delight in God, God will put the desires that He wants us to have into our hearts.
That makes a lot of sense based on what we’ve learned so far this morning. The more we get to know God and understand His character and the more we mature in our relationship with Him, the more that our desires will conform to His character. And since God primarily reveals Himself to us through His Word, the way we get to know Him better is by consistently reading and studying the Bible.
If we don’t deal with the sin process at this point, it will naturally progress to the next stage…
2. Deception – an act of my mind
Once we move beyond the emotional desire, the next step is to begin to justify in our minds our right to have that which we desire. In our mind we believe that fulfilling that desire will bring satisfaction and happiness.
James uses two pictures to describe how that occurs. He says that a person is tempted when he is “lured and enticed by his own desire”. The first verb – “lured” – is a hunting term and it describes luring an animal into a trap. The second verb – “enticed” – is a fishing tem that describes catching a fish with bait.
I really enjoy fishing and I especially like the challenge of trying to deceive the fish into biting my hook so that I can catch them. Most of the time I like to fish for trout in a stream using a variety of lures. The challenge is to find just the right lure and to present it in a way that the fish will be tricked into thinking it is something good to eat. Occasionally, I’ll also use bait like worms or salmon eggs. And when I do that I have to make sure that the bait completely covers the hook so that fish won’t see it.
Temptation is just like that. We get deceived by something that looks really good, but which in fact is harmful to us. The fact is that no temptation ever looks like one at the time. The bait, whatever that may be, disguises the consequences of the sin we are about to enter into.
Let me illustrate. A man was on a diet and struggling. He had to go downtown and as he started out, he remembered that his route would take him by the doughnut shop. As he got closer, he thought that a cup of coffee would hit the spot. Then he remembered his diet. That’s when he prayed, “Lord, if You want me to stop for a doughnut and coffee, let there be a parking place in front of the shop.” And sure enough, he found a parking place right in front - on his seventh time around the block!
We chuckle at that probably because we’ve all gone through experiences like that. That man’s problem began with a desire – he was hungry. Now that hunger itself was certainly not wrong – God designed us to get hungry because our bodies need food to survive. But unfortunately, he took it to the next step. He took an emotional desire and began to justify in his mind how he was going to satisfy that desire the way he wanted rather than the way God wanted. And then he even justified it further by “putting out a fleece” so that he could blame God when he gave into his temptation.
In his book, Be Mature, Warren Wiersbe makes this insightful observation:
A temptation is an opportunity to accomplish a good thing in a bad way, out of the will of God.
When that happens, thirst turns to drunkenness, hunger turns to gluttony, and the sexual desires that God intends to be satisfied in marriage turn into pre-marital sex, adultery, pornography, homosexuality and all other kinds of sexual sin.
Although I am certainly in danger of crossing over the line from temptation, which is not sin, into sin itself at this point, it is still not too late to put an end to the process right here. And since this step takes place in the mind…
• I deal with temptation at this point by saturating my mind with God’s Word
Let’s start with the familiar words of Paul in Romans, chapter 12:
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
(Romans 12:2 ESV)
I’m really amazed at how consistent this verse is with the teaching of James that we’ve been looking at this morning. Paul is concerned that we understand God’s will – that which is good and perfect – two words that we’ve already run across here in the first chapter of James – words that describe both the character of God as well as what he desires for us to become. And the way that we do that is to be transformed by the renewing of our mind.
Now that sounds really good in theory, but exactly how does that occur in my life? Paul gives us some further insight into the practical application of that principle in another of his letters:
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
(Colossians 3:16 ESV)
We’ve certainly run across this verse frequently in the past. You see, transforming our minds really has two distinct, but equally important aspects and both are based on allowing God’s Word to dwell richly in us.
First we have to get rid of the wrong ideas that we have about how to satisfy our desires. And the Bible helps us to identify many of those areas like the ones we’ve already talked about where we have a tendency to fulfill a God-given desire in an ungodly way.
But it’s not enough to just empty our mind of those thoughts. We also have to replace them with right thoughts and we find those in the Bible as well.
If I don’t deal with the temptation at this point by saturating my mind with God’s Word, then the process will naturally progress to the next step:
3. Disobedience – an act of my will
James turns to another picture here – that of childbirth. When a child is conceived, unless something intervenes in the process, it will inevitably lead to the birth of the child about nine months later. As e have already seen, the same is true of our desires. If we don’t allow God to give us the right desires, it will inevitably lead to deception and if we don’t deal with that deception, it will inevitably lead to disobedience.
Disobedience takes us to the next level. It is not merely an emotion or even just a thought in my mind. It is an act of my will where I make a conscious decision to act upon the thoughts in my mind. I actually take the bait and become ensnared by sin.
Once my temptation has given birth to sin, there is only one way I can deal with it then.
• I deal with sin at this point by confession and repentance
Both confession and repentance are required. Because of who He is, the very moment that I confess my sin to God, He forgives me:
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 ESV)
Confession means that I agree with God that my sin is sin. I don’t try to justify it or excuse it. I admit to God that I have violated his standards by an act of my will. But I’m still not done. I also need to repent.
Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you.
(Acts 8:22 ESV)
Repentance means that I change my mind in a way that also leads to a change in my behavior. With God’s help I do everything I can to make sure my sin doesn’t become a lifestyle. Because if that happens, I progress to the last step in the process:
4. Death
My first inclination was that James was describing spiritual death here. But we need to remember his audience. He is not writing here to unbelievers, but rather to believers who were once spiritually dead, but who are now alive in Christ. So if he’s not writing about spiritual death here, what is he referring to?
There seem to be two possibilities. First, both Paul and John describe that sin can lead to physical death:
For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
(1 Corinthians 11:29-30 ESV)
If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that.
(1 John 5:16 ESV)
I can think of some sins that could certainly result in physical death – drunkenness that either leads to liver disease or gets someone killed while they are driving, or sexual immorality or drug use that leads to contracting AIDS or some other deadly disease.
But the greater danger for most of us is what I would call “operational death.” When a believer allows some sin to become a lifestyle, if that person is a genuine believer, he or she does not lose his or her salvation. But that person does lose the ability to function under the power of the Holy Spirit and to live as an effective ambassador for Jesus. He or she can’t produce anything of lasting value. So everything that is produced becomes wood, hay and stubble that will be burned up when that person faces Jesus one day.
So how do we deal with sin that has become a lifestyle and caused operational death?
• I deal with sin at this point by getting some help
While it is true that when I become a genuine follower of Jesus, I have been set free from slavery to sin, that doesn’t mean that I won’t need some help from fellow believers in struggling with some sin in my life. As we’ve discussed frequently, one reason that Jesus makes all of His followers a part of His body, the church, is so we have a support group already in place to help us deal with our struggles.
But the principle of getting help with our struggles is not limited to the New Testament. The writer of Ecclesiastes also shows the value of getting some help.
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
(Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 ESV)
What a great picture. A threefold cord is not easily broken. When Jesus is that third strand and I get help from a fellow believer, it is possible to get control over any sin in my life so that I don’t become either physically or operationally dead.
I was going to spend some time looking at how this entire process unfolded with Adam and Eve in the Garden, but there are some other issues that I wanted to make sure we had time to address so I’m going to skip that. But I encourage you to go back and read Genesis 3 and see if you can identify each of these steps.
I know that I’ve taken longer than usual this morning, but I’m confident that this has been time well spent. How to deal with our temptation is such an important topic for all of us and we still have really only scratched the surface.
But here is the bottom line when it comes to temptation. We need to deal with it as early in the process as possible. Temptation is a lot like a desert broom. When one pops up in my yard and I pull it out while it is still small, I can get it root and all and it won’t come back. But once it gets bigger, it’s almost impossible to get the root out and the plant just keeps coming back over and over again.
I need to deal with temptation like that. I need to “pull it out” while it’s still at the desire stage, before my mind and will are engaged. But if I miss it there, I need to be diligent to catch it at the next stage of deception before those roots get any deeper. If I don’t “pull it out” there, it’s going to be really difficult to avoid the next stage of disobedience. Frankly, all of us still have our sin nature so we are going to arrive at that stage at times in our lives. By that time the roots are so deep that we can no longer pull them out and we’re well on the road to death. But the good news is that God is not only able to pull it out roots and all, He delights in doing that for His firstfruits.
