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“Temptation” is used in two senses: testing under trial, as we have seen in verse 12, and now solicitation to evil, verses 13–14. James is now going to talk about that temptation, which is temptation to do evil. People often say that the Lord tested them when it wasn’t the Lord at all. God cannot be tempted with evil, and He does not tempt with evil. James deals with something here which is very important for God’s children to understand, because we often blame God for a great many things in our lives for which He is not responsible.

We have seen in the preceding verses that God tests His own children, but now James makes it very clear that God never tests men with evil and with sin. “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God”—a more literal translation is this: “Let not one man being tempted say, I am tempted of God.” Notice that James is no longer using the noun temptation as he was previously. He is now using the verb; he is speaking of the action.

The natural propensity of mankind is to blame God for his own fumbles, all of his foibles, all of his faults and failures and filth. From the very beginning, since the time of the fall of man, this has been true. Adam said, “… The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat” (Gen. 3:12)—he really passed the buck! The woman did the same thing; she said, “… The serpent beguiled me …” (Gen. 3:13). Actually, all three of them were responsible.

We often hear questions like this: Why does God send floods and earthquakes and allow the killing of babies? We blame God today for the result of the greed and avarice and selfishness of mankind—that is what is really responsible for floods and earthquakes. Man builds too close to a river and, when in the natural course of events the river rises, he calls it a flood and an act of God. But man thinks it is more pleasant to build by the river, or it’s nearer transportation, or that is where the business is. It is actually the greed and avarice of man that causes him to build where it is really dangerous to build.

If you are going to live in Southern California, for example, you are going to take a chance on having an earthquake—you can be sure of that. We had a small one just the other evening as my wife and I were sitting in our den. The seismologists predict that we are in for a big earthquake here, yet people are still streaming into Southern California and putting up high-rise buildings. We ought not to blame God if a slab of concrete falls off one of those high-rise buildings and kills one of our loved ones. It would be much safer in the wide open spaces of Texas. I’m a Texan, but who wants to go back there? I know it’s nicer there than when I was just a boy growing up, but I want to stay here in California. However, I’m not going to blame God when the earthquake comes. We have already been warned that it is coming.

Men also blame God in their philosophies today. Pantheism, for instance, says that everything is God, but good is God’s right hand and evil is His left hand. Fatalism says that everything is running like blind necessity. If there is a God, they say, He has wound up this universe like an eight-day clock and has gone off and left it. Materialism’s explanation of the problem with the human race is that the loftiest aspirations and the vilest passions are the natural metabolism of a physical organism.

God has answered these philosophies in His Word. There is no evil in God. In Him all is goodness and all is light and all is right. John wrote in his first epistle, “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light [that is, He is holy], and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). The Lord Jesus made this very interesting statement: “… for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me” (John 14:30). That means there is no evil or sin in Him. But every time Satan gets around me, he is able to find something in me.

Let me introduce something which is theological at this point: Jesus could not sin. Someone will immediately ask, “Why, then, was He tempted?” In Matthew 4:7 our Lord said to Satan, “… It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” God wants to save from sin, and He does not tempt men to sin—He wants to deliver men. He never uses sin as a test, but He will permit it, as we shall see. The Lord Jesus had no sin in Him—“The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.” The reason He was tempted was to prove that there was nothing in Him. After He had lived a life down here for thirty-three years, Satan came with this temptation, a temptation that appealed to man’s total personality—the physical side, the mental side, and the spiritual side of man. The Lord Jesus could not fall, and the testing was given to demonstrate that He could not fall. If He could have fallen, then any moment your salvation and mine is in doubt. The minute He yielded to sin, we would have no Savior. His temptation was to prove that He could not sin.

Let me illustrate this with a very homely illustration from my boyhood in west Texas. My dad built cotton gins for the Murray Gin Company, and we lived in a little town that was near a branch of the Brazos River. In the summertime there wasn’t enough water in that river to rust a shingle nail, but when it began to rain in wintertime, you could almost float a battleship on it. One year a flood washed out the wooden bridge on which the Santa Fe railroad crossed the river. They replaced it with a steel bridge, and when they completed it, they brought in two locomotives, stopped them on top of the bridge, and tied down both of the whistles. All of us who lived in that little town knew for sure that something was happening. We ran down to see what it was—all twenty-three of us! When we got there, one of the braver citizens asked the engineer, “What are you doing?” The engineer replied, “Well, we built this bridge, and we are testing it.” The man asked, “Why? Do you think it’s going to fall down?” That engineer drew himself up to his full height and said, “Of course it will not fall down! We are proving it won’t fall down.” For the same reason, Jesus was tested to prove that you and I have a Savior who could not sin. God cannot be tempted with sin, and God will not tempt you with sin.

However, God does permit us to be tempted with sin. In 2 Samuel 24:1 we read, “And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.” Frankly, that was sinful. Then, did God tempt David with evil? My friend, to understand the Bible you always need to get the full story. In 2 Samuel you have man’s viewpoint of the events recorded. From man’s viewpoint it looked as if God was angry with Israel and He simply had David do this. However, in 1 Chronicles we are told God’s viewpoint of it: “And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel” (1 Chr. 21:1). Who provoked David to sin? It was Satan, not God. God merely permitted Satan to do that because He was angry with Israel and their sin. God never tempts men with evil.

A man got lost in the hills of Arkansas back in the days of the Model T Ford. He had lost his way, and there were no highway markings. He came into a small town and saw some little boys playing there. He asked one of them, “Where am I?” The little fellow looked at him puzzled for just a moment. Finally he pointed at the man with his finger and said, “There you are!” My friend, when you ask, “Who tempted me to do this?” God says, “There you are. It’s in your own skin—that is where the problem is.”

“Every man is tempted.” Every man—this is the declaration of the individuality of the personality in the race of mankind. Just as each one of us has a different fingerprint, each one of us has a different moral nature. We have our own idiosyncrasies, our own eccentricities. All of us have something a little different.

One man was talking to another and said, “You know, everybody has some peculiarity.” “I disagree with you,” said the other. “I don’t think I have a peculiarity.” “Well, then, let me ask you a question. Do you stir your coffee with your right hand or with your left hand?” asked the first man. “I stir it with my right hand,” the other man replied. “Well, that’s your peculiarity. Most people stir their coffee with a spoon!” May I say to you, all of us have our peculiarities. One person may be tempted to drink. Another may be tempted to overeat. Another may be tempted in the realm of sex. The problem is always within the individual. No outside thing or influence can make us sin. The trouble is here, within us, with that old nature that we have.

I think of the little boy who was playing around one evening in the pantry. He had gotten down the cookie jar. His mother called to him and said, “Willie, what are you doing in the pantry?” He said, “I’m fighting temptation!” He was in the wrong place to fight temptation, but that is the same place a lot of grown-up people are today. Many things are not bad within themselves, but it is the use we make of them that is wrong. Food is good, but you can become a glutton. Alcohol is medicine, but you can become an alcoholic if you abuse it. Sex is good if it is exercised within marriage. When it is exercised outside of marriage, you are going to experience several kinds of damage. Our society has an epidemic of venereal disease because of the looseness of the “new morality” today.

Many psychologists are trying to help us get rid of our guilt complexes. A Christian psychologist who taught in one of our universities here in Southern California told me one time, “You need to emphasize in your teaching that guilt complex more than you do. A guilt complex is as much a part of you as your right arm. You just cannot get rid of it.”

However, the godless psychologist may attempt to remove the guilt complex in the wrong way. For example, a Christian lady called me one time and said, “Dr. McGee, a most frightful thing has happened to me. I’ve been having a real problem and have been on the verge of a nervous breakdown due to certain trials I’ve been going through. I went to a psychologist whom my doctor recommended. When he found out that I was a Christian, he said, ‘What you need to do is to go downstairs to the barroom and pick up the first man you find there. Then you’ll get rid of your guilt complex.”’ I agree with the woman that such counsel is frightful indeed!

Then there are other psychologists who say, “What about your background? Did your mother love you? Did anything unusual happen while you were in the womb?” If you said, “Well, my mother was caught in a rainstorm while she was carrying me,” the psychologist would say, “That’s the reason you’re a drip!” Well, he practically says that when he blames his patient’s problems on the mother.

My friend, you could solve a great deal of your problems for which you are blaming someone else if you would say to the living Lord Jesus who is right now at God’s right hand, “I’m a sinner. I’m guilty.” Then He will remove your guilt complex—He is the only One who can do that.

Proverbs says, “For as he [man] thinketh in his heart, so is he …” (Prov. 23:7). The solicitation to sin must have a corresponding response from within. James says that it is of your own lust (lust is an overweening desire and uncontrolled longing) that you are drawn away into sin. The Lord Jesus said, “I will draw all men unto Me” (see John 12:32), but the scoffer says, “He’ll not draw me!” My friend, He will not force you. Hosea tells us that He will only use bands of love to draw us to Himself. He wants to woo and win you by His grace and love. Frankly, evil is attractive today; it is winsome. We are told that Moses was caught up at first in the pleasures of sin. Man can be enticed; the hook can be baited. If he yields, before long a person will become an alcoholic or a dope addict.

McGee, J. Vernon: Thru the Bible Commentary. electronic ed. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1997, c1981, S. 5:633-635