- Theology and Identity
- Season 2
- Episode 8
- Airdate: 6 June, 2025
- Please note this is a script, and not a transcript. There may be slight differences between this text and the actual broadcast.
- All Bible quotations taken from the English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016)
Audio Links:
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If I were to write a blog on contradictions in the Bible, I think the topic I would choose is Temptation.
Does God tempt his people or doesn’t he?
Most Christians would say – of course God doesn’t tempt people. And this viewpoint is clearly supported in James 1:13 which reads: ‘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.’
But on the other hand, we have this very tricky petition in the Lord’s Prayer where Jesus taught his followers to pray: lead us not into temptation.
Why would the followers of Jesus ask God to not to do something that the Bible says he doesn’t do? Why would they pray ‘don’t bring into a place of temptation if this is something that God categorically doesn’t do?
I’m David Clark, I lecture in . . . .
The title of my podcase is Theology and Identity. Throughout this second season, we’ve been working our way through the Lord’s Prayer. We’ve now come to the petition ‘Lead us not into temptation; and in this episode we’re exploring the question ‘If God doesn’t tempt us, why do we pray ‘lead us not into temptation’?
Before we start working our way toward an answer to this question, let me say that over the past 2000 years, no phrase in the Bible has been subject to more debate, more re-translation, and more re-interpretation than ‘lead us not into temptation’ which is found in both Mt 6:13 and Lk 11:4. Today we’ll take a brief look at this history of the debate, and then I’ll present my own view on the problem.
We begin with the history.
The first major theologian to address the problem was Tertullian, who wrote from North Africa right at the end of the 2nd century.
Tertulian took a firm stance on the idea that God does not tempt his people. In his view, the only one who tempts Christians to sin is Satan. And therefore, his interpretation of the petition is not that it means ‘don’t bring us into temptation’ but rather ‘protect us from the one who tempts us.’
In his work entitled On Prayer, in ch 8 he wrote ‘the meaning is: that we should not be allowed to be led by him [Satan] who tempts us... or that we should not be ensnared by temptation, that is, either by persecution or by lust or any such matter.”
A few decades later, the Egyptian theologian Origen followed the same line of reasoning in his interpretation of this petition, but with a bit more nuance.
Origen also insisted that God doesn’t directly tempt people. God does, however, allow some people to be tested by Satan, in the same way that the Father allowed Jesus to be tempted by Satan in the wilderness.
For Origen, this is essentially a prayer of surrender to God’s providence.
In his own work entitled ‘on prayer’ in chapter 29 he writes ‘For God tempts no one, although He permits some to be tempted. Therefore, the Saviour commands us to pray that we may not be deserted by the providence of God and thus led into temptation.”
In other words, this is a way of saying to God: If in your fore-ordained plan for my life you allow me to be tempted by the evil one, please don’t desert me in the process.’
Now the problem with these very pastoral, nuanced interpretations of the text is that is that they really don’t have a lot of support in the Greek grammar of the original Gospel texts.
The phrase reads
καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν
The key verb is eisphero which means to bring someone in, or cause someone to enter into a situation. So for example we see this elsewhere in the NT. The friends of the paralyzed man could find a way to bring their friend, eisphero, into the house where Jesus was healing the sick.
In the Lords prayer, is very clear that the one being asked not to bring us into temptation is God. The verb is addressed to second person ‘we ask you’ - don’t do this. There’s no allusion to the idea – as Tertullian suggested – that Satan is the one who does the bringing.
So its really difficult to justify a translation of the original text in which Christians are asking God to protect them from something that Satan is doing. Its just not there.
And I think a lot of people realised this.
As a result, the next stage in this text focused on the limitations of the Greek language itself.
Theologians started to wonder if Latin was more appropriate for recovering some of the nuance that may have been present in the original teachings of Jesus. We remember that Jesus spoke aramaic, and that is the language that he would have used when he first taught this prayer.
So we find that in some very early Latin translations of the Gospel, the language of this petition in the Lord’s Prayer is very different,
One manuscript called Codex Colbertinus reads: ne passus nos fueris induci in temptationem
This translates “do not allow us to be led into temptation.
In Roman Catholic tradition – the Latin translation of the Bible was held in very high regard for many centuries, and thus its nots surprising that what we find in these early Latin translations continues to be reflected in many Catholic liturgical traditions today
- Pope Francis, for example, argued that the English translation of the text should be: “Do not let us fall into temptation”
- In France, when Roman Catholics recite the LO they say ‘Do not let us enter into temptation’.
- And it Italy, they pray ‘Do not abandon us to temptation
Now while these progressions certainly reflect pastoral concerns – emphasising God’s role as a protector and not a tempter – the problem is we still can’t get around the fact that the earliest and most reliable version of this prayer, written in Koine Greek – clearly indicate the Jesus was in fact suggesting that it is the Father who ‘brings’ people into temptation – and the request in the LP is simply: Don’t do this. Don’t take us there.
So, in my research on the LP, I have proposed a different way of resolving this problem.
For me the answer lies in the way we have translated the Greek word that appears in the LP as ‘temptation’. This word - which is peirasmos - actually has a range of possible meanings. One of thes possible meanings is obviously ‘temptation’. But another possible translation is ‘testing’. And I think that is a better choice. When I pray the LP on my own, this actually what I say. I pray ‘lead us not into testing.’
So lets explore what changes about our understanding of this word peirasmos when we go with testing instead of temptation.
We here discover that the difference is actually enormous.
I believe that when the first followers of Jesus thought of God and peirasmos, they would in not way have thought about God as someone who is trying to trip his children up - inventing ways to lure them off track, and tempting them to sin. And this is what James was arguing in his text. Don’t think of God as someone who wants to see you stumble.
But if we look at the Bible as a whole, its very clear that God does in fact test his children.
The early followers of Jesus, who read the Greek version of the Old Testament, would have been very familiar with this idea.
In a previous episode, where we talked about the meaning of the petition ‘give us this day our daily bread’ I mentioned that in the ears of Jesus’ first followers, this petition would have brought them back the Sinai wilderness, and the provision of Manna.
The same thing is happening with the petition ‘lead us not into peirasmos. Lead us not into testing’. The early Christians who prayed this would have made an immediate connection with the Sinai wilderness – because all across the OT this is referred to as the setting where a lot of testing took place.
In the Greek text of Exodus 16:4, YHWH spoke to the people of Israel saying that he fed them on manna so that he might “test them” (peirasmos) to see whether they would walk in his laws or not.
And then again in Deuteronomy 8:2, Moses explained that “the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you (peirasmos) to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.”
In numerous places, the OT often talks about the idea of testing in this way. God does test his people. He takes the initiative to create difficult circumstances for Israel because he is not sure what is in their hearts. Here are some examples:
- Ex 15:25 There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them[1]
- Ex 20:20 Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.”
- Dt 13:3 For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul
- Jdg 2:21-22 I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died, 22 in order to test Israel by them, whether they will take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers did, or not.
In the Greek text of all if these passages, the term used is peirasmos. So once again, early Chirstians reading the bible in Greek would have been very comfortable with the idea that God does test his people.
When they prayed the in the LP ‘bring us not into peirasmos – testing’ they would spoken this prayer with the awareness that God might continue to act in the same way.
The heart of the petition is this: God we know that sometimes you test your people to see what’s in their hearts. But we ask you not to do this.
Its actually a very tender expression of intimate relationship between a father and his children. Father – we know that sometimes you test your children, and you’re completely right and justified when you do. But we ask – don’t test us.
Its very subjective and personal isn’t it? It seems to acknowledge that everything in our lives may not be set in stone. Maybe God has plans to test us – but it doesn’t hurt to ask him not to do this.
So that’s one element that I see in this petition.
But if we go back to this idea of peirasmos, and how it unfolded in the Sinai dessert, there’s actually a second shade of meaning to be explored in this word.
Another angle on “testing” refers to the idea of Israel putting God to the test.
This is seen, for example, in Psalm 95: “Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, ‘They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways’” (Ps 95:8–10).
God said to the people of Israel: your fathers put me to the test. They brought me into peirasmos with their grumbling, doubt, and hardness of heart.
There are numerous examples in the OT where peirasmos is used to describe people testing God:
- Ex 17:2 Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?”
- Isa 7 Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz: “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.”
- Ps 78, vs 18, 41, 56 repeat the same basic refrain: ‘They tested God again and again and provoked the Holy One of Israel.’
- PS 1-6: 14 ‘But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness, and put God to the test in the desert’
All of these are examples in the Bible where the people of Israel are putting God to the test.
So once again we see two angles on this: In the Greek OT, which was the OT of the early church - sometimes peirasmos is used to describe God putting the people of Israel to the test. And sometimes peirasmos describes the people of Israel putting God to the test.
So the question is: In the LP - Which one is it?
When Jesus’s followers prayed “Lead us not into testing,” were they saying “don’t bring us to a place where you test us,” or did they mean “don’t bring us to a place where we test you”?
The answer is that – grammatically and theologically - it can be both. When the early followers of Jesus thought of testing, they might have thought about the ways that God tests people. Or they might have thought about the way the people test God.
What’s clear in this petition they didn’t want either one to happen.
So again: Lead us not into testing can mean:
- Do not bring us to the place where you’re testing us. And it can also mean
- Do not bring us to the place where are testing you.
Now I appreciate that it may be difficult for us get our heads around this kind double meaning for a single phrase.
But I think the key here is to look at the vision behind this petition. Jesus is challenging his followers to imagine a relationship with the Father that transcends testing. That is, a relationship that transcends doubt, that transcends insecurity, and that transcends suspicion.
The people of Israel tested God because they doubted his goodness. They doubted whether he really cared for them.
God tested the people of Israel because he doubted their commitment to him. He questioned what was really in their hearts.
If the people of Israel would have walked in deep love relationship with YHWH – none of this testing would have been necessary.
One of the big ideas I’ve emphasised in my writing on the LO is that for Jesus, the LP is the prayer of the new Israel. Through this prayer, he is trying to help his followers take hold of something that the original 12 tribes never attained. By praying the LP and living it out in their lives, the disciples of Jesus have the opportunity to become what God always hoped Israel would be. Jesus is creating a new Israel with his 12 disciples.
In this petition – the aspiration is that his followers will live in such intimacy and harmony with the Father – that no testing of any sort is happening. They don’t test him, and he doesn’t; test them because they know each other and they love each other.
I think that this is what the apostle John was getting at when he wrote in his first epistle – ‘perfect loves casts out fear.’ The fear that he referred to was a fear rooted in really not knowing the other person – and being afraid of what they might do. John was saying that when a person really knows God and lives in intimacy with him, there is not doubt, there is no fear, there is no suspicion.
So circling back to the petition – lead us not into testing.
I believe that Jesus taught when his followers to say these words- he was asking them to pause and reflect on the quality of their relationship with their Father.
Are they doubting God? Are they questioning his character? Are they harbouring anger or resentment toward him? In other words - are they in any way testing him?
And they are called to reflect on how God might see them. The request ‘don’t bring to a place where I’ll be tested’ is really a way for them to say – Father – we don’t you to have any doubts about what’s in our hearts. Make us so strong and faithful that you won’t feel the need to test us. We want you to know that we are true.
The early followers of Jesus were praying for the type of relationship with the Father that transcends testing, doubt and insecurity. And this was something that most of their ancestors never had.
Thus, in the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into testing” means “Save us from the chaotic and dysfunctional relationship that our forefathers had with you. Let us be a people whose hearts are fully committed to you, so that we might not test you, and that you may find no need to test us.” Its a prayer about living in intimate relationship with God.
And so as we bring this episode to a close, lets reflect on how all of this relates to the broader themes of this podcast.
Throughout the 2 seasons that I’ve been running this podcast, I’ve been trying to illuminate how the Biblical narrative paints a picture of the relationship between God and his people that is actually quite complex.
When we look at the relationship that YHWH had with the people of Israel – it was messy. In season 1 of this podcast, that messiness and dysfunction is evident time and time again.
In season 2, we’ve been looking at the Lord’s Prayer, and what we see here is that Jesus acknowledges the messiness our relationships with one another, and our relationship with God. We hurt each other, we hurt God. We’re selfish, we don’t want to share. We stumble. We give into the tricks and deceptions of the enemy.
The Lord’s prayer implicitly acknowledges all of this chaos -and yet at the same time challenges Christians to imagine what perfect love with God might look like. The strategy of Jesus seems to be that if we can imagine it, if we can pray it, if we can believe that the Father will do it – then it will become real in our lives.
When Christians pray ‘lead us not into testing’ they are called to imagine themselves in a relationship with God that has transcends testing – because it casts out all doubt, mistrust, suspicion and fear.
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ex 15:25.