This👇 is part 10 in our series, Teach Us to Pray. Enjoy!
“Lead Us Not into Temptation” – Matthew 6:13a
When I was in college, it was kind of a thing to pray for “traveling mercies.”
This did not deny human responsibility in operating an automobile. It simply was an acknowledgement of a theological reality: God is sovereign over every detail of our lives.
While both are true, one has the priority, or is ultimate in the equation of responsibility and sovereignty.
All of life is like that, isn’t it?
We are morally responsible for our actions, but God is cosmically sovereign over those actions.
We are not puppets on the stage of history.
Far from it. We have free agency to do what we please when we want.
The problem is that the sinful nature (the flesh/sarx) is with us everywhere we go, seeking to influence everything we do.1
And not the good kind of influence. Think little demon on the shoulder whispering kind of influence.
And so Jesus instructs us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.”
On the surface this sounds as if we have no control over the steps we take, places we go, or things in which we participate.
After all, aren’t we asking the Lord not to lead us in a certain direction, as if we are fully passive in the process?
No, that’s not what Jesus means. More on this in just a sec.
For a moment, an exegetical aside.
It should be noted that the Greek text behind this prayer in verse 13 makes it possible that Jesus has a specific temptation in mind. The Greek word translated temptation, peirasmos, may also be translated as trial. Some have speculated that the temptation or trial in the mind of Jesus is the great Messianic tribulation spoken of in the gospels.
In that sense, as Nicholas Perrin indicates, Jesus would mean for us to pray something akin to, “Lead us not into the trial,” or “into that temptation.”2
Due to the “us-ness” of the prayer (not to mention the negative participle conjoined with an aorist imperative in the Greek text), I can see how that could be a legit interpretation. However, if Jesus were thinking about one specific trial, my guess is he would have said that.
So, rather than a prayer for a specific event, I think this is a prayer for any circumstance in which we recognize our tendency to swerve off the road and into a ditch.
And we don’t want to do that. Insurance rates go up and everything.
So, we pray, “Lead us not into the ditch.” Any ditch.
In other words, Jesus is calling us to pray with self-awareness of our need, not only for justifying grace but for sanctifying grace. Something like, “Without your protective Spirit guiding me in the narrow way, I will make a wreck of my next decision.”
Just like many of us think we are better drivers than we really are, we think we're better people than we really are.
But one look at the cross undermines such an evaluation.
The Bible correctly diagnoses our human condition by calling us sinners. We’re not sinners because we drive into ditches. We drive into ditches because we are sinners. It is not primarily a problem of behavior correction but one of nature.
We. Just. Can’t. Help it.
From that perspective, we can see how this is a prayer of humility and dependence.
This leads us to some very good news.
Because Jesus was willing to endure the greatest trial of them all in crucifixion, we not only are fully forgiven but also are supernaturally empowered when temptations come our way–or when the flesh whispers, “Swerve.”
Praying “lead us not into temptation” is simply an honest confession of our prone to wander and need for the same grace to sustain us that has saved us.
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This is to say, our will is free to the degree it is liberated from the power of the flesh via the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. Until then, our wills are in bondage to sin. We could say it this way. We are as free as the sinful nature/the flesh will let us be. This is a morally responsible freedom, but not one where we are going to follow the ways of Jesus as Savior and King. Does that make sense? Or to belabor the point, humans had unrestricted free will before Genesis 3. Afterward, we are restricted in our freedom by the presence and power of the sin nature.
Nicholas Perrin, The Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019), 220.