And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil...
Or,
And do not subject us to the time of trial, but deliver us from the evil one...
Or,
And do not let us yield to temptation, but deliver us from evil...
And so on.
This last line of the Lord’s Prayer is the one for which there are most variant readings. Pick up a dozen different Bible translations and you’ll likely find a dozen slightly different versions: lead us not, let us not be led, do not subject us to, let us not yield to... and then temptation may also be trial, ordeal, or testing.
Equally, deliver us from evil may be evil generally, or the evil one – a personal manifestation of all that is evil.
It might seem tedious, but with so many possibilities floating around it’s worth having a little look at the Greek, starting with the first part of the line, in which the key word is ‘peirasmos’. The English translation ‘temptation’ doesn’t really do it justice.
For example, here it is in 2 Corinthians 13:
Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, indeed, you fail to pass the test!
Here, in the Greek version of the book of Deuteronomy, it is used to refer to God testing our faith:
you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you indeed love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul.
And similarly in the book of Genesis, God is described as ‘testing’ the faith of Abraham, by asking him to sacrifice his son.
It makes no sense in modern English to say that God is tempting his people, or that he is tempting Abraham, nor that the Christians in Corinth are to tempt themselves! But if we look back a bit in the history of the English language, we find that in Elizabethan English – that’s the language of the Book of Common Prayer, the Authorised version of the Bible, to test and to tempt were at that point used interchangeably to mean some kind of test that contained the possibility of failure, but not a test that we are supposed to fail.
The Greek verb from which ‘peirasmos’ comes, is used in various ways in the Bible, most of them implying something more like our word ‘try’, or even ‘test’. In fact, some churches use ‘do not bring us to the time of trial’ in their versions of the Lord’s prayer.
But whether it means trial, test or temptation, in some ways it’s still an odd thing to pray: temptation is part of being human. The writer of the Hebrews ‘tests’ and ‘proves’ Jesus’ humanity and divinity by saying ‘he was tempted or tested as we are, and yet without sin.’
Imagine, for a moment, a life without temptation. A life devoid of challenges, trials or tests. Yes, it’s suddenly not so attractive after all, is it? We need temptations, trials, tests, to exercise our free will, to be human. If temptation and trial is so much a part of human existence that it is not only unimaginable to live without it, but it was also the very test of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, then what are we actually praying for?
We know we will face trials and temptations. So perhaps we are praying not to be abandoned into the grip of temptation, and to be able to live without yielding to it – certainly this is something that we can all pray, that when we are tested and challenged, we will not be found wanting; we will come through whatever it is, perhaps stronger than before.
There’s also a sense in which temptation and testing are not from God, exactly, but neither are they outside the plans and purposes of God. By facing difficulties, we are enabled to become the people God wants us to be, much as precious metals are tried or proved in the fire, and so become pure.
Job says at one point, ‘But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I shall come out like gold’, and in the first letter of Peter, we read, ‘In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.
There is something brutal about the image of refining precious metal, but it is a strong recurring biblical image. And it is precisely because testing and trials are hard to bear that they do reveal who we are and what we are made of. It is also because they are hard to bear that they encourage us to place a healthy reliance on the grace of God, rather than on our own means. Such testing can absolutely be within God’s providence. And we have God’s promise that he will not test us to destruction. So when we pray this prayer we are trusting God that it is through his strength that we will come through our testing time. In this way, it is not that we glory in temptation, but we recognize that God shows us a use for it.
I suppose for me this explains why we pray for release from temptation and testing, even though we know they are essential to our life as human beings. This line in the Lord’s prayer is a way for us to bring God into our experience of human life and its challenges. We remember Jesus praying to his Father in Gethsemane, ‘take this cup from me, and yet not what I will but what you will’. We, like Jesus, gain strength through that same prayer. In this way, the Lord’s prayer is part of our armour, and in a sense. evil isn’t conquered at the moment of temptation, but through all the spiritual discipline and prayer beforehand – we certainly see this in the life of Christ.
Testing, challenges and trials are what make us who we are. They show us for who we are, and give us a chance to show what we are made of. And when we trust God in our times of trial, we will show ourselves to be the people he created us to be.
Let’s move on briefly to the second clause of tonight’s line of the prayer. You will all have read versions of the Lord’s prayer in which we are to be delivered from the Evil One, and it is worth noting who he is. The Satan, in the Bible was the prosecuting council in the imaginary heavenly courts in the book of Job, for instance. His job was to be the adversary of humanity, in a legal sense, to make a case against humankind. Now the word ‘diabolos’ in the New Testament (from which we get our word ‘diabolical’ means not only ‘devil’ but also generally ‘slanderer’. It strikes me that there’s not all that much difference between making a legal case against humanity, and building a ficticious or slanderous case against us, perhaps. Both are designed to cause a breach between humanity and God.
So much for the personification of Evil. Whether evil takes the form of a person or not, it is very real, and it does indeed cause a very real breach between God and his people. This line in the prayer acknowledges that reality, and asks God to save us from it.
It confronts the danger in human life, and confesses the inadequacy of our own resources to battle it, taking the battle to the protecting power of God.
St Paul bemoans his own weakness in the face of evil in Romans 7: So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
And then in the very next chapter he answers his own question: who will rescue me? by affirming that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The evil we face and from which we need deliverance comes from without, but it also comes from within. But the good news is that there is nothing which can separate us from God’s love, if we pray for protection from all that might try.
It’s right that we finish this sermon series on the Lord’s prayer with this most instinctive and natural of all prayers, ‘Lord, save me’, for that, at its simplest, is what we are praying. It is our natural response to our human weakness and human danger. It is the prayer that Jesus himself is praying in Gethsemane, showing us his humanity, yet at the same time giving us a model of submitting to that trial, and trusting in God for our protection.
For the whole of the Lord’s Prayer is a natural prayer. It encapsulates most of what we’d ever want to pray. As such it is a prayer itself, but also a pattern for our prayers. It gives us the right to call God ‘Father’, and reminds us to live for God’s glory and according to his purposes. It gives us license to ask God for the things that we need.
It reminds us to take an honest part in economy of repentance and forgiveness, and it gives us permission to be afraid of the evil and trials that life brings us, and to desire not to avoid them altogether, but that God will give us the strength we need to face them not with fear but with confidence.
Let us pray.
Lord be with us this night
Within us to purify us
Above us to draw us up
Beneath us to sustain us
Before us to lead us
Behind us to restrain us
Around us to protect us.
Through Christ our Lord.