And now as to the word temptation. To be tempted is another thing from having a lust to sin-the carnal mind.

Temptation is used in Scripture not for internal sin at all, nor in connection with it, save when it is the actual giving way to the temptation by reason of the sin-"drawn away of our own lusts, and enticed." "Tempted" there is the giving way to the trial. But temptation otherwise is just the trial of what is in the person so tried; and this may be very various. God in this sense may be tempted. We
know from His very nature, and by the Word, that He cannot be tempted of evil; yet "they tempted God in the desert." They tempted, and were destroyed of the destroyer. God was put to trial as to what He was; and this was just their sin. In Him, it need not be said, absolute, essential perfection was found. Neither can God tempt any man in the way of evil, or lust. Yet God did tempt Abraham; He put Abraham to trial, and proved the grace which He had given him, saying thereon, "Now I know." Exhibition of grace was the result of the trial-of the temptation here.

So we pray, "Lead us not into temptation"- clearly, not into lust, or evil, but into a place of trial of what is in us, we knowing our weakness, and therefore adding, "but deliver us from evil," or the evil one. But the Spirit of God did lead Christ into temptation (Matt. 4; Luke 4); not, surely, into any exercise of an evil nature, but into Satan's trial of what He was. The first Adam, confessedly innocent, and having no sin, yet was tempted, and so tempted that he fell into sin; so that, clearly, here temptation does not imply existing evil, or a sinful nature; for there may be temptation so as to fall into sin where there was no evil nature at all. He was tried, and fell; weakness and fallibility being there, though not sin. We are tempted-what is in us is tried; and in our case evil continually is found. . . . The sinful nature is distinct from the temptation, though discovered by it. So Christ was tempted, tried in all points according to the likeness of His brethren; but the result was, there was nothing found in Him but perfectness.-Extract from J. N. D.