Charles Ellicott Commentary James 1:13

"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man:" — James 1:13 (ASV)

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God.—Far be it from the true Christian either to give way to sin that grace may abound (Romans 6:1), or to suppose for one moment that God, and therefore invincible power, is drawing him from righteousness. Almost every reflection on the nature of sin leads to an inquiry about its cause, and this enigma will hardly be solved in this life.

The very facts of the presence of evil among God’s creatures, and its continual attraction even for the best, have often driven people to doubt His supremacy. Sadly—how can we in charity think otherwise?—some have felt the pain, but not the purpose of the world. At times they cannot see in nature “the work of a Being at once good and omnipotent,” and prefer to doubt the latter quality rather than the former. But this nineteenth-century conclusion is no advance beyond the dual system of the Persians, or rather, of Manes, who corrupted the faith of Zoroaster with his Indian fancies. The Manichees settled the difficulty better than our Deists by declaring the existence of a good God and a bad one, and appealed to the daily strife between virtue and vice, even life and death, in witness of their simple creed.

Thanks to the gospel, a nobler theology is our Christian heritage, through which we are persuaded that good will triumph in the end, and by which we are also taught the humility to acknowledge that God’s ways in permitting and overruling evil are beyond human comprehension. And a better skepticism remains for us than that of the Theist or the Agnostic: a more vehement disbelief that this can be the end, since in this life we in no sense fully experience the rewards for the just and the unjust.

See especially J. S. Mill’s “Three Essays on Religion,” Nature, p. 38.

For God cannot be tempted with evil.—We can see here a good instance of the excellence of the old Geneva Bible, “the first on several occasions to seize the exact meaning of a passage which all the preceding versions had missed.” Our present rendering follows the Genevan exactly, rejecting those of Wiclif: “God is not a tempter of yuell things”; Tyndale, “God tempteth not vnto evyll”; and Cranmer, “God cannot tempte vnto euyll.”

Neither tempteth he any man.—The trial comes from Him, that is, the Tempter is allowed; but only so far, and no further. God Himself is ‘unversed of evils,’ and no possibility of temptation remains with Him. Into the unseen splendour of His fullness no thought of wrong can enter; no foul thing wings its silent flight.

It would be blasphemy, perilously near that of the Pharisees (Matthew 12:22–37), to think that God’s kingdom could be so divided against itself that He, directly or indirectly, should seduce His subjects into the revolt of sin. No; if we have one golden clue by which we may feel our erring way out of the labyrinth of this lower world into the belief and trust in God our Father for the life to come, it is this: trials and temptations are permitted to strengthen us—if we will—for His mightier service. And, as compulsory homage would be worthless to the loving Lord of all, voluntary homage must be found instead, and proved and perfected. In this lies the Christian conflict, and the secret of God’s ways with humankind.