Deception and temptation
It’s a statement that we often hear these days: ‘I have to be true to myself’. A similar expression is, ‘I need to be the best version of myself’. But these ideas are deeply flawed. James makes it very clear that sinfulness is part of our sinful natures; if we just heed what we hunger for, we can end up in a world of hurt.
Tom Wright:
‘If you are true to ‘yourself’, you will end up a complete mess. The challenge is to take the ‘self’ you find within, and to choose wisely which impulses and desires to follow, and which ones to resist’.1
And Wright adds a word of encouragement for us:
‘One day, God’s word will transform the whole creation, filling heaven and earth with his rich, wonderful light and life. Our lives, transformed by the gospel, learning to look at the world differently, standing firm against temptation, are just the start of that larger project’.2
Some Christians like to blame Satan for their poor choices - but James confronts that kind of thinking too.
‘James knows the origin of temptation. It is not God, nor is it Satan and Satan alone. It is instead a personal desire born of self-interest that renders us susceptible to the evil inclination and therefore, at times, to the wiles of the evil one. We may wrongly seek to blame others, Satan, or even God, but ultimately we are morally responsible. The key term here is epithymia, which means “desire.” In the New Testament epithymia generally carries a negative meaning, such as “lust,” “selfish ambition,” or “evil desire’.3
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book, Temptation, describes how misguided desire works:
‘With irresistible power desire seizes mastery over the flesh.… It makes no difference whether it is sexual desire, or ambition, or vanity, or desire for revenge, or love of fame and power, or greed for money.… Joy in God is … extinguished in us and we seek all our joy in the creature. At this moment God is quite unreal to us, he loses all reality, and only desire for the creature is real; … Satan does not here fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God.… The lust thus aroused envelops the mind and will of man in deepest darkness. The powers of clear discrimination and of decision are taken from us. The questions present themselves: ‘Is what the flesh desires really sin in this case?’ ‘Is it really not permitted to me, yes—expected of me, now, here, in my particular situation, to appease desire?’ … It is here that everything within me rises up against the Word of God’.4
Mature Christians know these two facts - we are called, not to be what we desire, but to embrace God’s desires for us. And we are called to take full responsibility for our actions and choices.
1 Wright, T. (2011). Early Christian Letters for Everyone: James, Peter, John and Judah (p. 8). SPCK; Westminster John Knox Press.
2 Wright, ibid
3 Nystrom, D. P. (1997). James (p. 73). Zondervan Publishing House.
4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Temptation (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1961), p. 33.