But every man is tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and allured.
εκαστος δε πειραζεται υπο της ιδιας επιθυμιας εξελκομενος και δελεαζομενος
10 Church Fathers comment on this verse
Since it has been proved concerning the divine nature that God is neither tempted Himself nor tempts others, he here calls temptations the thoughts that trouble the soul. Temptations from God do not trouble the soul, but strengthen it by enlightening it. Therefore he says, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights"; Jas 1:17. But everything that comes from us has imperfection.
But it happens that, according to His higher and hidden judgments, He abandons someone. And when He abandons someone, then the tempter finds an opportunity to do something to him.
For in such a case he no longer meets an opponent, but an obedient subject in the one whom God has abandoned. Therefore, lest God abandon us, we pray, "Lead us not into temptation."
"Each one is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own desire," says the same Apostle James. "Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is accomplished, brings forth death" (Jas 1:14-15).
What does he teach us by this? That we should struggle against our desire. In holy Baptism all sins are forgiven, but desires remain, so that, having been born again, you may wage war against them.
The conflict remains within you. There is nothing to fear from the external enemy. Conquer yourself, and the world is conquered.
What can the external tempter, the devil or a servant of the devil, do to you? Suppose someone offers you some profit in order to entice you and incline you to an evil deed.
What will he do to you, if within you no place has been given to covetousness? But if within you a place has been given to covetousness, then, seeing gain, you will burn with desire for it.
You will be captured by the nets of sinful food. Those nets will lie stretched out before you in vain, if you are not yielded to covetousness.
Let the tempter also bring before you a most beautiful woman to tempt you. If love of chastity is established within you, you will easily overcome this external assault.
So that the lure of another man's wife's beauty may not capture you, conquer your own desire within yourself. You do not perceive your enemy, but you feel your own desire.
Conquer inwardly what you feel there. Struggle, and you will conquer. The One who regenerated you is your Judge. He has set before you the contest, and He prepares the crown.
But without doubt you will be conquered if you do not have Him as your helper, when He abandons you. Therefore you have been taught to cry out in prayer, "Lead us not into temptation."
The wrath of the Judge has handed some over to their desires, as the Apostle says: "God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity" (Rom 1:24). How did He give them over? Not by compelling them, but by abandoning them.
Those baptized by the power of Christ have mystically received purification and sanctification. Yet because of his own little faith, each one falls under the action of sin, being drawn away and enticed by his own desire. "Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is finished brings forth death"; Jas 1:14-15.
Jerome speaks about this verse in Against Jovinian: "As in good works God is the accomplisher, so that we may be able to reach the goal, and this depends not on the one who wills or strives, but on God who shows mercy and helps; cf. Rom 9:16.
"So also in evil works and sins, the seeds are our impulses, but the fulfillment is from the devil. After he sees that upon Christ's foundation we have built a structure of hay, wood, and straw, he sets fire to it.
"Let us build of gold, silver, and precious stones; cf. 1 Cor 3:12, and he will not dare to attack. Yet even in this case there is no certainty or quiet, for the lion lies in ambush and in hidden places to kill the innocent (1 Pet 5:8; Ps 9:29).
"Moreover, the furnace tests the potter's vessels, and the temptation of affliction tests righteous men; cf. Sir 27:5."
Since the brother of God showed above that God is neither Himself tempted nor tempts others, he now says that man's evil desire first conceives sin through pleasure-loving conjunction and consent.
According to Theophylact, this concerns passionate thoughts that trouble the soul. Thoughts coming from God do not disturb a man's soul. Rather, they give it peace, establish it, and illumine it with light.
Then desire gives birth to sin by carrying it out in deed, as John Zonaras interprets. Sin committed in deed gives birth to the death of the soul.
It is possible that the discussion here concerns mortal sins, such as fornication, adultery, murder, and the like. If it remains only in desire, the sin is pardonable. But if it is committed in deed, then it is mortal.
For example, the evil desire of those two Jewish elders conceived the sin of adultery against the chaste Susanna. In the end, it brought them a double death, of body and soul.
As Daniel said to one of them: "Beauty deceived you, and desire corrupted your heart" (Dan 13:56).
Desires also put the negligent to death, so that they do nothing with their hands. Solomon said: "The desires of the sluggard kill him, for his hands refuse to do anything" (Prov 21:25).
So too the desire for riches plunges a man into utter ruin and destruction. Paul said: "Those who desire to be rich fall into trials and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge men into utter ruin and destruction" (1 Tim 6:9).
As was said, evil desire conceives sin. Therefore, conversely, good desire conceives virtue through consent and gives birth to it through action. Virtue, when accomplished, gives birth to the life of the soul.
Solomon said: "A good desire is a tree of life" (Prov 13:12). And again: "The desire for wisdom leads up to the kingdom" (Wis 6:20).
For this reason Daniel was called by the Archangel Gabriel a man of desires (Dan 9:23), or better, by the Spirit, according to Gregory the Theologian in his discourse to his father.
The divine Cyril of Alexandria also cites this saying: "Those who tolerate idols in their soul and allow shameful images and thoughts to be present in it should know that they will become a dwelling of bats, that is, of unclean spirits.
"Each one, he says, is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own desire," and so forth. Therefore let us suppress the beginnings of the passions and cast away the new idols, the sensual desires that invade through thoughts.
Let us remember what is written: "If the spirit of the ruler rises up against you, do not leave your place; for healing will quiet great sins" (Eccl 10:4) (Homily 2 on Isaiah, vol. 2).
This means the healing of the first assaults of thoughts, which prevents sin from being committed in deed. These are the assaults that arise from the conjunction and consent of thoughts.
In another place, the same Cyril noted on the same saying: "You see how the first generation of wickedness is accomplished in desires, and how the first seeds of sin are conceived in shameful pleasures" (book 4 on John, vol. 4).
See verse 13. Yet the Apostle does not have in mind here that original first tempter, but man himself. He considers man the source, or more precisely the guilty party, in temptation.
He says that everyone is tempted by his own desire. Thus he indicates the foundation of temptation in man himself, and shows how this happens and how it ends (Jas 1:14-15).
By desire he means here man's inborn inclination toward evil in general, which exists since the ancestral sin. It is desire in the broad sense of the word; cf. 1 Jn 2:16. This desire is the cause of man's evil temptations.
How this happens the Apostle explains immediately afterward. Desire, or the sinful inclination that deceives man, draws his free will after itself. As soon as man notices this deception and attraction, the very action of temptation takes place in him.
If man's will stands firm against the deception and rejects it, he has overcome temptation. He has stood firm in good and has become morally stronger.
But as soon as the will yields to deception and attraction, the seed of a particular sin appears. Then the sin itself is born as a definite immoral act, contrary to the will of God.
That will may be expressed either in a given positive law or in the law of conscience. The object of this immoral act is determined by the object of desire toward which the man, drawn by desire and deceived, did not stand firm.
The evil temptation has been accomplished, and sin has been born. But this temptation did not come from God. It came from the man's own desire, because he did not stand firm against the evil attraction.
Therefore God is not the author of such temptation and sin. Man himself is.
Evil temptation comes chiefly from sinful desires. From them are born sins that lead to bodily and spiritual death. This was so in the first temptation of Eve and Adam, and it is so now. "Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, false witness, blasphemies," says Christ Himself, the Knower of hearts; Mt 15:19. "Do not be deceived," says the Apostle James, concluding his defense of God's righteousness. After a similar word, the Apostle Paul adds, "God is not mocked"; Gal 6:7.
The Lord sends trials to people not in order to draw them into sin, but to strengthen their power to withstand sin. If a person falls in the struggle with temptation, the fault lies with the person himself. For each one is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own desire; v. 14. The Lord always assists the good and the moral perfection of man. "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change and no shadow of turning"; v. 17.
See the interpretation on Lk 6:46.
God tempts no one toward evil, although He permits temptation. Thus He permitted the temptation of the first-formed people, but He was not the author of their fall.
He gave them a certain commandment solely so that, by exercising themselves in its fulfillment, they might learn unconditional obedience to Him and be established in good.
The nearest cause of their fall was the tempter, the devil. Yet the devil could have done nothing if he had not found in our first parents a predisposition toward sin.
Before he approached Eve with his wiles, temptation had already begun within her from her own desire. The success of his action is explained by the agreement of his evil suggestions with the struggle already taking place in her soul.
That struggle was between submission to the will of God and self-will. Dissatisfaction with God's commandment arose in her. A desire contrary to God's will was conceived, a desire to act against the commandment.
The cunning spirit of malice, who was watching her sharply, noticed this God-opposing desire in her and strengthened it by his suggestions.
Under the influence of the devil's flattering words, which promised our first parents equality of honor with God and independence from Him, the fruit of the forbidden tree became a lure.
Eve rushed upon it with the eagerness of a bird that sees the bait and fails to notice the net beneath it, which destroyed it.
Eve ate this fruit, "drawn away and enticed by her own desire," and thus sin, at first hidden in the soul, was committed in deed. After sin came the sentence of death.
Desire conceived sin in the soul. The commission of sin in deed corresponded to the birth into the world of a conceived infant. The accomplished sin brought forth death.
This history of the ancestral sin is repeated in the life of every sinner. "Each one is tempted toward sin by his own desire," that is, by an irrational desire contrary to the will of God.
At first the root of this desire is the representation of sin. This representation of sin is called an assault, or provocation. In itself it is not imputable, so long as sympathy for sin has not arisen in the heart.
This sympathy is called conjunction with sin, or being deceived by sin. If this sympathy is not stopped at the very beginning and has deeply taken root in the heart, this means that the soul has conceived sin.
Conceived sin, as is proper to every seed, grows and strives to bear fruit, to turn into a sinful deed. The irrepressibility of this striving is called captivity.
This means that the soul has brought itself into slavery to sin, to the loss of freedom to resist it. Then sinful desire gives birth to a sinful deed, which in turn gives birth to death.
First comes spiritual death, which consists in the soul becoming insensitive to the voice of God's grace calling it to salvation. It dies while still alive to the spiritual life. Then follows eternal death, that is, eternal perdition.
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 10 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS