Why Not Freedom From Temptation?
A Sunday School Times reader has written of his experience. “It is not a temptation for me to take a glass of beer; there is nothing in me that requires or desires it; but sometimes it might be and has been a strong temptation to get impatient, which I have yielded to at times. Why should one be any more a temptation than the other, provided I am in victory over all sin?”
Careful distinction must be made between temptation itself and the form that the temptation may take. The appeal to a man’s natural desires may change its form, but always, in every part of his nature, he will be tempted while he is in this mortal body. The desire for beer which leads to intemperance and sin is an appeal to a natural appetite. Sin is moral, and does not reside in the physical appetites, which are merely the channels for the temptation and sin. A man who has been in bondage to drink may through the power of Christ completely lose that desire and have no further temptation to that particular form of appetite. But the temptation to intemperance remains. For the natural appetites remain. While the appetite may give up this taste or that, and thus be dead to certain forms of temptation, the Christian is always liable to the temptation to go contrary to the will of God, in satisfying these natural appetites of the body: hunger, the sacred sex desire, and all the natural impulses of the body that may seek expression in lawful ways.
The Times reader compares his freedom from the temptation to drink with the appeal that is made to him to get impatient. But strictly speaking, one is never tempted to be impatient. No one desires to be impatient, and Satan could not use any incentive to such a temptation. Yet we sometimes speak of these temptations to irritability, jealousy, loss of temper, as though there were some secret springs in our nature labeled “Impatience,” “Irritability,” and like qualities, and that the temptation consisted in Satan touching these springs and causing the sin. A business man does not lose his temper for the sake of the pleasure it gives him. It may be an intense desire to have justice that has led to his outbreak against some one who has dealt unfairly. The temptation has come along the line of some natural desire. So with the housekeeper who is irritated with her maid over some bit of stupidity, or the young girl who is “blue” and moody because her plans for the day’s enjoyment have been upset.