A Homily for the Ninth
Sunday after
Trinity
There hath no temptation taken you but such
as is
common to man:
but God is faithful, who will not suffer you
to be
tempted above that ye are able.
—I Corinthians, 10:13
In today’s epistle lesson, Saint Paul counsels the Corinthians (and us) about temptation.
Paul reminds us of several incidents from the Old Testament (from fourth book of the Torah, which is called “Numbers”). In each of the incidents he refers to, the Israelites, while they were wandering in the wilderness, were confronted collectively by temptation, the temptation of pride, of material excess, or of sexual licentiousness; each time, the people succumbed to the temptation, and each time their lust for forbidden things brought on disaster.
These incidents from the history of our spiritual forbears, Paul tells us, were meant to be examples to us; they were written down to warn us. The sins of the Israelites in the wilderness were committed in willful rebellion against God, and there were consequences, just as there are consequences for us when we rebel against God.
Paul tells us that the Israelites sinned because they were tempted and they gave in to temptation. And he tells the Corinthians, and us, that we should resist temptation: do not lust after things, do not let idols replace God in your life, do not commit fornication, do not put God to the test. It is good advice, surely; but it is a bit thin on details.
Temptation is not sin. Jesus himself was tempted. He was in every way tempted as we are, but he did not sin. It is not being tempted, but rather yielding to temptation, that is offensive to God. Indeed, it is worse not to be tempted, because that probably means that we have already yielded, and that sin has become habitual for us. We may even have rationalized our sins, so that temptation appears to us in the guise of an opportunity to do good.
Within the last couple of weeks, we have been saddened by the spectacle of a clergyman, an American priest, admitting to all the world that he engages regularly in behaviour that Scripture tells us is not only sin, but an abomination in the sight of God. And that priest was not publicly confessing his sin and praying for forgiveness: no, he was boasting of his behaviour as an expression of love, and what Scripture denounces as abominable, he declared to be sacramental.
We must feel very sorry for that clergyman, and we must pray for him, especially as he is about to enter into new responsibilities within what professes to be a Christian community not unlike our own. But we must not gloat. Because if we examine our own lives carefully, we may find that we have our own favorite sins, about which we have convinced ourselves that they are really virtues; and, having so convinced ourselves, we then no longer feel temptation as temptation but as opportunity.
Temptation is not sin. And yet our Lord taught us to pray that we not be led into temptation. Why do we pray not to be led into temptation? It is because we are weak, because we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves. It is because our fallen nature is already tainted by rebelliousness against God’s authority, and is inclined to yield to temptation.
In baptism, we renounced the devil, the world, and the flesh, and we were born again to a new life in Christ. In baptism, our sins were washed away, but not our lusts; against those we still have had to fight even after we were born again. It is those lusts that are part of our nature to which the tempter appeals, it is the inner rebelliousness that the tempter would turn into full-scale rebellion.
But God is faithful. He has provided remedies against temptation. He will not allow us to be tempted more than we are able to resist. But we have to ask God for help and we have to avail ourselves of the remedies that he has provided. And God knows what we need before we ask, and so those remedies are available to us to build up our resistance to temptation before the time of testing comes.
In baptism, our souls were infused with the grace of God to quell our inner rebelliousnes; but we must cooperate with that grace to keep the rebelliousness subdued. God can provide us the strength that we ourselves lack, but we must be willing to use that strength.
Elsewhere in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul compares the Christian life to the life of a warrior or an athlete. An athlete, to be competitive must always be in training. He cannot win if he only stresses himself on the day of the big game. He may have innate skill, strength, and coordination; but he has to work out every day in order to be able to use those traits effectively when he takes the field.
God has given us his grace in baptism, and his grace is sufficient for us. But we need to build up our own ability to work with and use that grace that has been infused in our souls. Just as an athlete begins his training program running a few laps, lifting a few pounds, and then builds up steadily, we, too, need to begin our exercise against light resistance.
Every day we meet with little temptations, or, perhaps one should say, with temptations to little sins. Maybe they do not quite appear as temptations, maybe the sins are just minor infractions. We can fight them off, or we can give in to them; maybe knowing that we are strong enough to resist them if we want to excuses giving in every now and then. But if we make resistance habitual, we gradually build up our strength for the time—and we do not know when the time may come—when we face a greater temptation.
If we make it a habit to call on God’s grace to resist the slightest temptation, we will not hesitate to call on God’s grace when we are really put to the test.
God has provided us resources to build up our resistance to temptation. We have only to make use of them.
First, there are the sacraments. In baptism we are born again and God’s grace is infused into our soul. In Holy Communion, we are fed with the very body and blood of Jesus Christ, God incarnate: our bodies are made clean by his body, our souls are washed by his most precious blood.
Then, there is Scripture. The whole of Scripture was written for our learning. The regular reading of Scripture reminds us of God’s love to us-ward, shown in his mighty acts from the beginning of the world until now. If we make a practice of reading Scripture regularly, then we have the assurance of God’s grace in our mind all the time.
There is always prayer, because God hears us when we call to him. If we make it a practice to talk to God regularly, every day, maybe several times a day, then we will have that much more confidence to call on him in times of special need.
In his letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul did not promise that they or we would not be tempted to sin; and he did not promise that God would protect them or us from temptation. What he promised them was that God is faithful, and will not allow us to be tempted more than we are able to bear. Whether we actually do bear up under temptation depends upon whether we are willing to cooperate with the grace of God that is in us and to use the resources that God has made available to us.