Desires

“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” James 1:13-15

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” Genesis 3:6

God never tempts anyone to sin but rather our own fleshly nature does. God sometimes brings trials/thorns in our life to test us, such as certain Philistines left in the Land of Promise to test Israel and Paul’s thorn in the flesh but any temptation to sin is produced by us alone when we fail the test.

We are tempted when we are lured by our own fleshly desires and when we act on these desires it gives birth to sin and if repeated enough to death. This could be a death to a reputation, friendship, marriage, job, self-control and perhaps even physical death in some situations, although not to our relationship with God if we confess our sins (I John 1:9).

In Eve’s sin in the Garden, desire for the fruit of the one forbidden tree (aroused partly because it was forbidden) caused the loss of her and Adam’s perfect life in Eden. The pain of childbirth for Eve and difficulty for Adam in bringing forth the earth’s fruit were other penalties paid for their sin. God, however, did not break off fellowship with them but still was there to fellowship with them in the cool of the day. God even replaced their inadequate fig loincloths with garments of animal skins, the killing of the animals symbolic of Christ’s blood that would one day atone for their (and our) sins. This is illustrative of the principle that God restores fellowship to Christians even after we sin but does not always cancel the consequences.

No one can ever rightly accuse God of tempting to sin. Our own sin nature does. But to the extent that we walk in the power of the Holy Spirit we can avoid fulfilling the lusts of the flesh (Galatians 5:16) and the consequences that our sins produce.