“No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Day three of camp was all about living a holy life. If we are going to go higher in our relationship with God, we are going to have to come to look more like Him. This means growing in holiness. God is holy. If we worship Him, if we love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we will come to reflect His holiness in and through our own lives. That’s natural for someone who is in Christ. What’s unnatural for a Jesus follower is sin. And yet sin keeps getting in our way. As a result, in worship tonight we talked about one of the vehicles sin uses for that: temptation. Let’s dive in a bit deeper.

Temptation is tricky stuff. It’s tricky enough it gets mentioned in one capacity or another several times. What Paul writes here in his letter to the Corinthian believers is one of the more important statements on it. Before we jump into that, though, let’s start here: Jesus understands our struggles with temptation.

Matthew and Luke both highlight this in their Gospels. After His baptism, Jesus went into the wilderness where He spent forty days in prayer and fasting. At the end of that time, He was tempted directly by the devil. He resisted all three attempts, refuting the devil’s lies (including deceptively framing Scripture itself) with His clear and firm grasp of Scripture.

The author of Hebrews (4:14-16) points out why this scene matters so much. It lets us know that Jesus is familiar with our struggles against sin and with temptation. This obviously wasn’t the only time He was tempted, but it was a significant moment all the same. Jesus’ familiarity with temptation allows Him to intercede for us before the Father even more effectively than He could have without it. It also means that we can go to God with greater boldness since we know we have an advocate with the Father who understands our position perfectly.

Still, though, advocate or no, we face temptation. These don’t ever come from God, as James (1:13-15) makes clear. God doesn’t tempt, nor is He tempted. Instead, our own desires lead us astray when we follow them. You see, every temptation we face is nothing more than an opportunity. That’s all temptation is: an opportunity.

More specifically, temptation is an opportunity to do something our way or on our timing rather than in God’s way or on His timing. The more we want whatever it is, the harder it is to say no to ourselves. For indeed, in battling temptation, we are only ever battling against our desires, not those of someone else.

This brings us back to what Paul writes here for the Corinthian believers. When we face a temptation of some kind, it’s never unique. Our experience of it may be unique to us, but the desire whose expression or fulfillment we are battling is not unique in and of itself. It is something someone else has faced and either fought or fallen to. This means several things, but for now it mostly means we aren’t ever alone in our temptation. Whatever desire you have, someone else has had or currently has it.

Because we are not alone, that means we have help. We have help from people if we want it. We have help from, more importantly, from God. Paul tells us that God won’t ever let us face a temptation beyond what we can bear. This is a fact of great comfort. You won’t ever face an opportunity to do something your way instead of God’s way that you can’t walk away from, choosing God’s way as the right one. To put that another way, sin is never a foregone conclusion. There’s always an out.

Speaking of an out, what comes next in the last part of the verse is really important. Here, Paul unpacks the means by which God helps us bear it rather than falling to it. He gives us a way out. If He has allowed you to be harassed by some temptation, He always has an exit strategy for you. He does this so you can bear it.

Think for just a second about what that means. God’s way for you to bear up under temptation is to remove you from it. This is consistent with Paul’s divinely inspired command to flee temptation. God doesn’t intend for us to just sit there and stew in a place of temptation. He intends for us to go away from it. Quickly. That’s how He delivers some of His help.

But, and this is important, His help is the necessary ingredient here. Without the presence and power of His Spirit in our lives, we don’t stand a chance in the face of temptation. Remember what we’ve been talking about in Romans? On our own, we are slaves of sin. Our desires are far more powerful than we can successfully battle when we are operating on our own.

Instead, we need to lean into the help He provides through His Spirit in us. We need to let the Spirit do His growing work in us. And this is a help the Spirit provides us in Christ. We let Him sow seeds of righteousness in our lives, and the fruit of His work will come to bear. We will see more love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. We will see ourselves growing in holiness, going ever higher in our relationship with God. That is an effort definitely worth it.