What Does 'Lead Us Not into Temptation' Mean?

This petition raises an honest puzzle: if we ask God not to “lead us into temptation,” does that mean God tempts people toward sin? Scripture answers plainly that he does not. “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” (James 1:13). Temptation to sin comes from our own sinful desires, from the world, and from the devil—never from God, who wills our holiness, not our fall.

So Luther clarifies exactly what we are and aren’t asking: “God tempts no one, but we pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice.” We are not asking God to stop doing something evil. We are asking him to protect us—to keep us from being overwhelmed by the temptations that constantly assail us, and to guard our faith when we are tested. It is a prayer for spiritual defense.

There is also a distinction worth knowing between temptation (enticement to sin, which is evil) and testing (trials that can strengthen and prove faith, which God may permit for good). God does allow his people to be tested—as he tested Abraham, and as the Spirit led Jesus to be tempted in the wilderness—but always with a purpose of good and always with a limit. Paul’s promise anchors the whole petition: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

The petition also breeds humility. Jesus told his sleepy disciples, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Matthew 26:41). We pray this precisely because we know how weak we are—how easily we deceive ourselves and fall. It is the prayer of someone who has stopped trusting his own strength to resist, and has learned to cry out for a stronger hand to hold him.