What do you do with temptation?

Character is not developed only when we are doing good. It is also revealed when we are tempted to do wrong. Every human being faces temptation. The temptation may be sexual. It may be financial. It may involve anger, dishonesty or pride. It may involve revenge, substances or the desire for recognition. Temptation itself is not sin. Jesus was tempted.

Hebrews adds an important truth:

For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Because He understands our weakness without sharing our sin, we are invited to come to Him. The question is what we do when temptation arrives.

Joseph’s test

Joseph provides one of Scripture’s clearest examples. He was young. He was far from home. He was in a powerful man’s house. He was tempted sexually. And there was apparently very little immediate human accountability. Joseph could have reasoned, “Who will ever know?” Instead he said:

How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?

That sentence reveals character. Joseph understood something profound: God was present even when no human being was watching. That is integrity. Notice also what he did next. The woman spoke to him “day by day,” and “he did not heed her” (Genesis 39:10). When she finally caught him by his garment, “he left his garment in her hand, and fled and went outside” (Genesis 39:12). He did not stay to test his strength. He ran. Paul gives the same instruction to Timothy: “Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:22).

Joseph paid for his integrity. He was falsely accused and thrown into prison. Doing the right thing does not always protect us from the wrong consequences. But the character he formed in that house was the character that later governed Egypt.

David: how temptation grows

David’s failure shows how temptation grows when it is not resisted early. The account begins with an ordinary detail: “It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel... But David remained at Jerusalem” (2 Samuel 11:1). He was in the wrong place. He saw. He inquired. He sent for her, and he took her (2 Samuel 11:2-4). James describes the pattern that David’s story illustrates:

But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.

The progression is clear: desire, enticement, conception, sin, death. The time to resist is at the beginning, before desire is allowed to conceive. Joseph fled at the door; David lingered at the window. Both men were forgiving, praying, godly men. The difference was what they did in the first moment.

Jesus in the wilderness

The temptation of Jesus shows us how to answer. After forty days of fasting, the tempter came to Him. Each time Jesus responded with Scripture: “It is written” (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10). He did not rely on His own cleverness or argue with the tempter. He answered from the Word of God. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Knowing Scripture in advance prepares us for the moment when no time remains to look for an answer.

The secret test

The real test of temptation often comes down to this: whom do I want to please more, myself or God? The natural heart says, “What do I want?” The transformed heart increasingly asks, “What does God want?” That is the battle, and we should not underestimate it. The Christian life is not the absence of temptation. It is learning to surrender temptation to Christ. Paul gives this warning and this promise:

Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

God provides a way of escape. But we must choose it.