Last week during church, we were going through Matthew 4, which starts with the story of the temptation of Jesus. A question was asked about the connection with this story and the statement made by James that God cannot be tempted. Here are the verses:
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. – Matthew 4:1
Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. – James 1:13
Do we have a contradiction here? James tells us that God cannot be tempted and Matthew describes the story of Jesus being tempted. The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is both man and God. Jesus is not a man that has a special connection with God, but he is God. So when James tells us that God cannot be tempted, then why was Jesus tempted?
If we look at the Greek behind these verses there is help. In Matthew 4:1 the work tempted is used once and in James 1:13 the we find the word tempted four times. In each case, the Greek word is the same word with grammatical variations. The key phrase is: "God cannot be tempted", which is two words in the Greek, God and 'not-tempted'. The form of 'not-tempted' is the negated form, typically done in Greek by adding the letter 'a' in front of a word. The definition of this 'not-tempted' word in Greek is 'not able to be tempted'.
James is telling us that you can try to tempt God, but you will not be successful. God is not affected by any temptation. In Matthew, the devil tries to tempt Jesus, but the result is known ahead of time. Jesus is God, so no one is able to tempt him.
It appears the contradiction is not valid. What to you think?
