James 1:13-16 – Did the Devil Really Make you Buy that Dress?

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.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.

James 1:13-16

This may seem like a neck-snapping transition as James moves his discussion from tests and trials to comments about temptations; perhaps it is. But I think James is continuing his discussion about trials by trying to head off a sort of faulty thinking that still persists today. Simply put, James does not want his audience to be deceived into thinking that temptations come from God; they don’t, they come from us. James wants his audience to separate the trials resulting from being a believer from the temptations with which they struggle. God can test us through trials — just ask Abraham, Isaac, and Job — but he doesn’t tempt us to sin.

It might be helpful to go back to James 1:2-12 and re-read that passage with this distinction in mind. I think you will see that James, in telling his audience to rejoice in the trials they face, indicates those things brought on because they believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, not temptations that might lead them to sin.

I realize this may seem like an obvious distinction, but I’ve heard people muddle up the two. But what such people don’t seem to understand is that while we may take joy in the trials we experience, we shouldn’t take joy in the temptations we endure. For example, which of the following statements seems to make the most sense?

Statement A: I am being chased out of town because I believe in Jesus; thank the Lord that I am counted worthy to be persecuted for his name!

Statement B: There is a naked picture of a very attractive person in front of me; thank the Lord that I am being counted worthy to be tempted for his name!

I’m fairly certain that reasonable people will conclude that statement A seems consistent with the whole of scripture while statement B does not. We may take joy in what God is bringing about because of our trials, and even the trials themselves, but we should not have the same response when it comes to temptations. James doesn’t even hint at the possibility that there is a positive result from being tempted; in fact, he states exactly the opposite.

James provides a clear cause-and-effect chain that helps us understand how temptation works. Temptations occur when we are lured and enticed by our own desire; not by the hand of God. Nothing external to ourselves entices us into temptation; it all comes from us. And then our own desire brings forth sin and ultimately death.

Notice that James uses sexually charged terms to describe this chain of cause-and-effect. We are lured and enticed by desire. Desire conceives and gives birth. I think James uses those familiar terms, not because all sin is sexual — it isn’t — but because sexual desire is nearly universal and we probably understand its nature more explicitly than anything else. But there is a second reason why I believe James uses sexually charged language; the path from conception to maturity necessarily implies the passage of time.

Conception can take place after only one attempt or it might require multiple attempts before conception occurs. Then, once conceived, a baby grows in the womb for about nine months. Following birth, it takes many years for the baby to become a mature man or woman. Just as the process of conception to maturity is a slow process, so also is the path from temptation to death.

There are times when I’ve immediately given into temptation and sinned when confronted with desire, but there have been other times when it took multiple engagements with temptation before my desire gave birth to sin. Some desires might immediately conceive sin, but other desires could require years before I finally conceive sin. Regardless of which desire, how it was conceived, or how long it took, sin always matures into death.

I remember the comedian Flip Wilson perform a comedy sketch involving a preacher and his wife Geraldine. Geraldine walks into the house with an expensive dress in her hands. Her husband, the preacher, asks Geraldine why she bought the dress. She replies, “The devil made me buy that dress.” (You can listen to the sketch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kaiLcwHXB4). Whether you are old enough to remember Flip Wilson or not, you have probably, like Geraldine, blamed someone else for your own sins. But James tells us that we are to blame. To better understand this, let’s look at Genesis 3 through the eyes of James.

When Eve was in the garden, the serpent asked her if God really said they weren’t to eat of the tree. He then told Eve that God didn’t want Eve to eat of the tree because if she did she would become like God. At this point, you might be tempted to say, along with Flip Wilson, “the devil made her eat that fruit.” But the serpent was not to blame for Eve’s choice.

In James’s eyes, unless Eve already had the desire to be like God then nothing the serpent could ever say would have caused her to eat the fruit. If Eve didn’t already want freedom from God then the serpent would have been wasting his breath. Eve was the source of her own temptation; she had the desire within her that lured and enticed her away from God’s ways. And so Eve, just as James describes, allowed her temptation to conceive and give birth to sin; she pulled the fruit from the tree and, after probably smelling it and brushing the dust from its surface, sunk her teeth into the fruit.

Just like Eve, if Geraldine hadn’t wanted that dress, nothing the devil could say or do would have enticed her to buy the dress. And if you didn’t want to _, nothing anyone — the media, the devil, our neighbors, our friends — could ever say or do would entice you to _. [You know yourself best, so I’ll let you fill in the blanks on your own.] It’s that simple. We never lie unless we want to lie. We never steal unless we want to steal. We never commit adultery unless we want to commit adultery. There is nothing we ever do that we don’t first long to do.
Just take a moment to think about that.

If you look back at the sins you have committed you will realize that every sin was something you wanted to do. Sure, you might have felt bad about doing it, maybe you even felt nervous about starting down the path toward doing it, but in the end, it was always something you wanted to do. Sin is an expression of the desire that lives within you.

Even if we see death lurking at the end of the path — and I would suggest that most of the time we do — we figure we can step off the path before encountering death. For some reason, we always think we will be the exception, but we aren’t; death always awaits us with open arms. This was true in the Garden, it was true in James’s time, and it is true today. Nothing has changed. You know it and I know it, but we still need to be reminded about it.

And we are responsible; there is no one else to blame for our own sins. The devil didn’t make us do it; we made ourselves do it. The cause for any temptation, and the resultant sin, is not external, it is internal. Sure, there might be all sorts of things going on around us, but none of them are enticing or alluring. Yes, that’s what I said; none of the sinful activities going on around us are enticing or alluring. It is our own desires which entice us and lure us away to sin.

There might be a building down the road in which some sinful activity takes place, but that building and those people inside do not entice you; you do that yourself. There might be a website, a magazine, a politician, a media star, a bad driver which you blame for luring you into sin, but you are just passing the buck. If you didn’t want to sin in that particular way, you wouldn’t; they — whoever or whatever they are — just happened to be there to allow you to express your desires.

But not everyone is enticed into every sin. I mean, just as each of us is attracted to specific types of people, each of us is attracted to a specific type of sin. Our own desire — the desire unique to each one of us — is for that sin to which we wish to become united. Certainly, we can walk away from the wretched hives of scum and villainy that surround us, but we can’t walk away from our own desires.

This is a bleak picture, I know. And it seems like an awful place to leave off, but that is exactly what we will do. But don’t fret; hope is found in the next passage, but that will have to wait until the next post. In the meantime, I encourage you to consider James’s words; think about your own desires and how they have lured and enticed you into temptation and sin. You may even want to grab a pen and a blank piece of paper and become brutally honest with yourself; list all of your desires that entice you to sin; then pray about those longings — give them to God. Ask for ways in which you can avoid, manage, or escape those people, places, and things. But remember, the solution is not solely found in managing your desires or running away — though both are highly recommended. The solution to sin is found in a changed heart filled with new desires. And it is that to which James addresses his comments in the following passages.