The Lord's Prayerنموونە

Protection

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one

The Bible takes it for granted that we are in a fight against evil and that this is a battle that doesn’t just simply involve us resisting some sort of abstract principles of evil, but also evil in a personal form. The idea of some malignant, intelligent power of evil operating in the world today is something that very few people, unless they are religious, take seriously. Given the evidence for evil in the world today I find this is somewhat surprising. There are probably several reasons for this dismissal: evil is often caricatured (think of the red-clad cartoon devil with the pitchfork) or abused as with tragic cases of exorcisms that go wrong, or those rather pathetic statements such as ‘the devil made me do it’.

In fact, let’s begin with that curious phrase the evil one. Older Bible versions of the Lord’s Prayer had the idea of us being ‘delivered from evil’ as if it was some sort of abstract philosophical state. There is general agreement, however, that what Jesus is talking about here is deliverance from an evil one. Now there are lots of issues here and I refer you to my book on the Lord’s Prayer for more detailed coverage. Nevertheless, it seems that to be any sort of consistent ‘biblical Christian’ we must believe in the presence in the world of some evil spiritual entity, infinitely inferior to God, but nevertheless capable of opposing him and who is a malicious and powerful opponent of believers. In fact, the way the world is, it’s often easier to believe in the existence of a devil than to believe in a good God. 

The evil one here is mentioned as an agent of temptation. This, too, needs careful handling. One danger is that we imagine it is God himself who does the temptation and that, in the Lord’s Prayer, we are asking God ‘to ease off’. Perhaps the best way of viewing this clause is to make a distinction between testing and temptation. Testing, whether physically or spiritually, is a good thing. To pass a test is something that is encouraging and allows us to realize that we have grown. Nevertheless, if God can use a test to make us grow, the devil can turn it into temptation to break us. 

It may help to think that what this passage is talking about is something that can be described both as temptation and testing. From God’s point of view what we are getting is a test to demonstrate the quality of our faith; if we pass the test we can be encouraged at this sign of our spiritual growth. But if we assume the existence of the devil, then the same test can be seen from a different perspective; if we fail then he has struck a blow against our Christian faith.

So what are we praying here? Quite simply we are praying that, faced with temptation or testing we will triumph and not fall. We are praying for God to help us to resist the challenges of the evil one.  Let me offer three suggestions here.

First, we should recognize that every day, in every way, there are tests and temptations heading towards us. We need to be prepared.

Second, we do not face the evil one defenseless. God has given his children the Holy Spirit to help them. It is an act of incredible folly to try to deal with some sort of serious temptation without resorting to the one whom God has given his children to defend them.

Third, it’s a classic tactic of the ‘evil one’ that when we fall – and we all fall at some time or another – he tries to make us believe that, with this failure, we are permanently finished with God. Actually, if we are indeed God’s children then although our failure to pass the test grieves our heavenly Father, it is not cause for him to reject us. Our failure to pass the test does not destroy the nature of our relationship with our heavenly Father – we remain his children – but it does damage the quality of our relationship.