Someone once approached me with a clever argument designed to disprove Jesus’ divinity. Their line of reasoning went something like this:
The Bible says, “God cannot be tempted” (James 1:13),
yet Jesus was “tempted in all things” (Hebrews 4:15).
Therefore, Jesus cannot be God.
This person’s calculated arrangement of fragmented verses demonstrated the craftiness of using Scripture to oppose sound biblical doctrine. It also highlighted the necessity for us, as believers, to always read verses in context when presented with arguments to discredit the Bible, to ensure that passages are not misquoted, misinterpreted, or taken out of their context and assigned meanings that differ from the writer’s intention.
Such was the case with this argument.
After reading both verses in their respective contexts in James and Hebrews, I was immediately struck by the formulation of their presented argument. They intentionally isolated and removed certain words from each passage and combined them to make their case, completely ignoring the context of each verse that contradicted their argument. The faulty premise of their claim also struck me because it assumed each reference to “tempted” in both passages meant the same thing. However, that was not the case.
The only accurate component of their argument was this: Jesus was tempted in all things. Hebrews 4:15 reads, “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.”
However, the rest of their argument was flawed and false. James does not state, “God cannot be tempted,” as if Jesus could not be God because He was tempted by Satan. Rather, James 1:13-14 says, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.”
The focus and context of James 1:13-14 were sinful human temptations. James identified the source of human temptation as originating from their internal, lustful passion for evil, not from God. In other words, fallen humanity’s temptations to sin stem from their sinful nature within.
These revelations about human temptation provide the framework for correctly understanding and interpreting James’ statements about God, namely that He cannot be tempted by evil because He does not possess an evil, sinful nature like fallen humanity. Rather, He possesses a holy, righteous, and divine nature that radiates purity exclusively.
As such, James’ declaration, “God cannot be tempted by evil” conveyed the impossibility for God to experience an internal desire, craving, or longing to sin like fallen humanity, nor can He be enticed, provoked, persuaded, bribed, swayed by, or presented with anything evil that would ever evoke a yearning within Himself to entice others to sin. In other words, God is immune to experiencing internally based temptations, but that does not exempt Him from encountering temptations from external sources, such as Jesus experienced from Satan in the wilderness. Hence, Jesus is not disqualified as God for being tempted (by Satan), as the presented argument tried to prove but failed.
I hope this information helps you understand this vital topic and equips you to unravel these types of clever and cunningly calculated arguments designed to discredit Jesus, the Bible, and sound doctrine.
