Lead Us Not into Temptation, But Deliver Us from Evil

We pray “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil” because we are in a warzone: The Kingdom of Darkness invaded God’s world. You live in a very real, spiritual war. You’ve got the sign of the cross on your head and a target on your back. You and I live in a dystopian world where evil is normal. Evil is multifaceted. Evil is a condition, it’s an act, it’s a way of life, and Evil is a real, living being. We see evil all around us in sin and poverty and shame and death and misery and heartache, but evil is also personified, and his name is Satan.

The Devil has two primary weapons in his arsenal of evil: lies and fear. The devil introduced sin into this world with a lie in the Garden of Eden. Sin is believing the lie that God is holding out on a better life for you so you must love yourself by doing things your way. Luther says, “though I am now chaste, patient, kind, and in firm faith, the devil will this very hour send such an arrow into my heart that I can scarcely stand. For he is an enemy that never stops or becomes tired. So when one temptation stops, there always arise others and fresh ones.” Too often people push the idea of Satan into a small area of what we consider “supernatural.” In reality, he attacks all areas in our life: home, work, family, school, health, soul—not just the ones we consider “spiritual.” There’s a sinner who lives inside you that Satan loves to play with, tempting you to lust after people as objects for your own pleasure, to laziness so that you don’t have to do the hard work of serving others, to gluttony and drunkenness and greed making life all about your own enjoyment, to give in to anger and impatience, to hatred and hostility, violence and vengeance, cursing and slander, envy and arrogance. After he softens you up with a missile barrage of temptations, Satan goes for the final blow: he tempts you to ignore and despise God’s Word and works. His plan is textbook divide and conquer; isolate you from God and go for the kill: tear you away from faith and destroy all your hope and dependence on God.

That’s when Satan brandishes his other devastating weapon of fear. In his book, The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis says, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” Satan wants your attention. He wants you to give in to the fear that he has more power over you than God does, that you are in his control. He haunts houses to scare its residents into fearing evil’s power. He wants you to fear pain and discomfort and suffering in the world to make you believe God is not properly caring for you. He wants you to fear God’s damnation for indulging temptations.

But, dear Christian, do not believe Satan’s lies and do not fear. Something miraculous has happened. You were baptized. God, who was once your enemy, sent His Son behind enemy lines to save you. You’ve switched sides. That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray, “lead us not into temptation”. It’s not praying that God would remove temptation; it’s praying you won’t give in to temptation. Hebrews 2:18 says, “For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” Jesus fought the battle for us that we could not fight ourselves: He overcame temptation and never sinned. And He gives us His same Holy Spirit as divine air support to help us resist temptation.

But the truth is, try as you might, for the rest of your life, you will give in to temptation because you are a sinner. Jesus doesn’t save you by putting you in His battle suit and sending you to the front lines against temptation and the Devil. Jesus saves you by bestowing on you His badge of victory and His medal of righteousness. The forgiveness of the cross is Heaven’s nuclear strike against Hell. Even if it is the one-millionth time you’ve given in, pray it, confess it, receive forgiveness. The church is a field hospital that administers forgiveness, it’s a training ground in God’s truth, it’s a radio tower of prayer for divine air support, and it’s a rally point to the hope of the cross.

Jesus doesn’t teach you to pray a prayer He doesn’t plan on answering. When Jesus teaches you to pray, “deliver us from evil”, it’s a promise that He will. In Luther’s day, children were taught that whenever they witnessed something scary or terrible or evil, to make the sign of the cross as a reminder that God promised to deliver them from evil. God is powerful to save: He delivered Jesus from all your sin, from death, from hell, and even from the power of the Devil by raising Him from the dead—and He promises the same to you. The Lord’s Prayer is our battle cry and a terrible reminder to Satan that the victorious Jesus will deliver us from evil.