In a couple of recent conversations the issue of temptation has been alluded to or discussed. Those conversations reminded me of a brief work I read several years ago of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on temptation. (It is entitled Temptation.) It was one of those books that I found so insightful that I can remember it with some clarity, unlike many other things that I read that I cannot remember a few days later. To liven up our blog a little, I offer this insight to all those who struggle with temptations of divers sorts. Seek to develop a dependence on Christ and on His Word, not your own strength.

If temptation were really what natural man and moral man understand by it, namely, testing of their own strength — whether their vital or their moral or even their Christian strength — in resistance, on the enemy, then it is true that Christ’s prayer would be incomprehensible. [Here Bonhoeffer is referring to the Lord’s Prayer — ‘Lead us not into temptation . . .’] For that life is won only from death and the good only from the evil is a piece of thoroughly worldly knowledge which is not strange to the Christian. But all this has nothing to do with the temptation of which Christ speaks. It simply does not touch the reality which is meant here. The temptation of which the whole Bible speaks does not have to do with the testing of my strength, for it is of the very essence of temptation in the Bible that all my strength — to my horror, and without my being able to do anything about it — is turned against me; really all my powers, including my good and pious powers (the strength of my faith), fall into the hands of the enemy power and are now led into the field against me. Before there can be any testing of my powers, I have been robbed of them.

From Temptatiion by Dietrich Bonhoeffer