"Let no man say"

In James 1:12, we see the reward of enduring through trials. In James 1:13-18, we see the nature of our trials. James 1:13 states, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." There are many that believe that God puts us through trials to test our faith; this is not true. God is holy. He can have no association with evil. This prohibits Him from tempting us to sin. Anything that God does is good; it is perfect. From the beginning of our Bibles we read, "In the beginning God created the heavens and earth" (Genesis 1:1). He created everything in six days. God spoke and no only "was it so" but "it was good" (Genesis 1). This word translated "good" came from the Hebrew word towb or tobe, which means "to be good (or well) in the widest sense: to be better" (Strong's Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary of the Old Testament, 2895). God could not help but make things that are "good." When God creates or changes something it instantly becomes better. One cannot read of any account in the Bible of God making a mistake or making something worse than it was to begin with.

Many of the world try to accuse God of mistakes or making something worse than it was originally. For example, when God destroyed those on the earth with the flood. Satan, which translated means "the accuser," and his children make the accusation that when the Bible states, "It repented the Lord that he made man on the earth," that He had done something wrong. The word "repent" is translated from the primitive Hebrew word nacham, which literally means, "to sigh, i.e. breathe strongly; by implication, to be sorry" (Strong's Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary of the Old Testament, 5162). One can do something good and still feel sorry that you had done it. When we chastise our children to correct their error, we know we have to do it, but we still feel bad sometimes when we do it. God created mankind on the sixth day and when He had looked back on everything that He had created, "it was very good" (Genesis 1:31). This includes mankind. Men have been and always will be free moral agents. We have the God-given right to decide our own fate. If we chose good, reward. If we chose bad, punishment.

In Genesis 6, mankind had chosen evil and the Lord knew that it was time to purge the earth from all of its evil. He was cleansing the earth; He was making it better. These same people point at Jesus' crucifixion and accuse God of error. They believe that God and Jesus were to originally create an earthly kingdom, but the Jews had rejected Christ. So God instituted the church until the Messiah returns to earth once again and sets up His kingdom. This is a misunderstanding of many passages. Jesus was always prophesied to die a death of a martyr. In Isaiah 53, the entire chapter is a discussion of the trials and death Jesus would endure perfectly while here on the earth. Prophesies found in Daniel 2, Joel 2 and Isaiah 2 all point to the creation of the kingdom of God or the mountain of the Lord's house. In Acts 2, we see the creation of this kingdom, the creation of this house. In Acts 2:47, "the Lord added to this church daily such as should be saved." This was not plan B. This was the plan from the beginning. In 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14, we read that, "God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth; Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ." We are called by the gospel. The gospel is what brings us into the church, the kingdom. From the beginning, God planned our salvation and made no mistakes in the process thereof.

When we are tempted we cannot blame God. God gives us the exact opposite of temptation: "Every good gift and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures" (James 1:17-18).

God gives us all we need and more. He is perfect and immovable. He will always be perfect, so it is we that separate ourselves from Him. We are lead away from our Father by our own lusts. We see something that appeals to one of our desires (cf. 1 John 2:16) and we follow after it. This begins our digression. James 1:14-15 tells us, "every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." Yielding to temptation can only and will only result in our spiritual death. We are putting something ahead of our God. When one sins, they are disregarding God's laws for the gratification of their own desires; we are putting our own desires before our Father's. In Isaiah 59:1-2, we are told, "Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear; But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear." God can have no association with us while in our sinful state. Our lusts cause us to be separated from God, so we must transform ourselves to His will to be right with Him once again. Paul charges Christians everywhere in Romans 12:2 to be "not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." By rejecting self and accepting God, we remove the separation between us and the Father. That is why James commands us simply in James 1:16, "Do not err, my beloved brethren." The word "err" means to wander off. Satan does not kidnap you and pull you forcefully from God's protection; we wander off from the Father by willfully following our own lusts. Let us be mindful of where we stand and keep from separating ourselves resulting in eternal Hell.

Jeremy Ferguson