“12 Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. 13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”
– 1 Corinthians 10:12-13 (ESV)
Anytime I come across a text such as 1 Cor. 10:12-13, where there is a stern warning followed by a reminder that His grace is sufficient for the challenge, my soul feels as if it has been put through a furnace fired by His Glory that God uses to forge within me a renewed and grateful heart! As tempted as I might be to focus strictly on the reminder of His grace, I must be faithful to the text and acknowledge that Paul’s stern warning is too often the truth of myself. The warning Paul issues is warranted. As for many other such powerful texts, the ultimate reason behind the “take heed” is to redirect the misguided toward the true source of encouragement, renewal, and emboldenment for the believer in Christ. Because one’s ego, pride, adrenaline, and any number of other traits native to humans will lead us to naturally process the Word of God for the purpose of self-glorifying, verse 12’s warning precedes the grace assured in verse 13.
Had Paul not warned us of our own self-glorifying tendencies by saying that “ anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall”, the whole premise of verse 13 could easily be misconstrued. One could twist GOD’s grace statement here to rather say something such as “You can do it, as long as you set your mind to it,” exactly the sort of mindset Paul is warning against! By no means should we presume to find freedom from temptation and victory over sin by bearing the weight on our own backs. The truth is, brothers and sisters, we CANNOT bear it. Period. There is no amount of effort or strength of will that we can muster up within our human capability to produce God-granted, blood-bought, Spirit-testifying sanctification. According to 1st Peter 1:2b, sanctification is of the Spirit. Once we realize that we think we are the ones who stand and then, we appropriately and immediately “take heed”, we will rightly perceive God’s faithfulness and provision to man in his daily fight against his own flesh sweeter all the more! May we be wary of our own hearts if we begin to think that we have pulled ourselves up by our own boot straps and hustled our way up the mountain of righteousness! For it is only by God’s faithful provision for His beloved that we may ENDURE temptation, much less CONQUER SIN! Ultimate victory over sin can be attributed only to the fact that as God’s elect–His own children!–we enjoy the fulfilled promise of our faithful God Who bought our victory with the blood of the resurrected Christ!
With that being said, our broken nature will look down on the idea of merely enduring temptation because our inward desire is to attain perfection. For such a standard to be met, sin in its entirety–temptation included–must be eradicated. This particular desire is gifted to us by God as His own holy standard. The Devil is good at twisting not only God’s Word, but also His very attributes. Our enemy is one that can use our God-gifted thirst for righteousness and turn it into deep despair when we try in our own strength and fail over and over again. Our yearning to be completely sanctified here in this life in our mortal bodies can easily give way to impatience; impatience, to carelessness; carelessness inevitably gives way to lawlessness which began the pattern to start with! The whole process repeats incessantly, like a broken record under the turntable’s needle. One can begin to hear Satan’s low, persistent hisses… “You keep struggling, you weak sinner. If God was really who He said He was He would’ve taken away your struggle completely. After all, isn’t that what He said He was going to do ‘take away the sins of the world.’? There’s no point in continuing this pointless fight, you’ve lost. You will always lose. You’re human. Just accept it.” Haven’t you heard something similar, dear reader?
If so, my brothers and sisters, allow me to silence the enemy by pointing you to Romans 8:15-17. “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” The enduring, the suffering, the waiting, the grinding, all of it! Are not signs of God’s absence from you; rather they are all proof of the Spirit’s TESTIMONY on your behalf that you are a CHILD OF GOD. The cries for help that we yell into the night to our Father are not pointless whimpers, but glorified testimonies to His faithful work in your life! So praise God for the struggling, my beloved! Going to GOD with our suffering will result in the light of His glory shining through the darkness to mend our broken hearts!
I wish to leave you with this thought to ponder: enduring this life’s ordeals is not only the sign of God’s redeeming work in our earthly lives, but also the reminder–based soundly upon assured hope–that when Christ comes with His Kingdom, the enduring of temptation will become defeated sin, never to be battled again.