πειρασμός (pi-ras-mos'): “Lead us not into testing”—Part I: Summary of the Lord’s Prayer with initial synthesis of peirasmos

[Reading time: 5 mintues]

Summary of the opening four petitions of the Lord’s Prayer

We spent 3 posts on the fourth petition of the ἐπιούσιος (e-pe-ü'-se-os) bread, in which we contended, together with many of the Church Fathers, that the meaning of this highly debated phrase is not so much us asking for the material, biological sustenance of “daily bread” that keeps our bodies momentarily alive in this age [and which, we might add, Jesus in the verses that follow specifically tells us not to ask for (Mt 6:25, 31-33)], but rather it is the eternal bread of Deuteronomy 8 and John 6, which is the the “Word of God” that activates in us now the life of the coming Kingdom. And this living bread, which is none other than Christ Himself, becomes the integrating center of the prayer that unites the opening petitions calling for God’s name to be hallowed, His Kingdom to come and His will to be done with all that follows. We ask, then, for these realities to become operationalized now, today—”Give us this very day” (δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον) such that these eternal realities “in heaven” become present here and now “on earth” (ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς). And when we do so, we are asking that all things “that are in heaven and that are on earth” which have been created in Christ (Col 1:16), now become reconciled in Him (Col 1:20), such that the life of God’s eternal Kingdom fill and reshape the present moment (Mt 13:33; Lk 17:21).

Yet we must ask how can this be possible?

How can this be?

In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together, it can occur only “through and in Christ”—For it is He alone Who is the only One able to unite us “on earth” to God “in heaven” so that our lives here and now begin to resemble the life of God’s eternal Kingdom. And it should be mentioned here that in Syriac versions of the prayer, the epiousios bread was often translated as the “future bread” or the “bread of tomorrow” or the “bread of the future age” that comes to us here and now in us only through Jesus. And carrying this interpretation forward further, the early liturgies of the Church frame the witness of our partaking of the Lord’s Supper “as the sacrament of the Kingdom…its end and fulfillment.”. As we partake of this bread “today”, it inaugurates in us the life of the Kingdom to come, renewing us into the new creational community that is realized only through and in Christ.

The fifth petition: forgiveness, love and recreation

And how does this renewal begin its operation in us here and now? One word only—forgiveness: “Forgive us this day our debts as we forgive our debtors.” (As will be the content of future posts, can we not say that it is not thoroughly instructive that our “spirituality” almost summarily fails when it is actually tested within the realities of family or community life?). As such, for the Kingdom to become operationalized in any truly Gospel way in our current reality, there must be forgiveness—we might even say—continual forgiveness. For it is only forgiveness that can form an unbreakable bond of unity within the new creational community “above” with that which is here “on earth.” For it is only this reality that is capable of displaying the eternal Love of a Triune God to each other and to an age trapped in darkness and deceit (Jn 17:21).

Such a reality, however, cannot or will not come into being without our vital union with Christ—that which alone can unites the eternal dimensions with our present realities. And yet, the fact remains, that such realities will/must/have to be tested to reveal their ultimate foundations (I Cor 3:10-15). This will be focus of the following two posts. We will close this section with the words of spiritual direction given by Father Zosima in the early portions of The Brothers Karamazov, which centers all that follows in the forgiving, renewing Love of Christ:

“Don’t be afraid of anything, ever. And do not grieve. As long as your repentance does not weaken, God will forgive everything. There is not—there cannot be—a sin on earth that God will not forgive the truly repentant. Why, a man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. How could there be a sin that would surpass the love of God? Think only of repentance, all the time, and drive away all fear. Have faith that God loves you more than you can ever imagine. He loves you, sinful as you are and, indeed, because of your sin. It was said long ago that there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ten righteous men. Go now, and fear nothing…For if you repent, you love, and if you love, you are with God. Love redeems and saves everything. If I, a sinner like yourself, am moved and feel compassion for you, how infinitely much more will God! Love is such an infinite treasure it can buy the whole world and can redeem not only your sins, but the sins of all people. So go and fear no more.”

Then in the later story of Zosimas’ dying brother that drew Zosimas from the vanity of the world to life in Christ:

"The days were starting to be bright, serene and fragrant--it was a late easter. All night he would cough, I recall; he slept badly, and in the mornings would always get dressed and try to sit in a soft armchair. That is how I shall remember him: sitting there quietly,
meekly, smiling, in reality ill, but with a countenance of cheerfulness and joy.

He had undergone a complete spiritual alteration--such a wondrous change had suddenly begun within him! Our old nurse would enter his room: 'Let me light the lamp before your icon, dearie,' she would say. And previously he had not allowed it, would even blow it
out. 'Light it, dear nurse, light it, I was a cruel monster to forbid you earlier. As you light the lamp you say your prayers, and I, in rejoicing for your sake, say mine also. That means we pray to the same God.'

Strange did those words seem to us, and mother would go away to her room and weep and weep, though when she came in again to him she would wipe her eyes and assume an air of cheerfulness. 'Dear mother, don't cry, my darling,' he used to say. 'I have much time to live yet, I shall make merry with you both, and my life, my life will be joyful and merry!' '

Oh, dear boy, what kind of merriment can there be for you, when all night you burn in a fever and cough till your chest nearly bursts apart?' '

Mamma,' he replied to her, 'do not weep, life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we don't want to realize it, and if we did care to realize it, paradise would be established in all the world tomorrow.'

And we all wondered at his words, so strangely and so resolutely did he say this; we felt tender emotion and we wept. Friends would come to visit us: 'My beloved, my dear ones,' he would say, 'what have I done to deserve your love, why do you love such a one as me, and why
did I not know it and value it earlier?' To the servants who came in he would say every moment: 'My beloved, my dear ones, why do you serve me, am I worthy of it? If God would have mercy on me and let me stay among the living, I would serve you, for all must serve one another.'

Kind mother, when she heard this, shook her head: 'My dear one, it's your illness that's making you talk like this.'

Mamma, joy of my life,' he said, 'it's impossible that there be no masters and no servants, but let me be the servant of my servants, and let me be to them what they are to me. And I say to you also, dear mother, that each of us is guilty before the other for everything, and I more than any.'

Dear mother smiled wryly at this, she wept and smiled, saying: ‘But why are you more guilty before all than anyone else? What about the murderers and brigands? What offenses have you committed, that you should blame yourself more than anyone else?' '

Dear mother, droplet of my blood,' he said (at the time he had begun to use endearments of this kind, unexpected ones), 'beloved droplet of my blood, joyful one, you must learn that of a truth each of us is guilty before all for everyone and everything. I do not know how to explain this to you, but I feel that it is so, to the point of torment. And how could we have lived all this time being angry with one another and knowing nothing of this?'

Thus did he arise from slumber, each day growing more and more full of tender piety and joy, and trembling all over with love. The doctor used to come--old Eisenschmidt, the German, on his rounds: ‘Well, doctor, will I live another day upon the earth?' he would ask--he used to like to play the clown with him. 'Not only will you live another day, you will live many days yet,' the doctor used to reply to him, 'you will live for months and even years.' '

Oh, what use are months and years!' he would exclaim. 'Why count the days, when one is enough for a man to know all happiness? My dear ones, why do we quarrel, boast in front of one another, remember wrongs against one another? We should go straight into the garden and make merry and romp, love and praise and kiss one another, and bless our lives.'

'He is not long for the world, your son,' the doctor told dear mother as she was seeing him off from the porch, 'he is lapsing from illness into madness.' The windows of his room overlooked the garden, and our garden was a shady one, with old trees on which the springtime buds
were forming, and where the early birds came to rest, twittering and singing through his windows. And suddenly, as he looked at them, lost in wonder at them, he began to ask them for forgiveness:

'Birds of God, birds of joy, you must forgive me too, for against you too I have sinned.' No one was able to understand this at the time, but he wept with joy: 'Yes,' he said, 'all around me there has been such divine glory: birds, trees, meadows, sky, and I alone have lived in disgrace,
I alone have dishonored it all, completely ignoring its beauty and glory.'

'You take too many sins upon yourself,' dear mother would say, weeping.'

‘But dear mother, joy of my life, I am crying for joy, and not from grief; why, I myself want to be guilty before them, only I cannot explain it to you, for I do not know how to love them. Let me
be culpable before all, and then all will forgive me, and that will be paradise. Am I not in paradise now?"

The penultimate petition—“Lead us not into testing” (πειρασμός)

This summary now leads us to the penultimate petition of the Lord’s Prayer, which will be the focus of the next three posts. This initial post will give a brief introduction to the Greek word peirasmós (πειρασμός) providing an introductory synthesis. The next post will focus on its uses in the Gospels, where it more readily expresses the realities of “testing” or “trial” rather than “temptation.” The third post will seek to frame its meaning within its OT counterpart in the LXX: nasah (נָסָה), as well the closely related words, tsaraph (צָרַף) and bachan (בָּחַן). And Part IV will close the study by tracing the development of peirasmós through Acts and the Epistles into Revelations. One final post will offer key insights from the Church Fathers and later commentators on the theme of trials and testing through the centuries.

Summary of the Sixth Petition

As this new creational reality of God’s eternal kingdom comes into the present age (the opening three petitions), being enacted in Christ (fourth petition) through forgiveness and love (fifth petition), there is a clash with, in Jesus’ words, “the power of darkness” (ἡ ἐξουσία τοῦ σκότους, Lk 22:53), “the ruler of this world” (ὁ ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, Jn 12:31; 16:11) and in Paul’s language, “the god of this age” (ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου, II Cor 4:4).

This leads to a violent struggle with these ever present realities (βιάζεται, Mt 11:12. Lk 16:16) which must climax into a death to all that this darkness/age/world has to offer us (Jn 12:24)—and this actuality constitutes for us the testing, the trial, the peirasmós, which we can only endure if we remain with Jesus in His peirasmois (δδιαμεμενηκότες μετ’ ἐμοῦ ἐν τοῖς πειρασμοῖς μου, Lk 22:28…Rev 3:10—The final occurrence in the NT).

If we seek to do so alone in our own strength (I Cor 13:1-3) we will fail, just as the disciples in the Garden (Mt 26:56; Mk 14:50…Jn 15:4, 6), who entered into their peirasmós without watchfulness and prayer (γρηγορεῖτε καὶ προσεύχεσθε, ἵνα μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς πειρασμόν, Mt 26:41; Lk 22:40, 46).

Our union with Jesus (Rom 6:2-8) is what makes this endurance of watchfulness possible in our own particular testing. For it is Christ alone Who is the only human person to have endured the ultimate test—the only One Who was able to bear under (ὑπο + μένω) all the force of satanic testing (πάντα πειρασμὸν, Lk 4:13), the only One Who literally could take it all into Himself and conquer it (I Pet 2:24); and thus, the only One Who can release to us the Spirit, Who operationalize this work in us (Jn 7:39…14:15-23…15:4-7…26-27…16:7-15…17:21-25).

For the Spirit brings Christ’s Life to bear in our own experiences (i.e. that which is produced “out of” [ex] the “peirasmós,” Col 1:12-27), recreating our fallen human nature (I Cor 5:14-21) such that we can then endure together with Him. And thus, in union with Jesus, the intensity of testing, the hardship of trial, the horrors of affliction (θλῖψις), are no longer the things we fear and desperately seek to avoid; for these are precisely the means by which the Spirit can work deep into our being (κατεργάζεται) the realities of Christ-like endurance (ὑπομονὴ), forming our character (δοκιμή) through them into one marked by hope and vivified by the eternal love which He “sheds abroad (ἐκκέχυται) in our hearts” through the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:3-5).