πειρασμός (pi-ras-mos'): “Lead us not into testing”—Part IV: Acts to Hebrews

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Summary of Peirasmós in the Lord’s Prayer, the Gospels and the OT

This is now our fourth post on the word, peirasmós. We opened with a synthesis of the Lord’s Prayer focusing on the penultimate petition, which we have come to see not so much as “Lead us not into temptation,” but rather, “Lead us not into testing.” The next post traced the use of peirasmós through the Gospels where we found that we can only endure trials and testing if we remain with Christ in His peirasmós (Lk 22:28).

With the third post looking at testing through the lens of the OT words, nasah, bachan and tsaraph with a focus on Abraham’s testing on Mount Moriah, the synthesis at which we arrived was that we are continually to pray, “Lead us not into testing alone.” For if we are tried alone, we will, as the disciples in the Garden, utterly fail. Yet if we remain with Christ in His trials as the Holy Spirit unites us continually to Him, then we will be given the ability to endure (ὑπομονή [hupomone]).

From here we now conclude the study by tracing the uses of peirasmós through the final 11 occurrences in Acts, the Epistles and into Revelation. As this is somewhat lengthy, we have broken it up into two sections with the next post following peirasmos from James through to Revelation. And as noted prior, the final post will offer a collection of quotations from the Fathers of the Church, both old and new, on the place of testing in the Christian life. 

From Acts through the Hebrews

Summary Synthesis

The opening occurrence ties our growth in true humility to our experiences of hardship, trials and testing that come to us through tears. In the midst of the testing, however, no matter the intensity, God will always make a way for us to endure, as we turn from the idols and lusts of This Fallen Age to Christ and the communion of His Body.

In this communion, then, we become willing to support one another even to our own hurt, no matter the cost. Yet when we instead pursue the self life, in greed seeking after those things that benefit only ourselves (be it money, wealth or any human resource), we fall into delusion and literally “pierce ourselves through with many sorrows.”

A community can only be maintained on the foundation of love.

And when we are tested, as the Israelites in the wilderness, if our response is to lash back out at God and one another in fear and bitterness (ekpeirazo), the result will be the destruction of true community, and its replacement with the infernal counterpart.

Detailed Analysis

Acts

We see immediately in the first and only occurrence of peirasmós in the book of Acts that the sanctifying and refining reality of testing begins to become a conscious-level dimension in the lives of now Spirit-filled believers. Paul is moving with all speed to Jerusalem to be there on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 20:16). When he passes through Ephesus, he calls together the elders of the Church to hear him one last time (20:17). In this final exhortation, Paul begins by declaring that they “understood from the very first day” that he came to them, “how” he “served the Lord with all humility of mind/heart/soul/nous” (ταπεινοφροσύνης [tapeinos + phren, from which we derive the incredibly important verb, phroneo, 20:19a])—that is to say, he served them with a humility of his entire being, his entire person.

Then he adds the explanatory phrase, “with tears and trials” (πειρασμῶν [peirasmós], 20:19b), which demonstrates that our life of humility before the Lord and before one another is inextricably tied to our experiences of hardship and trials and testing that come to us through tears. 

I Corinthians

From here, we move to the two occurrences in the First Letter to the Corinthians, where Paul now encourages the Church, in the midst of great thlipsis, that the degree of testing they experience will never overwhelm them, if and only if they are following Christ and not the lusts of this age. If they give themselves over to such lusts, they will, as the Israelites before them, be “overwhelmed in the wilderness” (κατεστρώθησαν, I Cor 10:5) and “destroyed” (ἀπώλοντο) by the “destroyer” (ὑπὸ τοῦ ὀλοθρευτοῦ, 10:9-10).  The history of Israel, Paul goes on to declare, is given to us “for an example” (τυπικῶς [typikos], 10:11) so that we who think we stand, “take heed” lest we “fall” (10:12). He then writes,

“There has no testing (πειρασμὸς [peirasmós]) taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tested (πειρασθῆναι [From peirazo] above that you are able; but will with the testing (πειρασμῷ [peirasmós]) also make a way to escape, that you may be able to bear it” (10:13). 

He then closes this section with the words, “Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry” (10:14). That is to say, flee from that which will enable the testing to overwhelm and destroy you.  And, fascinatingly enough (though we won’t discuss it here), Paul then transitions from this warning on the failures of community into a discussion on the eucharist—the “communion” (κοινωνία [koinonia]) of the body and blood of Christ (10:16), through which true community is formed and maintained.

Galatians

The next and only use in Galatians moves from the testing that can be used to build up community to the support a community provides to help a single believer in the midst of trial. “And my trial (πειρασμὸν [peirasmós]) which was in my flesh you did not despise or reject, but you received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus” (Gal 4:14). And Paul continues, “What then was your blessing (μακαρισμὸς [makarismós])? For I bear you witness that, if possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me” (4:15). That is to say, they were willing to enter into the hardship of his trial together with him. 

That is quite incredible—a community so united through Christ that they would support one another no matter the cost.

[Unfortunately, however, the remainder of that section demonstrates how false teachers crept in, disfiguring the community and their commitment to Paul (4:16 ff.).]

I Timothy

From here Paul specifies a further warning that can distort the lives of believers and destroy a community—the love of money. He first advises them to depart from “corrupt minds, destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain” (I Tim 6:5). He provides the corrective that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (6:6), explaining that “we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content” (6:7-8). 

“Yet (δὲ),” he goes on to say, ‘those who intend/plan/desire (βουλόμενοι) to be rich fall into testing (εἰς πειρασμὸν [peirasmós]) and a snare, and into many foolish (ἀνοήτους: Lit. those things which take away [ἀ] our mind/heart/spirit/nous [νοιέω]) and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition” (6:9). 

Then follows the well-known declaration, 

“For the love of money (φιλαργυρία) is the root of all evil (πάντων τῶν κακῶν) for which some have strayed (ἀπεπλανήθησαν) from the faith (Lit. Fallen into delusion) in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (6:10). 

From these things the “man of God” is to “flee,” instead pursuing “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness” (6:11). A community is to be built and maintained not by human resources, (wealth, money, etc.), but by the virtues of Christ, operating throughout eternity, and which must be worked out here and now in our own particular contexts.

In the words of the Desert Father, Abba John,  

‘A house is not built by beginning at the top and working down.  You must begin with the foundations in order to reach the top.’ 

They said to him, ‘What does this saying mean?’ 

He said, ‘The foundation is our neighbor, whom we must win, and that is the place to begin.  For all the commandments of Christ depend on this one.’

Hebrews

The writer to the Hebrews then returns to the warning given in I Corinthians with very similar words. But in doing so, he expands on the theme of Israel’s testing in the wilderness, summarizing these dimensions in light of Psalm 95, the analysis of which will form the backbone of Hebrews 2-3.

And his quotation of the close of the Psalm stands as an ever-present warning to the community of Christ:

“Today, if you will hear His voice:

Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion,

As in the day of trial (πειρασμοῦ [peirasmos]; In Heb מַסָּה [massâ]) in the wilderness,

When your fathers tested (ἐπείρασαν [peirazo]) Me;

They tried (ἐν δοκιμασίᾳ [dokimazo]) Me, though they saw My work.

For forty years I was grieved with that generation,

And said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts,

And they do not know My ways.

So I swore in My wrath,

They shall not enter My rest” (Ps 95:7-11, quoted in its entirety in Heb 3:7-11). 

A word on our testing God and one another (ἐκπειράζω)

When we are tried in our own periods of testings, the way to ensure our utter failure is to then respond by “testing” God Himself. In the NT, the word that is used for this type of testing is ἐκπειράζω which comes from the preposition, ek, + peirazo, and means “to test out to an extreme,” or to “hypertest.”

As we discussed in the above study, the way this word is utilized in Scripture demonstrates that when we fallen humans begin to expeirazo one another, our hypertesting reveals that we are not seeking to understand the heart of who someone truly is (cf. Deut 8:2-3). Rather, our intention is to tear them down, to destroy them. When we do this in community, the effects are, in no uncertain terms, demonic.

And with this word of sober warning, we close this section, looking forward to the final uses of peirasmos in James to Revelation, which lead us out of the realm of demonic hypertesting into the eternal joy of the New Creation in Christ.