πειρασμός (pi-ras-mos'): “Lead us not into testing,” Part II: The Gospels—Prayer, The Parable of the Sower and The Garden

[Reading time: 12 minutes]

As noted in the first post on peirasmós, the initial synthesis of this sixth petition of the Lord’s Prayer was as follows:

When the 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 ability to endure the peirasmós, then, can only be through our union with Christ as His Spirit is poured out upon us in such a way that the realities of hardship, trial and tribulation (θλῖψις) in our testing become precisely the means that will work in us to produce (κατεργάζεται) patient endurance (ὑπομονὴν), character (δοκιμήν), hope and joy (Rom 5:3-5), refining us and shaping us further into the image of Christ, the Suffering Servant of JHWH (Rom 8:29), one drop of Whose blood recreated the entire world.

Now in this second post we focus in on the uses of peirasmós in the Gospels, tracing their development through the life of Christ that climaxes in His final testing which we are called to endure together with Him. In the next post, we will examine the OT Roots in נָסָה (nä·sä) and its related words, בָּחַן (bachan) and צָרַף (tsaraph) finishing with the next post tracing peirasmós through the Epistles into Revelation, and a final post offering insights from the Fathers of the Church on these points.

The Gospels

Summary Synthesis

Peirasmós first occurs in the sixth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, which is then worked out in the fires of testing in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus, in the ἀγωνίᾳ of battle, prays three times with his prayer being refined into the final statement—“not my will but Thine be done.” Here He stands for us, His people, as the living example of the call to “watch and pray” lest one “enter into testing” (μὴ εἰσελθεῖν εἰς πειρασμόν). For in our testing, we will unmitigatedly fail, just as the disciples, if we operate in the weakness of our flesh. We may only endure if we “remain with” Christ, Who shows us through His watchfulness and prayer, the pathway forward that brings down the divine strengthening through which we may be able to endure. This is the focus of the first two Gospels.

In the Gospel of Luke, the meaning expands. Beginning in the wilderness tests of the fourth chapter in which Satan focuses “all the testing” (πάντα πειρασμὸν) onto the Person of Christ, Luke moves from here to the Parable of the Sower, where a counterexample is given. The seed that falls on rocky ground is identified as those who initially “receive the word with joy” but when a “season of testing” (ἐν καιρῷ πειρασμοῦ) comes they “wither” (ἐξηράνθη) and “fall away” (ἀφίστημι). We might say, then, that such testing is absolutely necessary to show the genuine nature of one who claims to believe.

This reality becomes even clearer in the final occurrences of peirasmós that come in the pathway to Christ’s Passion; for it is here in the final days and moments of Jesus’ life on earth that we see the reality of the unseen warfare for the human heart, in which prayer becomes the weapon by which we, as true disciples, must do battle in the midst of the onslaught of the principalities and powers. And our ability to “remain with” Jesus in His peirasmós is made possible only through our moment-by-moment union with Christ that will and must be tested in the fires of trial. Outside of this vital union, we as disciples will fail and wither away; within it we will be refined into His people who are formed further and further into the image of the Son of God (Rom 8:29).

Detailed Analysis

The opening occurrence in the NT comes in the penultimate petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into testing” (μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν, Mt 6:13). From here we are taken to Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane where this petition is worked out in the life of the Messiah where He Himself enters into the testing for all humanity.

And as soon as Jesus enters the Garden, knowing the fiery trail that awaits, He immediately tells His disciples, “Watch and pray (γρηγορεῖτε καὶ προσεύχεσθε) that you may not enter into temptation” (ἵνα μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς πειρασμόν, Mt 26:41, cf. Mk 14:38, Lk 22:40). Then, as the weight of the sins of the world have begun to bear down upon Him (Περίλυπός ἐστιν ἡ ψυχή μου ἕως θανάτου, Mt 26:38, cf. Mk 14:34), exerting a stress on His cardiovascular system that causes his superficial capillaries to literally burst (hematidrosis) with his “perspiration, as drops of blood (ὁ ἱδρὼς αὐτοῦ ὡσεὶ θρόμβοι αἵματος) falling to the ground” (Lk 22:44), how does Jesus respond?

Being in the agony of the battle (ἐν ἀγωνίᾳ), the outcome of which will determine the life of His people for all eternity, what does Christ do?

He “prays the more earnestly” (ἐκτενέστερον προσηύχετο)—He prays literally with His inner being “stretched out” (ἐκ + τείνω, cf. I Pet 4:8) to its fullest limit, Lk 22:44.

This is supremely instructive.

Just prior to this statement, Luke specified that Jesus had already been in prayer—and the content of His prayer was centered on the plea that not His own will but that of the Father “be done” (πλὴν μὴ τὸ θέλημά μου ἀλλὰ τὸ σὸν γινέσθω, Lk 22:42…Mt 6:10). It was not as if He began to prayer only after it became difficult. Rather He was already in prayer “stretching” Himself out to the Father in total obedience to His will.

Then, in this pathway of self-emptying and self-denial, He receives divine strengthening, literally “from Heaven” (ἄγγελος ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ ἐνισχύων αὐτόν, Lk 22:43) that will enable him to endure the trial that is to follow.

That is the first point.

The second point is this: The answer to His prayer does not somehow take Him out of the trial or remove the experience of hardship and suffering. Rather He receives strength that opens up the well-springs of His being to the divine realm so that He can endure all that is to follow.

In His person, then, the threefold prayer of the opening petitions of the Lord’s Prayer is being, we might say, corporealized:

Ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου: Hallowed be Your name, which begins our movement out of the vanity of This Fallen Age into the eternal life (αἰώνιος ζωή) of the Godhead;

Your Kingdom come, whereby the living reign of JHWH breaks into the present moment;

Your will be done, through which these heavenly realities reshape life on this earth.

The Psalms of Ascent worked out in Christ

In His person is the outworking of this movement upwards in the Psalms of Ascent whereby Israel ascends to Mount Zion through the path of hardship and affliction:

“In my distress I cried to the LORD, 

And He heard me.

Deliver my soul, O Lord” (Ps 120:1-2a).

“From whence cometh my help (עֵזֶר [ezer])?”

“My help cometh from the LORD,

Who made heaven and earth” (Ps 121:1b-2). 

“Unto You lift I up mine eyes, O You who dwell in the heavens” (Ps 123:1).

“Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us” (Ps 123:3a), who are trapped in the fallen realm; because here…

“If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,”
Let Israel now say—
If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,
When men rose up against us,
Then they would have swallowed us alive” (Ps. 124:1-3a).

“Many a time they have afflicted me from my youth,”
Let Israel now say—
Many a time they have afflicted me from my youth;
Yet they have not prevailed against me.
The plowers plowed on my back;
They made their furrows long.”
The Lord is righteous” (Ps 129:1-4a).

In the suffering, in the darkness, in the trial—that is to say, here “on earth”, the Psalmist, and Christ, as The Psalmist par excellence, looks up.

And help (עֶ֭זְרִי [ezer]) comes down.

Insight from the Lives of Antony and Pachomius

As a brief aside, we find this pattern worked out in the early communities of the faithful. There we see monks in the watchfulness of prayer receiving divine strength in their struggles against demonic forces in the deserts and wilderness of Egypt. Athanasius (c. 296-373) depicts this quite incredibly in his Life of Antony as well as in his writing on the Life of Amma Syncletica, in addition to Abbot of Tabennisi’s Life of Pachomius (the counterpart of Antony, who carried his work forward, developing the prototype of a new creational community such that—as Darwas Chitty put it—the “desert” became a “city.” Though we will return to these and other patristic figures in the upcoming post, we will mention here only one excerpt from the life of Pachomius to make this point clear:

In speaking of the wiles and methods of the principalities and powers, he writes of the following conversation he had with a demon. The first quote is from a demon then Pachomius responds,

“…But for the present my task is to overcome whomsoever I can, and I shall not cease to put you great men to the test."

"If, as you say, you will not cease from putting great men to the test, and if you claim that your main task is the perdition of souls, and that your malice is greater than all the demons put together, tell me, why is it that at this time you cannot prevail against the servants of God?"

"I have already told you. Because of the marvelous incarnation of Christ on earth, we are having to carry on with greatly curtailed powers. Because of those who believe in his name we have become as insignificant as sparrows.

Nevertheless, although we are weakened, we have not yet been so completely put out of action that we are prevented from deceiving where we can. For we never rest from sniping at your people.

We insinuate evil thoughts into the minds of those who set themselves up against us, and when we sense that they are giving some measure of assent to our titillations, we slip in a few thoughts even more disgusting still, and stir up the fires of various kinds of voluptuous excitement, By our subtle undermining tactics we can penetrate their defenses and bring them more fully under our power (p. 100-101).

On the other hand, if they reject what we suggest to them and pay no attention to us, and if they seriously and vigilantly build up their defenses by means of their faith in Christ, we are scattered like a smoke, driven from their hearts and put to flight.”

All this to very simply say, our prayers literally bring the holy angels down into the present moment through Christ Jesus. And this downcoming causes the demons to flee from their attacks of us, being “scattered like a smoke.”

The further developments of πειρασμός in Luke’s Gospel

From here we finish this post with insights from the remaining uses in Luke’s Gospel. And while the final two appearances of πειρασμός in Luke occur in the Garden, as outlined above, they are preceded by four other occurrences that each add further depths of meaning to Christ’s final command that his disciples “watch and pray.”

The initial occurrence comes in Jesus’ own testing by Satan in the wilderness, where Luke says that when the “devil had accomplished (συντελέσας...see its occurrence in Heb 8:8) all the testing” (πάντα πειρασμὸν) that “he departed from him until an opportune moment” [ἀπέστη ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ ἄχρι καιροῦ] Lk 4:13). Immediately, we see in the opening of the Gospel that Jesus is the One upon Whom will be focused literally “all the testing” that the satanic realm can marshal. And this Christ had to endure throughout the entirety of his earthly life, literally moment-by-moment.

The next instance is situated in Jesus’ interpretation of the Parable of the Sower, where He unveils the methods Satan employs to destroy the “seed” of the Word of God (ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ), which the Sower has given to be planted in the human heart (Deut 32:45-47). The first seed is that which falls by the path and is “trampled under foot” (καταπατέω). Here, man, called to be the “salt of the earth” has “lost the savor” (μωραίνω—lit. become moronic, foolish, Mt 5:13)—so that his response to the Word is to “trample it down” just as swine “trample underfoot” the pearls of the Kingdom (Mt 7:6). This is the outworking of the blinding by the “god of this age” (II Cor 4:4). Once the seed is trampled down, Satan then comes “as a bird” and “takes the Word out of the heart” of man (Lk 8:12-> Gen 40:17-19; Is 46:11; Ezek 39:4). 

Next the the seed falls onto rocky ground. This seed, Jesus explains, are those who “when they hear, receive the word with joy, but “have no root” such that they “believe” only “for a season” (πρὸς καιρὸν). When a “season of testing” (ἐν καιρῷ πειρασμοῦ) then comes upon them, they “wither” (ἐξηράνθη, Lk 8:6-> Jn 15:6) and, ultimately, “fall away” (ἀφίστημι, Lk 8:13-> 13:27).

The testing reveals our roots, our life source (Jn 15:1-5). 

Given these realities of the unseen warfare for the human heart, the remaining four occurrences speak of prayer as the weapon by which we, as true disciples, do battle in the midst of the peirasmós.

And Jesus begins by telling us to pray to the Father, “Lead us not into testing” (Lk 11:4) lest the peirasmós lead to the seed being trampled down or withering away. As we shall find in the ensuing instances, it is only Christ Who can endure the full weight of Satanic testing. Our ability to pass through the peirasmós is directly related to our union with Christ, as it were, in His testing (cf. Lk 22:38 below; Rom 6:3-14), which we have examined above. Otherwise, alone we shall be overcome, withering and falling away as the Parable of the Sower makes clear. 

From here all begins to focus on Jesus with the next occurrences appearing in the Passion narrative.  On the road to His Crucifixion, Jesus declares to His disciples, that they are those who have “continued” with Him in His “peirasmós” (διαμεμενηκότες μετ’ ἐμοῦ ἐν τοῖς πειρασμοῖς μου, Lk 22:28). And it is precisely because of their union with Christ in His trials on earth, that He “appoints” to them “a Kingdom” just as His Father appointed one unto Him” (Lk 22:29). And in this Kingdom, His disciples will “eat and drink,” Jesus says, “at My table in My Kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Lk 22:30). 

In the final instances we are then taken into the Garden where the disciples, in immediate contrast to the words above, continue not with him but fall asleep, flee and finally deny Him (Lk 22:31-34). And before their abandonment of Him, Jesus, knowing that this great peirasmós is awaiting each of them, implores them on His entrance into the Garden, “Pray that you you enter not into testing” (Προσεύχεσθε μὴ εἰσελθεῖν εἰς πειρασμόν, Lk 22:40).

After these words we see Jesus “withdrawing from them a stone’s throw away”, kneeling down and praying the very words of the Prayer He Himself had taught them, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done” (πλὴν μὴ τὸ θέλημά μου ἀλλὰ τὸ σὸν γινέσθω, Lk 22:42; In Matthew’s Gospel, he uses the exact words of the Lord’s Prayer: γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, cf. Mt 6:10).

In total commitment to the pathway (ὁδός) of the Father’s Will, an angel “appears to Him from heaven strengthening Him” (Lk 22:43), as noted above. After his third prayer with these same words, the text says that Jesus then “stands up from prayer” (ἀναστὰς...Lk 18:33-> 24:7, 24:46). He returns to His disciples, finds them asleep and pleads with them them, “Rise up to pray (ἀναστάντες προσεύχεσθε) that you enter not into temptation” (ἵνα μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς πειρασμόν). And this is where we have the final use of peirasmós in the Gospels—in this tension of us either standing with Christ and continuing with Him in His testing or falling away. 

In bringing this section to a close, we find that the uses in the Gospels take us to the heart of testing that must occur in the life of every believer. And in this testing, we either remain with Christ in His testing—the only One who endured “all the testing” of the satanic powers—or we remain in the strength of our flesh and finally fall.

We will continue our examination of the uses of peirasmós in the OT in our next post, closing with a final section on its uses in the Acts and Epistles into Revelations with insights from the Fathers on these points.