The One-Way Street
How often they rebelled against Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert! Again and again they [v]temptedGod, and pained the Holy One of Israel. Psalm 78:40-41 NASB
Tempted – We’re all familiar with James’ declaration: “No one is to say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone” (James 1:13), but we need Asaph’s clarification. James uses a rare Greek verb, peirázō, meaning “to try, to test.” But God often tests His people with circumstances and commands, so clearly James doesn’t use this verb in its common understanding. He uses the verb as understood in the Jewish context, that is, God does not test anyone with evil. It’s not simply a matter of testing. It’s a matter of attempting to persuade someone to do something evil (and, of course, God is the one who determines what is good and what is evil). Nevertheless, human beings often try to convince God to do something evil. They may not actually ask Him to perform an evil act. No one is quite that foolish. But they behave in ways that imply God should not be God. Therefore, “to tempt God is to fail to accept his power or his will to save. It is to challenge him in doubt and unbelief.[1] Asaph makes it clear that the people refused to acknowledge and act upon God’s sovereignty and compassion. The Hebrew verb is nāsâ, “to put to the test, to try, to prove, to assay.” They didn’t ask God to do something wicked. They simply acted as if He weren’t God.
Zornberg offers some startling insights. Although she is writing about the test for adultery in Numbers (5:11-31), her comment can easily be viewed as the way the people acted in order to ignore or abandon God’s purposes.
“In a world where the sense of the divine and the sense of transgression are still active, the adulterer must enter a state of disassociation. He must fragment his reality. The secrecy that the couple desire goes deep; it becomes an inner discontinuity, as though one were keeping one’s experience as a kind of secret from oneself. . . . Adultery dissolves God’s presence as a meaningful reality.”[2]
Apply Zornberg’s insight to the whole of willful disobedience. Isn’t the action the same? Don’t we have to disconnect ourselves from the awareness of God’s presence? Don’t we end up keeping secrets from our own conscience? How could it be any other way? Yes, there are mistakes, but those are actions taken in ignorance. Once the truth is revealed to us, we recognize our error and do what we can to correct it. In fact, virtually all of Leviticus’ discussion of sin is about mistakes, not willful disconnection. Willful disconnection is not a mistake! It’s a decision to separate ourselves from who we are so that we can live in a world absent of God.
The one-way street. God doesn’t test us with evil, but we often attempt to test Him, and in so doing, we engage in evil as a means of assaying Him. We disconnect while He attempts to reconnect. His action really is forgiveness, but not for the act of disobedience. It is forgiveness for becoming divorced from ourselves, isolated from the image of God in us.
Zornberg can write: “Adultery is then the quintessential act of darkness.”[3] But all willful sin is adultery, isn’t it?
Topical Index: nāsâ, forgive, test, tempt, adultery, disconnection, James 1:13, Psalm 78:40-41
[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 823). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[2] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, p. 45.
[3] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, p. 44.
