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James 1:14–15
“Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”
The Apostle James teaches us how to deal with the trials that we face in life—tragedies, temptations, and more. First he encourages us to count the facing of trials as joy, for the difficulties of life refine our faith and enable us to develop the whole spectrum of Christian virtues (James 1:2–4). Then he tells us that by persevering under trial, remaining in faith, we will finally enter consummated eternal life in the resurrection of the dead (v. 12). Third, he warns us not to sin in our trials by thinking that God is using them to entice us to transgress His law (v. 13).
Naturally, James 1:13 leads us to ask this question: If God is not tempting me to sin in and through my trials, where do these temptations to question God’s character and commit violations of His law come from? Anticipating this question, James provides the answer in today’s passage, giving us an overview of how sin is birthed by our innate desire and leads finally to death if not resisted.
Verse 14 explains that we are tempted to sin when we are lured and enticed by our own desire. Here, the word translated “desire” is singular, and in context should be read as “sinful desire.” Desire in itself is not necessarily bad—only the desire for what is forbidden by God. James has in view the tendency of fallen human beings to sin. The agent of temptation that leads us into sin is not God. Ultimately, this agent is not even the world or the devil, though they present to us external allurements to evil. Instead, the agent of temptation that leads us into sin is our own fallen heart and its proclivity to sin—sometimes called the “flesh” (Rom. 7:7–25). This tendency to sin is known as concupiscence in systematic theology and is itself sinful.
We sin in our trials when we give in to our tendency to sin and develop deeper desire for evil, which then conceives and gives birth to sin (James 1:14–15). At this point, sin becomes a concrete act. This sin, when “fully grown,” or brought to maturity, “brings forth death” (v. 15). John Calvin comments that James refers here “not [to] any one act of sin perpetrated, but [to] the completed course of sinning.” In other words, James has in view the course of an entire life in which there is no repentance of sin. Christians are tempted to sin and succumb to sin, but sin is never fully grown in true believers because they eventually repent truly, if imperfectly. Others do not resist sin and never repent. Thus sin comes to maturity in a life bereft of faith and repentance, the end of which is eternal death (Rom. 2:1–5).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
We dare not entertain sinful desires and continue on into acts of sin. This produces a lifestyle of sin that ends in eternal death if we never turn from it by trusting in Christ and endeavoring after new obedience to Him. Matthew Henry exhorts us to “let sin therefore be repented of and forsaken, before it be finished.” Those who trust in Jesus seek regularly to turn from their sin, and they are never comfortable if they entertain it.
For further study
- Genesis 4:7
- Psalm 73:25
- 1 Corinthians 10:6
- 1 John 2:15–17
The bible in a year
- Genesis 32–33
- Matthew 11:16–30