Let’s suppose that when you got up this morning you chose to spend a thoughtful hour in prayer and in contemplation of the life of Christ. You invited Him to take control of your life and accepted His gifts of repentance and forgiveness for the new day. You laid your plans at His feet, inviting Him to direct your ways.

And then you went about your work.

But before evening, you found that you had sinned. You had given in to one of the devil’s temptations, and as you looked back on what happened, you found yourself asking, “Why? How? When did I go wrong?”

Consider, for a few moments, the “anatomy” of a temptation.

We have already studied the fact that as long as your eyes remain fixed upon Christ, sin has no power over you. When you began your day with God, you placed yourself under His control. As long as you continue in dependence upon Him, the devil has no power to cause you to sin.

In fact, when you are depending upon Christ, sins will be hateful to you. Therefore the devil knows better than to waste his time trying to tempt you to do wrong things. First, he must somehow divert your attention from Jesus and dependence upon Him. Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, page 92, says,

“Yielding to temptation begins in permitting the mind to waver, to be inconstant in your trust in God.”

We have already noticed the devil’s tactics to get your eyes off Jesus. (See the list in Steps to Christ, page 71.)

He causes you to become absorbed in pleasures, in cares, perplexities and sorrows, in the faults of others, in your own faults and imperfections, or in anxiety over whether you shall be saved. As you turn away from Christ and begin to depend upon yourself, your defense has departed from you and the devil can then come in with his temptations to do wrong things, which you will inevitably find appealing.

This transfer of the attention from Christ to self, this change from an abiding dependence in God to self-dependence, often happens imperceptibly. Your first clue that anything has changed may come when you’re presented with one of the enemy’s temptations and find it attractive.

Edward Vick, in his book Let Me Assure You, gives five steps in temptations: temptation, consider, consent, plan, act. Let’s look at each step.

1. Temptation: The devil presents his enticement to commit sins. He cannot compel us; he can only invite. It’s no sin to be tempted. Jesus was.

2. Consider: God does not bypass our minds. We do not obtain victory apart from our own intelligence. Even Christ considered the temptation the devil presented to Him long enough to see the issues involved. Considering what is at stake and recognizing the temptation for what it is does not involve sin.

If you are depending upon Jesus at the time of temptations, you will stop right here. The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against the enemy, and you will be given the victory. But if you have turned your attention away from Jesus to self and are depending upon your own strength, you have no choice but to proceed to the next step, which is where temptations become sins–the point of consent.

3. Consent: What is consent? It is the response that says, “Hey! that sounds like fun!” It doesn’t necessarily have to be “Yes, I’ll do it.” For sins begin before actions begin. Jesus said in Matthew 5 that if you are angry, you are guilty of murder, and if you lust, you are guilty of adultery. It’s not necessary to go any farther than Step 3 to be guilty before God of sin.

“The prevalence of a sinful desire shows the delusion of the soul.” Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, p. 92.

4. Plan: Depending upon the nature of the temptation, this step may be brief or fairly complicated. Sometimes even the strong-willed person, who by sheer grit and determination can keep from going on to step 5, will still spend time here because it can be fun to make plans! The weak will plan, and then go ahead with those plans.

5. Act: Finally, the plan becomes action, at least for the weak. But notice that this is not the step that determines whether a person has sinned. Sin began back at step 3, when the consent was given.

The good news is that at any point along the way in these five steps, you can recognize your danger and turn to Christ for repentance and forgiveness. He is always willing to accept us, no matter when we come to Him. As long as we continue to seek a relationship and fellowship with Him day by day, He will bring us to the point where we will depend upon Him all of the time, not just part of the time.

When that time comes, the enemy will bring his temptations to us in vain.