The Pope made quite a stir when in 2019 he deemed, dared to, correct the Lord who said, “When you pray say…Lead us not into temptation” into “Do not let us fall into temptation”. I have preached a lot on the Lord’s Prayer every 4 years from 1990 to 2023. That in itself doesn’t make me an expert. It does make be experienced in dealing with this petition. Luther’s strong quoting of James 1:13 right off the bat notwithstanding, “God tempts no one”, I have stumbled at times in thinking, teaching and preaching. Ergo, I’ve concluded, that we need to connect the 6th, “Lead us not into temptation” with the 7th, “Deliver us from evil.”
Did you see what I did there? I did what I always do in thinking about those two petitions. I act like they are not already connected. I act like Matthew 6:13 doesn’t begin the 6th petition with “And” which links “Lead us not into temptation” with the forgiveness of the 5th petition.
Moreover, I ignored that “Lead us not into temptation” is an aorist subjunctive in Greek with a μὴ (the word ‘no’) and it means rather than to stop doing that; don’t even start. It’s a strong way to forbid something and the fact our Lord says, tell us to, commands us to speak this way to our Father is significant. Oh not for the Father but for us. This strong way of speaking assures us that under no circumstances is it the Lord leading us into temptation.
Luke 11:4 doesn’t have the 7th petition. It reads as about 45 of the 62 translations on BibleGateway has it: “’And forgive us our sins, For we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.’” Those following the KJV manuscripts tend to include the “deliver us from evil” part. The Lutheran conservative Evangelical Heritage Version also includes it, so that gives one pause.[i]
Include “But deliver us from evil” or not. Jesus did say and command it at least once. However, by Luke not recording it, Matthew stands out. So, keep “And lead us not into temptation, but (the emphatic Greek ἀλλά) deliver us from evil” together. Why?
So, when sickness plagues you, when turmoil invades your marriage, when Death’s hollow knocking raids your mind, you can know this: God is emphatically NOT tempting you to give up or in. God is NOT tempting you to panic. God is NOT tempting you to terror. No in all these things, on the extreme contrary (the Greek emphatic ἀλλά) He is rescuing you from evil or as Luther suggests it be translated recusing you from the Evil One.
[i] A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament doesn’t even treat the variant of leaving out “deliver us from evil” in Luke 11:4 because they believe the matter is settled. However, their commentary on changing the verse the way the Pope did is instructive. It’s in the Untied Bible Society’s – Third Edition which was published in 1975, 39 years before the Pope’s “correction”! They say that the ancient church heretic Maricon apparently read “Lead us not into temptation” as “Do not allow us to be led into temptation”. They say of this reading that it’s “a theological amelioration of the usual form of the petition” (156). Most laymen read 1 Timothy 4 about doctrines taught by demons and the examples of forbidding people to marry and ordering them to abstain from food, and think, “I see; the Catholic Church forbids marriage to priests and commands abstinence from some foods. Therefore, they are the modern examples of those teaching doctrines of demons.” We should do the same with the late Pope Francis’ emendation of the 6th petition: “Do not let us fall into temptation”. We should conclude, “I see; here is a modern heretic.”
