How God Tests the Strength of Our Will

We read that the righteousness of God provided for this too in the case of Job, his well-tested athlete, when the devil had challenged him to single combat. Suppose Job had advanced against his enemy not with his own strength but only under the protection of God’s grace. Suppose he had borne that many-sided weight of trials and losses, devised with all his enemy’s cruelty, held up by God’s help alone, without any virtue of endurance of his own. Then the devil could have repeated with some justice the slander he had uttered before: “Does Job serve God for nothing? Have you not hedged him in, and all his property round about? But take away your hand,” that is, let him fight with me in his own strength, “and he will curse you to your face.” But after the struggle the slandering enemy did not dare to let out any such complaint as this, and he was amazed that he had been beaten by Job’s strength and not by God’s. Yet we must not hold that the grace of God was wholly absent from Job. It gave the tempter a power of tempting in proportion to the power it knew Job had of resisting. It did not shield him from the attacks in such a way as to leave no room for human virtue, but provided only this: that the fiercest of enemies should not drive him out of his mind and overwhelm him, once he was weakened, with unequal thoughts in an unfair contest. [a]

That the Lord is sometimes accustomed to test our faith, so that it may become stronger and more glorious, we are taught by the example of the centurion in the gospel. The Lord knew that he would cure the man’s servant by the power of his word, yet he chose to offer his bodily presence, saying, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion overcame this offer with the ardor of a still more fervent faith and said, “Lord, I am not worthy for you to come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.” Then the Lord marveled at him and praised him, and set him above all those of the people of Israel who had believed, saying, “Truly I tell you, I have not found such great faith in Israel.” For there would have been no ground for praise or merit if Christ had honored in him only what he himself had given. We read that the righteousness of God brought about this searching trial of faith in the case of the greatest of the patriarchs too, where it says, “And it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham.” For the righteousness of God wanted to try, not the faith with which the Lord had inspired him, but the faith that he, once called and enlightened by the Lord, could show by his own free will. So the firmness of his faith was proved for good reason. And when the grace of God, which had left him for a while to prove him, came to his aid, it was said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear the Lord, and for my sake you have not spared your beloved son.”

That this kind of testing can come upon us, to prove us, is foretold clearly enough by the giver of the law in Deuteronomy: “If a prophet arises among you, or one who says he has seen a dream, and he foretells a sign and a wonder, and what he spoke comes to pass, and he says to you, ‘Let us go and serve foreign gods whom you do not know,’ you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. For the Lord your God is surely testing you, whether you love him with all your heart and keep his commandments, or not.” What follows, then? When God has allowed that prophet or dreamer to arise, must we hold that he will protect those whose faith he means to try in such a way as to leave no place for their own free will, where they can fight the tempter with their own strength? And why do they need to be tried at all, if he knows them to be so weak and feeble that they cannot resist the tempter by their own power? But certainly the righteousness of God would not have allowed them to be tempted unless it knew there was in them an equal power of resistance, by which, in a fair judgment, they could be found either guilty or worthy of praise, whichever way it turned out.

To the same effect is what the apostle says: “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has taken hold of you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make a way of escape, so that you may be able to bear it.” When he says, “Let him who stands take heed lest he fall,” he puts free will on its guard, for he certainly knew that after grace had been received, it could either stand by its own exertions or fall through carelessness. But when he adds, “No temptation has taken hold of you but such as is common to man,” he rebukes their weakness and the frailty of a heart not yet strengthened, since they could not yet resist the attacks of the hosts of spiritual wickedness. He knew that he himself and those who were perfect fought against these every day. Of them he also says to the Ephesians, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.” But when he goes on, “But God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able,” he is certainly not hoping that the Lord will not let them be tempted, but that they will not be tempted beyond what they are able to bear. The one shows the power of man’s will; the other points to the grace of the Lord, who moderates the violence of temptations. In all these sayings, then, there is proof that God’s grace always stirs up the will of man. It does not protect and defend it in all things in such a way that the will need not fight its spiritual enemies by its own efforts. Rather, the one who overcomes them may put it down to God’s grace, and the one who is overcome may put it down to his own weakness, and so learn that his hope is never in his own courage but always in God’s help, and that he must always flee to his Protector.

And to prove this not by our own guesswork but by still clearer passages of Holy Scripture, let us consider what we read in Joshua the son of Nun: “The Lord,” it says, “left these nations and would not destroy them, so that by them he might test Israel, whether they would keep the commandments of the Lord their God, and so that they might learn to fight with their enemies.” If we may illustrate the incomparable mercy of our Creator from something earthly, not as equal to it in kindness but as a picture of mercy, think of a tender and anxious nurse. She carries an infant in her bosom for a long time so that some day she may teach it to walk. First she lets it crawl. Then she supports it, so that with the help of her right hand it may lean on its alternate steps. Soon she leaves it alone for a little, and if she sees it tottering at all, she catches hold of it and grabs it as it falls. When it is down she picks it up; she either shields it from a fall or lets it fall lightly, and she sets it on its feet again after a tumble. But when she has brought it up to boyhood, or to the strength of youth or early manhood, she lays on it some burdens or labors by which it may be exercised and not overwhelmed, and she lets it compete with those of its own age. How much more does the heavenly Father of all know whom to carry in the bosom of his grace, and whom to train in virtue before his eyes by the exercise of free will! And yet he helps him in his efforts, hears him when he calls, does not leave him when he seeks him, and sometimes snatches him from danger even without his knowing it.