There’s a line in the Lord’s Prayer that has quietly troubled thoughtful Christians for centuries: lead us not into temptation. Why pray for God not to lead us into temptation? Does God do that? The book of James says plainly that God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone (James 1:13, NIV). The same Bible, a few pages apart, seems to say two different things. The problem isn’t in the Bible. It’s in the English word temptation — and behind it stands the Greek noun πειρασμός (peirasmos).

Peirasmos in first-century Greek means several things at once. It means testing — the way an examiner tests a student, or a metallurgist tests gold. It means trial — a hard ordeal that reveals character, like the trials of Job. It means probation — a stretch in which faithfulness is on the line. And yes, in some contexts it can mean temptation, an enticement to do wrong. But that modern sense is just one slice of a much wider word. Peirasmos covers all of it: testing, trial, ordeal, probation, and sometimes temptation. The English word has narrowed over the centuries until it cannot carry what the Greek held.

You can watch the breadth working in the New Testament itself. James, just before warning that God tempts no one, writes: Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance (James 1:2-3, NIV). The Greek for trials of many kinds is peirasmois poikilois — the same word as in the Lord’s Prayer, and here it plainly means hard testings to be welcomed, not enticements to sin. One word, two shades, fixed by context.

There was a larger, loaded sense too. First-century Judaism expected that before God’s kingdom finally came, there would be a time of intense testing — the day of the Lord, the great tribulation, the hour of trial. Revelation 3:10 names it: I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth (NIV) — hōras tou peirasmou, the hour of the peirasmos, with the definite article. Peter used the same word for the fiery trial the early church was already enduring. The American scholar Raymond Brown argued in a famous 1961 article that the whole Lord’s Prayer reads against this end-times horizon, and the line about peirasmos belongs squarely in it.

So when Jesus taught his disciples to pray do not bring us into peirasmon, he wasn’t asking the Father to stop doing something James says God never does. He was teaching them to ask to be spared the testing that breaks faith — the daily ordeal and the great one alike. The English isn’t wrong. It’s just narrower than what was first said.