Matthew 4:7

7. It is written again One text should limit, modify, and explain another. Promises are not to be wantonly presumed upon. They are to be interpreted in the spirit of the divine Promiser. The promise of God to keep us presumes that we soberly and truly desire to be kept.

It would be well for those who maintain the infallible perseverance of all saints to ponder this point. They quote God’s promises to keep and preserve the converted man in every case, omitting to note that all such promises of God are conditional. He will keep us, under proviso that we rationally and voluntarily will to be in his holy keeping. Tempt Or put to the test. To assume to draw at will upon the fund of his Father’s omnipotence, to perform a capricious experiment, would be a presumptuous tempting and insulting God.

The first temptation, as we showed, (in Matthew 4:3,) appealed to the animal appetites. This second rises to the higher sentiment, the love of show the gratification of admiration. All those who are carried away from God by the love of pomp, the gratification of mental taste, the pleasures of imagination, the gaieties of fashion, the enthusiasm for fame, and are induced to pervert for these objects powers given by God for rightful use, fall by this temptation. They tempt God by expending the powers he has given for ostentatious, wanton, selfish, and destructive purposes. The first temptation was animal, the second aesthetical.