Berean Standard Bible
No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide an escape, so that you can stand up under it.
King James Version
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.
About this verse
Three claims, each aimed at a lie temptation tells. First: your temptation is "common to man" — not uniquely yours, not proof you are especially broken. Second: "God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear" — it is bounded; the sense of inevitability is false. Third: "He will also provide an escape." But read the escape's purpose: "so that you can stand up under it." The exit is endurance, not evacuation — a way to stand, not always a way out of the situation.
Paul writes this to Corinth, a church surrounded by idol feasts and their own old habits, and he has just finished a tour of Israel's wilderness failures presented as warnings. The verse immediately before cautions the one who thinks he is standing firm to be careful he doesn't fall. So this verse addresses two audiences at once: the overconfident, and the defeated.
For anyone fighting a recurring sin or an addiction, the verse dismantles the two most dangerous thoughts: "no one struggles like me" and "I had no choice." Common, says the verse, and bounded, and exitable. In the moment itself, the practical question it teaches you to ask is: where is the escape in this one?
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