We find such a temptation when the devil causes us to question God’s election or predestination of us in “eternity as a past event” (i.e. “eternity-past”).
In an American evangelical landscape that emphasizes the importance of an individual’s personal decision to follow Jesus—as if that were the basis for God’s grace towards a man or woman—Lutherans and Reformed Christians insist that justification before God is based solely on Jesus’ work, two millennia ago.