It
is fair to ask why this is so. If God was pleased with his original creation as
he said he was, why then the apparent failure? We are exploring the reasons for
that, and learning why we should not judge the works of God too hastily. Also, it is why
we need to grow in our understanding of what God is doing. God’s creative work,
in essence, is a work in progress.
The
question today about the original creation is why God allowed evil to exist at
all. This perhaps is even the greatest of our questions. If the original
paradise was faultless, would not have it been better to banish Satan from the
garden from the very beginning? And why, after everything else is said, is
there a Satan at all? Did God also create Satan, thus in a round-about way,
being also the creator of evil?
Banished from
the Old Paradise
The
corruption to God’s creation came quite early. It came with Satan who, in the
form of a serpent, beguiled Adam and Eve to join him in his rebellion against
the sovereignty of God. With that rebellion came an immediate and a severe
punishment from the Lord God of all creation.
To
the serpent God said, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all
livestock and every beast of the field! On your belly will you go, and dust you
will eat, all the days of your life” (Genesis 314 BSB).
To
the woman he said, “I will sharply increase your pain in childbirth; in pain
you will bring forth children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he
will rule over you” (vs 16).
And
to the man God said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and
have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat, cursed is the
ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your
life. Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you, and you will eat the
plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until
you return to the ground—because out of it were you taken. For dust you are,
and to dust you shall return” (vss 17-19).
God
then drove Adam out of the garden. The ground on which the man was to toil was
not to be in the garden paradise of Eden, but outside of the blessing of God.
Significantly, it was also away from the Tree of Life, which from that time on
was guarded by a “whirling sword of flame” so that Adam and Eve could no longer
eat from it, “lest they live forever,” as God said.
The
first man and the first woman became mortal, destined to live their limited
years on a now cursed earth, only to finally die and have their bodies
decompose back into the soil.
“Dust
you are, and to dust you shall return.”
Welcomed into
the New Paradise
As
dismal as this outcome appears, it is not the ultimate plan of God. At the
other end of the Bible, in the Revelation, John is shown what God’s eventual
and final vision is for his creation. This proposal includes the reappearance
of the Tree of Life:
Then
the angel showed me a river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing
from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the main parkway of
the city. On either side of the river stood a tree of life, bearing twelve
kinds of fruit and yielding a fresh crop for each month. And the leaves of the
tree are for the healing of the nations.
No
longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be
within the city, and His servants will worship Him. (Revelation 22:1-3)
The
reappearance of what must be multiple “Trees of Life” that are growing along
the banks of the River of the Water of Life are part of the new creation. Of
this, John the Apostle also writes the following words:
Then
I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed
away, and the sea was no more…And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying:
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will
dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as
their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no
more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed
away.” (Revelation 21:1-4 BSB).
This
is the ultimate perfection of God’s creation—no more curse and none of the
things associated with the curse. God dwelling with us, and we with Him, just
as it was at the beginning before the rebellion. The “whirling sword of flame”
that guarded the access to the Tree of Life will be removed, and it will again
be our food. There will be no more Satan in the garden to entice us to
rebellion against God.
Why the Delay?
Seeing
God’s ultimate and perfect vision for his creation, we might ask, “Why did not
God simply create these conditions in the first place?” Did Satan ruin God’s
first plan? Was he able to throw God into confusion so that God had to try to do
the best with what had happened?
That
actually was not the situation. From our perspective, we may look at what Satan
did as temporarily ruining God’s plan for his creation, but this is not the
case at all. God knew beforehand what Satan was to do, and he knew that Adam
and Eve would fail. God actually allowed for the failure. It was the very
reason that he did not create the final conditions as the first step, and he
had some very good purposes in doing so.
The Origins of
Evil
Even
the existence of Satan and his presence in the garden was something that God
allowed in order to accomplish his eternal
purpose. This we try to understand, but it all is something that is outside of
our comprehension. We are earthly beings. Our knowledge and experience has to
do mainly with what we can perceive on earth—that which we can see and touch
and study.
Satan
is not an earthly being, but one of a great multitude of what we might call
“heavenly beings” who exist outside of our experience. We do not know much
about the origins of Satan, and what we do know is based only upon a few vague
Scriptural passages.[1]
However, from those passages, many people including myself believe that Satan
was originally one of the highest angels in the echelons of the angelic
hierarchy.
But
like us as earthly beings, God also created the angels with a free will. They
also are able to choose whether or not to recognize God as the Sovereign Lord
and Creator. Satan chose not to be faithful to God. He instead proudly desired to
replace God as the sovereign lord and rebelled against him. Not only did he do so personally, but he also
led a coup d'état, a great uprising
and insurrection of other angels. Perhaps a third of all angelic beings
followed him in this rebellion.[2]
Satan
was not satisfied with this. He still was not able to replace God. In his evil
controlled mind, be believed that he needed more allies, and decided also to
attempt to enlist the earthly beings into his rebellion—men and women. The
enticement for the humans in this was the same as Satan’s own enticement at his
rebellion.
Satan
told Eve, “You shall be like God.”
This
is actually the same lie with which we are tempted, not literally that we will
“be like God,” but that we can be our own masters and not responsible to the
Creator who made us. We can even deny that there was a creator, and that we, by
some magic that we falsely call “science,” made ourselves. Satan has entrapped
the world into thinking that everything that they desire in life is within
their reach here in the present creation.
Writing the Code
for Creation
Seeing
where these lies have taken us, we may wonder why God allowed for there to be a
Satan at all. It is difficult for us to understand why, if God had the ability
and power to create an ideal and perfect environment without the possibility of
failure, he would actually “plan in” a potential uprising.
We
do not do this when we are developing software for a computer program, for
instance. We try to write the code so that it does not malfunction. We try to
avoid a breakdown in the system.
Thus,
it is difficult for us to understand why God did not write the “code of
creation” in this way. It is difficult for us to understand because we are not
accustomed to creating beings whom we wish to endow with a free will. God wished
to give men and women, and even the heavenly beings a volition of their own and
able to make choices about their own destinies.
As
counterintuitive as it may seem, in some ways, it was necessary for there first
to be the imperfect so that the perfect could come. There is more involved with
having a free will than we at first might suspect. Arriving at perfection in
which people of free will are involved is a multiple-step process. It is a
process that requires these creatures, including you and me, to understand the
choices that we are making, and knowing full well the consequences of them.
For
instance, having a free will means little if there is no other significant
choices that are open to us. We can gain some understanding in this by taking
the example of presidential elections in a communist and strongly authoritarian
country. The elections are held, but there is never any question about what the
outcome will be. The government touts the elections as open and free and that
the citizens freely cast their ballots using their own volition, but there is
not actually any choice that they have that is significant in any way.
In
a similar way, if every single person in creation would choose to follow God,
would it not leave us questioning if our “free will” actually had any meaning
at all? Would it not leave open the possibility to be accused of choosing to
follow God only because there was no other choice that had any meaning—no
opposing candidate who was offering anything comparable?
This
is the angle that Satan used in his attempt to indict Job. As the devil stood
before God, he brought his accusations saying that Job’s faithfulness to God
actually meant nothing. Satan alleged that Job only remained faithful because
he actually had no other choice that had any significance.
To Reveal the
Depth of Our Faithfulness to God (The Example of Job)
Satan
spoke to God: “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not placed a hedge on
every side around him and his household and all that he owns? You have blessed
the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But
stretch out Your hand and strike all that he has, and he will surely curse You
to Your face” (Job 1:9-11 BSB).
So
began the test to see if Job was faithful to God only because God was so good
to him. One by one, God allowed Satan to bring hardship and disaster upon Job
until the afflicted man was left sitting almost naked in a pile of ashes, using
a broken piece of a clay pot to scrape the boils that had erupted all over his
body.
Through
it all, Job’s faithfulness to God did not fail. Even in the depths of his
suffering, the man fell to the ground and worshiped his creator. Despite
everything, Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing (Job 1:20-22; 2:10).
He
had lost everything: His wealth, all of his children, and even his health.
Perhaps few would have faulted him for denying God. The faith of his wife, for
instance, did fail her.
She
said to her husband, “Do you still retain your integrity? Curse God and die!”
Job
would not have it. “You speak as a foolish woman speaks,” he told her. “Should
we accept from God only good and not adversity?” (Job 2:9-10)
Job
demonstrates to us a free will that is truly free. It is a choice not based
upon present circumstances, but based upon what is a proper response to his
Creator. Job’s choice was not based on what he was suffering at the moment, but
on what he saw was the completion of God’s creation.
Job
was looking toward the fulfillment of God’s eternal plan. He declared, “I know
that my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will stand upon the earth. Even after
my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I will see Him for
myself; my eyes will behold Him, and not as a stranger. How my heart yearns
within me! (Job 19:25-27 BSB)
The
existence of evil in this world reveals what is truly in our hearts.
To Reveal the
Depths of God’s Love Towards Us (The Example of Jesus)
The
existence of evil not only demonstrates who is truly faithful to God, but it
also demonstrates God’s faithfulness to us. Evil has caused us to be the most
unlovable of creatures.
The
Old Testament prophet Habakkuk was frustrated by the evil that he saw in his
society and voiced his complaint to God: “Your eyes are too pure to look upon
evil, and You cannot tolerate wrongdoing. So why do You tolerate the
faithless?” (Habakkuk 1:13 BSB).
But
the plain fact is, we are all evil, and evil repulses God. He cannot even look
upon it. And yet, the Apostle Paul writes that despite the evil that we allow
to abide within us, God loves us even at our very darkest. He sent help for us when
we had no power to help ourselves:
“For
at just the right time, while we were still powerless, Christ died for the
ungodly…God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ
died for us” (Romans 5:6, 8 BSB).
This
shows to us the incredible depth of God’s love for us. Christ died for us in
order to redeem us from the power of the Evil one.
One
of the biggest complaints that the critics of Jesus had when he was on earth
was that he associated with the “unlovable” people of society, at least in the
opinion of the more “acceptable” class of society.
The
gospel writer Luke tells of the time when some of the local tax collectors
(considered the bottom of society by the Jews) and sinners were gathering
around to listen to Jesus. There were also a few Pharisees and scribes present.
These self-righteous people began to grumble: “This man welcomes sinners and
eats with them.”
Jesus
responded to them by telling them three stories. The first of these was the
parable of the lost sheep. “What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and
loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the pasture and go after
the one that is lost, until he finds it?”
The
second story was of the lost coin. “Or what woman who has ten silver coins and
loses one of them does not light a lamp, sweep her house, and search carefully
until she finds it?”
And
the third was the well-known parable of the prodigal son, who deserted his
father with much of the family wealth and spent it loosely and foolishly. When
he had lost everything, he returned home. He expected nothing but was instead
welcomed by his father with open arms.
The
brother of the foolish son however, was not in the least bit welcoming. He
refused to take part in the joy of the father and acted with great disdain
toward his brother. The response of the father to the angry son gives the
perspective of God toward any rebellious man or woman who come to him and asks
for forgiveness:
“Son,
you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But it was fitting to
celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again;
he was lost and is found.”
The
point of all three stories in much the same. There is no length to which God
will not go, no height that he will not ascend, no depth to which he will not
descend, nor any obstacle too massive for him not to reach the one whom he is
seeking. As a matter of fact, these are the four dimensions that Paul uses to
describe the limitless love of God, a love that is greater than any
understanding that we possess.
Paul
writes that it is only by Christ dwelling in our hearts through our faith that
we, “being rooted and grounded in love, will have power, together with all the
saints, to comprehend the length and width and height and depth of the love of
Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled
with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19 BSB).
This
is the surpassing love of God. Part of the reason that God has allowed evil to
exist is so that he would demonstrate the full dimensions of his great love for
us. Despite any idealistic opinions about how things might have been if we have
never been introduced to evil, one thing is clear—even at our most rebellious
condition, God responds to the contrite and repentant one not with anger but
with love and even great joy.
“In
the same way,” Jesus said to those same Pharisees and scribes, “I tell you,
there is joy in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who repents” (Luke
15:10 BSB)
What Sort of
Love is Revealed in Your Heart?
What
has been your response to the love of God? If you have continued to spurn his
love, how long will you do so?
After
some years of fighting, I myself could no longer resist. I have given myself to
learn to reject the evil things in my life that still find an abode, and live
in the love of God. It is my prayer that each one of you will also do the same.
The LORD your God is among you; He is mighty to save.
He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you with His love;
He
will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17 BSB)
In
all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am
convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities,
neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of
God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39 BSB)
Beloved,
let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been
born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God
is love 1 John 4:7-8 BSB
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