The Problem of Evil

The text below was edited from a transcript of a message called “Why Does Evil Dominate the World?” and from “The Origin of Evil” by John MacArthur.   www.gty.org

The Problem of Evil

I think in order to appropriately address the issue of the existence of evil, we must set aside all human considerations and focus on the nature of God and His righteous standard. Divine justice is where the discussion must begin. John MacArthur defines divine justice as an essential attribute of God whereby He infinitely, perfectly, and independently does exactly what He wants to do and when He wants to do it. Because He is the standard of justice, by very definition, whatever He does is inherently just.

God does not do something because it is good and right, but rather, the thing is good and right because God wills it and works it. By nature God is just and righteous and therefore whatever He does is just and right because of His nature. We as fallen humans cannot impose our own ideas onto our understanding of God’s working. So, the fundamental issue we must start at is to go to the scriptures to see how God Himself, in His perfect righteousness, decides to act. His actions will always be righteous and true.

Some would say that it can’t be true that God has both a full knowledge of evil and the full power to prevent it and still let it come into existence because that means He ordained it. However, if God had the full knowledge of it and the full power to deal with it and it exists, then He ordained it. Either He didn’t have the knowledge (not omniscient), or He didn’t have the power (not omnipotent), so you have to reinvent God.

There are some people who are just short answer folks. You say, “Where did evil come from?” And they’ll say, “Oh it came from Adam and Eve.” Really? How did it get introduced to Adam and Eve? “Well, oh yeah, that’s right, it came from the snake.” Well how did the snake get to a place where he could be embodied by Satan and how did Satan get to be Satan in which he was tempting people to do evil? “Oh well, he came from…oh, he came from heaven, didn’t he?”

So where did evil originate? Evil originated where? In heaven? Yes, evil originated in heaven in an angelic rebellion right under the nose of God. You think that was a shock? Then you don’t have a God who is absolutely omniscient. You think God couldn’t stop it once it got going? Couldn’t put an end to it right on the spot? Then you have a God who is not all powerful. No matter how you deal with it, if you sustain the biblical doctrine of God, God becomes ultimately responsible for the existence of evil.

Now when you boil all this down, there are a number of categories in which theodicies can be created. The first category is metaphysical. That is to say evil is inevitable. It is a corollary of good. It is necessary. It’s Yin Yang. It’s a necessary opposite of one thing that exists by the very metaphysics of its existence, the opposite can exist as well. It is not that God created evil. It is not that God ordained evil. It is that evil is because good is. It is simply a negation. It is simply a privation. It is the absence of the opposite of. If you have an infinity, you have a finitude. If you have a good, you have an evil.

There’s some truth in that to some limited degree metaphysically. There is also the more theological approach to that metaphysical idea and it is this, that because God created humanity good, the potential for evil existed within that creation and man exercising his will chose the evil. So it didn’t really come from God, it came from man. It didn’t really come from God, it came from Lucifer who made the same choice in heaven. That was strongly the argument of Augustine and Aquinas in ancient times. And there is truth in that. There is the holiness of God and there is the sinfulness of the creature. But it leaves too much to metaphysical inevitability and it asks the question, since good exists and evil must then exist, is that perpetually true? And when we get to heaven and the new heaven and the new earth because that is eternal and perfect good, will we always be staring down the barrel of potential evil again because it’s a metaphysical necessity?

There’s a second kind of theodicy. Let’s drop the metaphysical approach to theodicy and let’s introduce the autonomous theodicy, or theodicies. A number of people come into this category to develop their theodicies. This is the category that suggests the cause of evil is the abuse of free will. And again we’re back to our Arminian friends. This is the abuse of free will. And this basically says the highest good to God is free will. Free will trumps everything on God’s scale, even evil. God could have prevented evil, but He wanted free will to exist and when He allowed free will to exist, therefore evil exists because those free and autonomous creatures choose evil. And because free will was more important as a reality than eliminating evil, evil exists. Evil exists because God exalts free will. Free will trumps evil on God’s value scale so that God had to allow for the possibility of evil in order to preserve the more highly prized autonomy that protects Him from injustice. Again, the bottom line is you can’t make God responsible for anything, so the greatest good in the creation is free will; angels have a free will, at least initially; humans have a free will, they make choices, and that’s the greater good, that’s the higher value to God even if it means sin and evil exist. Humans must have the self determined freedom to act. If God acts as a primary cause for people’s choices, they would not be free. If God decided they would be coerced and compelled and that would violate their will and we should have a completely free will. That’s the highest good. This gets God off the hook again; at least it appears to on a shallow level. But again, it requires reinventing a God, who values your will over His own. This is inventing a God who values everybody’s will over His own and that’s not the God we read about in the Scripture.

If God knew people would choose sin and hell, why did He go ahead and create them anyway? Why did He design free will? He could decide what the noblest of all virtues was, why make it free will if it’s going to end up like this and you’re going to have to go to Plan B just to recover from the exercise of these myriad of free wills?

So you can see that an autonomous theodicy as a category has to deny the direct involvement of God as He is revealed to be in the Old Testament. Does He not know what people are going to do? Or is giving them the freedom to do it more important than the presence of evil? If God has both knowledge and power, then He had to give men the free will to start with and He knew exactly what they would do with it and He went ahead and gave it to them and therefore in the end He had to ordain evil. It doesn’t solve any problem except to diminish the glory of God.

To design a God with limited knowledge, to design a God with limited power, to design a God who is more concerned about the will of every single human being than His own will is to design a God that is not the biblical God. If God is not in total control of evil, if He has not ordained it, and if He does not have it under complete control at every millisecond of history, then this universe is out of control at the most crucial point. If God is not in control of this completely, then how and when will He get the knowledge and the power to get it under control? Would you rather have a God trying to get control of evil, or a God completely in control of it? Take your choice. But the God of the Bible is complete control of evil for His own purposes. It is really heresy to say that the world is full of evil apart from a predetermined plan and purpose by God that is far above the willy-nilly choices of people.

So what do we know up to now? Evil exists. God exists. God wills evil to exist. He did not create it. He could not create it. But He did not prevent it. He ordained it. He willed it. He willed it because He had a purpose for it. This is critical.

Let me put it to you simply: God is not responsible for evil. His creatures are. God is not responsible for evil. His creatures are. Everything that God created was “very Good”, everything. This is affirmed throughout the scripture. In Habakkuk 1:13, it says God’s “eyes are too pure to approve evil” and that He “can not look on wickedness with favor”. 1 Corinthians 14:33 says “God is not a God of confusion”. Confusion is a product of sin. 1 John 1:5 says “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all”. James 1:13 says “God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone”. 1 John 2:16 explains that “all that is in the world,” all evil categorically, “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world”. Psalm 5:4 says that He is “not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil dwells with You.” In fact, on a positive note, Isaiah 6, the antiphonal cry of the angels was that God was “Holy, holy, holy.” We see a glimpse of that, of course, when Jesus came into the world; God in human flesh. He was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. God is not evil. God does not do evil. He cannot be tempted to do evil. He never tempts anybody else to do evil. God is not responsible for evil.

The source of evil, the source of sin, is outside God. When God created angels and God created humans, he gave them intelligence. He gave them reason, and he gave them choice. And there is a sequence. I put those words in that order for a purpose. Intelligence gave them the ability to understand things. Reason gave them the ability to process that understanding toward behavior. And choice gave them the freedom to determine that behavior. Intelligence, reason, and choice. Bottom line: With what they knew, and with the ability they had to process that information, they would be brought to a choice. And whether angels or men, they would have the choice either to obey God or not to obey God.

Listen to this: To disobey God was to initiate evil. Evil is not the presence of something. Evil is the absence of righteousness. You can’t create evil, because evil doesn’t exist as a created entity. It doesn’t exist as a created reality. Evil is a negative. Evil is the absence of perfection. It’s the absence of holiness. It’s the absence of goodness. It’s the absence of righteousness. Evil became a reality only when creatures chose to disobey. Evil came into existence initially then in the fall of angels; and then next, in the fall of Adam and Eve. Just put it this way in your mind. Evil is not a created thing. Evil is not a substance. Evil is not an entity. Evil is not a being. Evil is not a force. Evil is not some floating spirit. Evil is a lack of moral perfection. God created absolute perfection. Wherever a lack of that exists, sin exists. And that cannot exist in the nature of God or in anything that God makes. Evil comes into existence when God’s creatures fall short of the standard of moral perfection.

Now, let me take it a step further. God did not create evil. He did not author evil. He did not make evil. But listen carefully, very important: God did decree to use evil as a part of his eternal plan. He will not be culpable for it. He did not bring it into existence. That would be impossible because God is good, all good and only good. Therefore, whatever comes out of Him is all good and only good. God can, therefore, produce only good. And what is evil but the absence of that good, which is a choice made by the reasonings based upon the information revealed to his creatures? But, God was not caught off guard. In fact, God decreed that evil would be part of his plan. He is not the creator of evil, and He is not the cause of evil. He did not bring evil into existence in a cosmic sense, and He did not and does not bring evil into existence in a personal sense. He is not the cause of sin, nor is He the cause of sins in the lives of people. But He does use it for His purposes. And that’s why in Isaiah 45:7 says that God creates “calamity”. Some older translations say He “creates evil”. That is a really poor translation, and not true. God does create “calamity”. And if you read the context of Isaiah 45:7, it is clear that judgment is the issue. God does not create evil, but God does bring judgment on evil, creating therefore the calamity by which evil is judged. Now, listen carefully: Scripture written by God always assigns the guilt and responsibility for all sin to creatures; never to God. Never to God. That’s all we know. I’ve taken you as deep as I can go. There’s nowhere else to go. That’s all we know. Beyond that, we operate in faith. We do know some things. We know God is holy, right? We know he is too pure to look on iniquity; can’t tolerate evil. We know He “tempts no man,” neither is tempted by any man. We know he is “Holy, holy, holy,” all the things we went through. “No evil dwells in Him.” “He is all light and no darkness.” We know that. We believe that. God is not the author of confusion. He is not the source of sin. We know that. We believe that. Sin comes into existence when the standard of moral perfection is not met, and that is an act based upon intellect, reason and choice made by his creatures.

If God had a purpose for evil, if God wills evil to exist, what is the purpose for evil?

Some great theologians and biblical scholars from the seventeen hundreds put together The Westminster Confession. In it, it says “God, from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. Yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second-hand causes taken away, but rather established.”

Sinfulness proceeds only from the creature and not from God who being most holy and righteous neither can be the author and approver of sin. But then the Westminster Confession says all that God decrees and all that God providentially brings to pass is all to the praise of His glory.

They got it right. The reason for God ordaining evil is for the praise of His glory.

So when the question comes up: Why would God allow sin? We can only speculate. There’s no specific statement. But I think you can make a fairly reasonable speculation beyond which I cannot go and it is this: What did sin coming into the world bring about? I would say it brought about three things. These are the three reasons why I believe God allowed evil.

Number one, it brought about the salvation of sinners, right? God had to allow sin. God had to decree sin in the plan, though never the author of it, in order that he might save sinners. Well, why did God want to save sinners? To put on display attributes that otherwise never would have been manifest. How is God going to show grace if there aren’t any sinners? How is God going to show mercy if there aren’t any sinners? That was a part of God’s nature that God wanted to display for His own glory throughout all eternity. So God provided a means in which he could demonstrate grace and demonstrate mercy. He also wanted to show love; love that is so far-reaching that it can reach even his own enemies who hate him. How’s He going to show that if he doesn’t have any enemies? So God allows evil in order that He might demonstrate grace and mercy and forgiveness and salvation.

Secondly, He allows evil in order that He might display his wrath; in order that he might put his wrath on display, his anger on display, his judgment on display. How would God ever reveal that part of His true and eternal nature if there were not an opportunity to judge sinners? And so all you can do is look at redemptive history, and you see the salvation of sinners and the damnation of sinners, and that is what goes on. And you ultimately see a place prepared for those who were damned and a place prepared for those who were saved. And you must conclude then that the eternal purpose of God was to save some and judge some in order that he might demonstrate both his grace and his wrath.

And then I’d like to throw a third thought in there. I believe that God allowed sin in order that he might forever destroy it. As long as His creatures have any measure of freedom, as long as his creatures have intelligence; that is, they can know and reason; that is, they can process that knowledge toward behavior and choice; that is, they can choose what to do. As long as they have that capacity, there is a potential for them to fall short of the standard, right? To make the wrong choice. So there is choice, and the potential of a wrong choice is there. A measure of freedom is given to the creatures by which they can choose to honor God, by which they can choose to dishonor Him. As long as that is there, then the reality, the potential reality of evil exists when the wrong choice is made. I believe that once the wrong choice is made, then God goes into action. And one, He can demonstrate his grace in salvation; two, He can demonstrate his wrath in judgment; and three, He can then finally destroy evil. It’s almost as if God wanted evil to come to the surface so that he could excise it. That’s what’s going to happen when the whole of redemptive history is complete; when all the saved are saved, and all the lost are cast into the lake of fire, then death and hell are thrown into the lake of fire. What does that mean? No more death, no more hell, no more judgment. Why? Because there won’t be any more sin. And when you go into heaven, there’s nothing there that smacks of a sinful world, right? There’s no more sorrow, no more sadness, no more sin, no more dying, no more death.

So I think God decreed evil within his plan, without creating it, for those three reasons: To save sinners, to judge sinners, and to once and for all and forever destroy evil. It was always potentiated. As long as it was possible, it would need to come to the surface so God could excise it.

Summing it up, there is no external cause of sin, outside the creature. There’s no force floating out there that God created. It is the absence of perfection. There is no deterministic cause and effect; that is to say, some fatalism. It’s just choice. Within God’s decree, he allowed for that choice, knew those choices would be made the way they were made, planned that into the decree in order to display both his grace, his wrath, and to put a final and eternal end to sin. But always: The one who chose evil was the source of it. In the case of Lucifer, he was the source of evil initially in the angelic realm. And he got a third of the other angels to get along with him and join. The same happened with Adam and Eve, only it had a different effect. With angels, they all sinned their own sin, and nobody’s sin passed to anybody else, because they don’t procreate. But in the case of Adam and Eve, when Adam and Eve made the wrong choice, all humanity went with them, because we all come out of the loins of Adam and Eve. So the source of evil is outside of God. The source of evil is the creature.

Let me ask you a simple question to help you answer the bigger question. Is God more glorious because of sin existing or less glorious? Throughout all the eons of eternity will God receive more glory from His creatures because sin existed.

All that really matters is the eternal glory of God!

Rom 3:5-6 But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is He? (I am speaking in human terms.) 6 May it never be! For otherwise, how will God judge the world?

Would you understand the righteousness of God if you didn’t understand unrighteousness?

Rom 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Our being sinners allows God to put His great love on open display at the cross.

Rom 9:22-23 What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? 23 And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory.

God had to “endure with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” so He could display His wrath and full eternal power. God also willed to make known, to display, His mercy to the “vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory”.

Prior to sin, God was not worshipped fully for His righteousness against the backdrop of unrighteousness. He couldn’t demonstrate His great love until he showed it against enemy, rebel sinners.

Rom 9:17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH.”

Isa 45:7 The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.

In Job 38, 39, 40, and 42 God shows Job that His ways are too wonderful for him to understand, that he is insignificant and that he cannot find fault with the Almighty.

Job 38:1-7 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, 2 “Who is this that darkens counsel By words without knowledge? 3 “Now gird up your loins like a man, And I will ask you, and you instruct Me! 4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, 5 Who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the line on it? 6 “On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, 7 When the morning stars sang together And all the sons of God shouted for joy? ….

Job 39:1-2 “Do you know the time the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the deer? 2 “Can you count the months they fulfill, Or do you know the time they give birth? ….

Job 40:1-4 Then the LORD said to Job, 2 “Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it.” 3 Then Job answered the LORD and said, 4 “Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You? I lay my hand on my mouth.

Job 42:1-6 Then Job answered the LORD and said, 2 “I know that You can do all things, And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. 3 ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ “Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” 4 ‘Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me.’ 5 “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; 6 Therefore I retract, And I repent in dust and ashes.”

Tough talk from God and Job buckles and says “God, I have no right to question You, You are God and You have every right to put Your glory on full display.” And evil makes that happen. We will spend forever and ever in the presence of God extolling Him in ways that never would be possible had He not allowed and ordained (without ever creating or being the source of it) the evil that temporarily dominates the creation. And in His perfect timing, it will all be over and He will destroy this entire universe in a holocaust described by Peter as the elements melting with fervent heat and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth in which only eternal righteousness exists, but we will forever worship with an understanding of the full display of His glory.

May we thank God for the insight that comes to us from His Word. He’s told us why. It’s not left to mystery. I’m God, I do what I do for My own glory. How wonderful is it that He has chosen us to be part of that eternal assembly who will give Him glory and who will sing praise to the Lamb who was slain. May we be in awe of God, that He has chosen us to be a part of that redeemed community who will understand forever the glory that came and was fully displayed because of sin. What a privilege.