The question of the origin of evil is not an easy one, and it’s not something where we can package up a nice, neat answer with a bow on it such that all subsequent questions are fully answered. We simply do not know all the answers. However, we do know what we need to know because it’s been revealed to us by God in Scripture. This is also an area where we need to paint lines on the side of the road with the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. What we need to know has been revealed. What we don’t need to know hasn’t and it’s quite dangerous to go beyond. I’m going to stay within the fence of what has been written and the implications of it.
The first thing we need to establish is what is revealed about God’s relationship with evil? Does Scripture even hint that he’s responsible for it or created it? Here is a small, vastly incomplete sampling:
- Deut 32:4 “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.”
- Habbakkuk 1:13 “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?”
- 1 John 1:5 “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”
- James 1:13 “Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.”
- 1 John 2:16 “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.”
- Psalm 5:4 “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.”
- Proverbs 8:13 “The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.”
This is not an exhaustive list, but it’s clear that God is not the author or creator of evil. It did not originate in him. He did not create evil for good purposes. He did not create evil at all. However, he is sovereign over it, and he does allow for its existence and does use evil for good purposes, but we’ll get to that. But let’s be clear at the start; he is not the source of it.
But wait, isn’t he the creator of everything that exists? Doesn’t John 1 teach us that everything that does exist was created by Christ? Isn’t Satan a created being? If evil exists, then how can he not have created it? To answer that, let’s use Scripture to talk about what evil “is”.
Something that has been very helpful to me are the passages concerning evil that talk about it in terms of “light” and “darkness”. Let’s start with 1 John 1:5 where it says that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. So let’s think about what “darkness” actually is.
Define “dark”. Define it as a thing without referencing light.
You can’t.
You see, dark is not a “thing” that is the opposite of light. Dark is simply the absence of something. Dark is the absence of light. It is not a thing, object, entity, or force that fills a room when you turn out the light. You don’t buy a ‘dark bulb’ that exudes darkness to fill a space when you turn out the light. It is simply what we call the absence of light. It’s a word to describe the condition when you REMOVE something. It’s not the ADDITION of anything. You can’t add darkness; you get the condition of darkness when you remove light. Light IS a thing (a form of energy) and dark is simply the absence of it.
That’s extremely helpful because evil I believe is the same concept. If God is light and evil is dark then evil is the absence of God’s life, spirit, moral perfections. It is the absence of God’s life and righteousness in his creatures. It’s not a “thing” he created, it’s what he calls the absence of the good he created. It’s what you have when you REMOVE spiritual life and righteousness.
That’s very helpful to me. Evil isn’t something created by God, it’s an attribute of a man created to be indwelt by God to display his image when the man loses that. It’s the absence of God in the creature.
That also helps combat the error of dualism – the idea that there is some eternally existing power called evil that is similar to or equal to God. No!
This gets to what we believe about the Fall of man. Adam and Eve had been told “In the day that you eat thereof, you will surely die.” And die they did, just not physically right away. Death is the removal or absence of life (sound familiar?) and though they lived on physically, emotionally, etc. – they forfeited the spiritual life of God within them – that day. God withdrew his spiritual life from them and thus they died spiritually that day (now knowing the absence of God and we call that state ‘evil’) and started dying physically so they did not live forever in that terrible state. We see they immediately did a 180-degree turn in how they responded to God as now they are suddenly focused on self (“We’re naked – and ashamed”) and are afraid of God and hide from him and are suddenly into blame shifting. They are now evil – dark. The light is now absent from within them and is external to them.
So where did the evil come from? Well, Genesis tells us that when God created everything, he pronounced it good and very good. No evil. God created his creatures (angels and humans) not as puppets but with an intellect so we can know things, reason so we can think through things, and a will so we can make choices. I’m convinced of the doctrines of total depravity and that man is not free in his will today to choose God on his own. We all are slaves to sin, none are good, none seek God, none can come to him on their own. Therefore, it follows that the only ones who can come to God are those the Father draws (John 6:44,65). But this is all post-fall; pre-fall there was free will in Adam and Eve. They could choose, and did, and wrongly. They, under the influence of Satan (hold those questions – we’ll get there), used their intellect, reason, and will to believe a lie and made a choice to rebel. That’s the origin of evil – a new state of being for them, absent the light. It came from within his creatures who were not created evil but became evil as they lost God’s Spirit in them due to their choices. They chose to believe the lie, God withdrew his Spirit, and they became terribly broken creatures. They were created to be indwelt by God and are now have a moral vacuum as they are left to their own devices minus God indwelling them. We’ve seen the results for thousands of years of “man minus God in him”. That’s evil. God did not create it.
But wait, they were influenced by Satan. Yes – he was already evil at the time of the Fall in Eden. We learn from Scripture that Satan used his faculties to see his exalted position and chose to become prideful; wanting to become God, become higher than God, and in so doing lost God and became the opposite of his perfections. So he fell as well (at some point before Adam and Eve) and convinced a third of the angels to choose his way also. That was the first fall. So who was responsible? Satan. He used his will to choose against his creator and became the first evil being. There is now a being in the universe still absolutely under God’s authority and rule as a created being but unanchored to God morally. And when you lose that anchor, lose the light, you are in a condition of darkness known as ‘evil’.
So while God does not create evil and it doesn’t rise from within him in any way but comes from his creatures, yet he is sovereign over it, uses it, allows it, and plans for it. So the question switches from “where did it come from” to “why did and does he allow it?” This is a deep well to swim in.
My answer to that goes back to the whole point behind the universe. Why does ANYTHING outside of God exist? What’s the point of everything? Your answer to that will determine much of your worldview, your life, and your eternity. The answer I believe rises out of Scripture is this – to display all of the glory of God; to put all of his attributes and perfections on display. Soli Deo Gloria. For the glory of God alone. EVERYTHING, including evil, is allowed for this reason. Where do I get this?
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Romans 1:19-20
God uses creation to display to his rational creatures some of his glory – namely his eternal power and divine nature.
Add to this Psalm 19:1-2:
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
The heavens exist to display the glory of God. Some say that if there is no other life in the universe, then the universe is an awful big waste of space. But the Bible tells us the vastness of space is not about us, it’s about God and he’s using it to shout his glory to us; if we have ears to hear and eyes to see. The vastness of space is there to show us the divine nature and glory of God who is above it and created it all – something so big we can’t even fathom it.
OK, so what does this have to do with God allowing evil to exist and in fact plan for it? Creation shows us his eternal power and divine nature and his glory as Creator. But that’s not all of his glory. Creation alone doesn’t display his perfect justice, his righteousness, and more importantly to us sinners, it doesn’t display his grace and mercy! How do you display those?
I get my answer from the deep wells of Romans 9, specifically vs. 22-23:
“22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.”
God is going to be glorified for all of his attributes. I think these verses clearly tell us that some are ‘vessels of wrath’ that will make known his power, justice, and righteousness (and those in this category would have it no other way – they want and choose this; they will not have the biblical God as their god). There are ‘vessels of mercy’ that are there to make known the riches of his mercy. If you are a universalist and everyone goes to heaven, that leaves a huge part of his glory out. On the flip side, if everyone is in hell that leaves the most glorious aspects of his grace and mercy out. Both are needed for God to fully display all of his perfections and glory.
You see, evil has to exist. Its like when a jeweler wants to show you all the beauty of a diamond, so he lays the diamond on a black cloth. God desires to show his mercy and grace which is defined as completely undeserved merit. There can be nothing in the creature to deserve grace at all or it isn’t grace. God’s heart is to save sinners to display the glory of his grace. Therefore, sin must exist. It is the necessary backdrop against which all these glories are so clearly shown. The angels who did not rebel can never understand the mercy and grace of God like I can and glorify him for it. I’m one of the redeemed and there is nothing as glorious to me as his mercy and grace, shown to me at such great cost to himself. You can’t get there from just looking at creation; to truly know God in this you must be a redeemed sinner. Look at how God is worshipped in Revelation – it’s for his mercy and grace and the saving of sinners at the cost of his own blood! None of that can happen apart from sin and evil existing. Huge portions of the stunning glory of God would go unnoticed.
So God did decree that evil exist, but it arose from within his creatures; from their choices as they were emptied of light (Satan and his demons, then Adam and Eve). He did not directly create it, nor did he create his creatures as evil. They became evil when they turned away from him. I know it’s dangerous to say, “God willed that evil exist”, so is there biblical basis for that from God’s revelation to us?
…and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.
Rev 13:8
If before the foundation of the world Jesus was “the Lamb who was slain” what does that mean? It means before the earth was created, it was decreed that sin and evil will enter that creation, and that Christ will enter as well and take the just wrath of God for the sins of his people, so that grace and mercy can be shown to them without doing any harm to his justice. He was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world so he could be both “just and the justifier” (Romans 3:26). All planned before the world was.
John Piper did a series on “Spectacular Sins” that delved into this. The most spectacular sins in the Bible were ordained to happen. Of course at the apex is the murder of Jesus and Acts 4:27-28 describes it as:
27 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.”
Another example is the betrayal by Judas which Jesus repeatedly said was “so that Scripture would be fulfilled.” All planned.
God is displaying his glory and he is showing it specifically in the person of Jesus Christ, and he is using the sin that originates in his creatures as part of it. The universe exists to display his glory in the person of Jesus Christ. In Ephesians chapter 1, Paul launches into the spiritual blessings of God’s people through Jesus Christ and how all of this was planned from eternity past, before the foundations of the world. Look at what he says is the underlying reason for all of this in vs. 6, 12, and 14. He repeats it 3 times.
Vs 6 – to the praise of his glorious grace,
Vs 12 – might be to the praise of his glory.
Vs 14 – to the praise of his glory.
If you are his today through repentance and faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is to the praise of his glory and in particular to the praise of the glory of his grace. That’s why anything outside of God exists, including sin and evil. He is not responsible for it and is not the author of it but does will that it exists and rules over it so that all of his glory is made manifest.
That’s the best I can do with the issue. We finite creatures cannot ultimately answer all the questions, but this is satisfactory to my soul. Beyond this, I simply bow. To God be the glory.