Does It Make God Evil to Ordain Evil?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:05.000 | Caleb, a listener from Fremont, California, writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, in an

00:00:09.220 | earlier episode you answered the question, 'How do you process public tragedy?' to which

00:00:13.400 | your response was very to the point, as far as God ordaining these things in order to

00:00:17.760 | bring a response of glorifying himself through the people being outraged at sin and responding

00:00:23.000 | to victims with compassion.

00:00:25.080 | A question I'm now wrestling with is this, 'How does God ordain evil acts without himself

00:00:31.040 | being evil?'"

00:00:33.440 | We need a category in our minds that goes something like this, "God can will that sin

00:00:43.560 | be without sinning."

00:00:47.520 | It's not a sin for God to choose that sin should be, should exist.

00:00:57.240 | And I say that because the Bible pictures God giving us grace in Christ Jesus before

00:01:07.280 | the ages began, which means that he was planning for the fall, which would then need to be

00:01:17.040 | redeemed by the crucified Christ through grace.

00:01:21.160 | And that was all being planned before anything had happened.

00:01:23.880 | So he's planning for the downfall of man.

00:01:28.120 | Same thing in Revelation 13, 8, where there's this book that God's writing before the foundation

00:01:34.000 | of the world, and the name of the book is the book of the life of the Lamb who was slain.

00:01:39.040 | So you have Jesus in the mind of God slain for sinners before there is even a world,

00:01:45.400 | which means that we need a category that God is planning that sin be without himself being

00:01:54.440 | a sinner.

00:01:55.760 | And we know from other passages that's in fact what God does.

00:02:00.240 | Genesis 50, verse 20, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it."

00:02:06.960 | That is, he meant the evil for good.

00:02:09.800 | So God can oversee and ordain and plan that evil happen without himself committing evil

00:02:19.200 | or loving evil or doing evil himself.

00:02:22.720 | So the question, as I understand it, is can we know anything about how God does that?

00:02:29.680 | And here's—this is really tough, Tony—and here's just my best shot.

00:02:34.160 | I thought of three things.

00:02:36.520 | One, God has infinite wisdom, and we don't have that, and so God is in a position to

00:02:44.480 | see how evil events can be woven together to bring about a greater good, and we dare

00:02:51.560 | not follow him in this and try to do evil that good may come.

00:02:55.880 | But God is infinitely wise and can see how it all fits together.

00:03:00.360 | A second thing is to say that when we sin, we sin sinfully.

00:03:08.480 | That is, we love sin.

00:03:09.960 | We do sin because it pleases us.

00:03:13.240 | When God ordains that sin be, he doesn't do it because he loves sin.

00:03:18.800 | He hates sin.

00:03:20.840 | We love what we're doing.

00:03:22.560 | We wouldn't do it.

00:03:23.560 | Nobody gets up in the morning and says, "I've got to sin some today out of duty.

00:03:26.520 | I don't feel like sinning, but I really should sin some today."

00:03:29.920 | We don't ever do that.

00:03:30.960 | We embrace sin because it pleases us.

00:03:34.000 | God never, never ordains that sin happen because it pleases him.

00:03:40.520 | He is managing something to a much higher end, so his motives and his heart are pure

00:03:47.440 | through and through.

00:03:48.960 | And the last thing comes from James 1, where it says, "Let no one say when he's tempted,

00:03:56.240 | 'I am being tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts

00:04:02.960 | no one.

00:04:04.520 | But each person is tempted when he's lured and enticed by his own desire."

00:04:08.600 | And a lot of people quote that and say, "God tempts no one with evil, so he can't be ordaining

00:04:15.440 | that someone sin."

00:04:18.820 | But that's not quite what it says.

00:04:21.760 | It says that temptation is being lured and enticed by his own desire.

00:04:29.240 | God cannot experience that.

00:04:30.800 | He's never lured and enticed towards evil by his own desire, and therefore he doesn't

00:04:36.480 | do that to people, which means he does not commend sin to people, he does not approve

00:04:42.040 | sin in people, and he does not directly awaken sin in anybody.

00:04:47.440 | He hasn't directly awakened those lurings and those yearnings toward sin.

00:04:54.280 | However, he knows, as God, all the circumstances that a corrupt heart will respond to that

00:05:04.480 | way.

00:05:05.480 | He knows exactly how Satan functions and what Satan does in response to those kinds of things,

00:05:11.760 | and he may ordain that those circumstances and that Satan be in such a position that

00:05:18.320 | a corrupt heart will respond that way.

00:05:22.400 | And so I think those three things at least distinguish God from us.

00:05:30.620 | And I should say one other thing about the comfort that God's sovereignty is to us.

00:05:39.160 | A lot of people stumble over the sovereignty of God in the control that he has ultimately

00:05:45.840 | over all things, including our lives, but according to Paul, there's a huge assurance

00:05:53.360 | in that as well, because he says, "God does not let us be tempted beyond what we are able,

00:06:02.680 | but with the temptation makes a way of escape that we may be able to endure it," which means

00:06:09.800 | that his sovereignty over what he allows into our lives is perfectly calculated so that

00:06:16.880 | none of his children is ever brought to destruction through temptation.

00:06:22.360 | Yeah.

00:06:23.360 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:06:24.720 | And for more on this topic, see Pastor John's book Desiring God and Appendix 5, which is

00:06:28.480 | titled "Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?"

00:06:33.240 | It can be found on pages 352 to 368 of the 25th Anniversary Edition of the book Desiring

00:06:38.640 | God.

00:06:39.640 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:06:40.640 | Thanks for listening.

00:06:40.640 | [END]

00:06:41.140 | 1. Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?

00:06:42.140 | 2. Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?

00:06:43.140 | 3. Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?

00:06:44.140 | 4. Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?

00:06:45.140 | 5. Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?

00:06:46.140 | 6. Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?

00:06:47.140 | 7. Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?

00:06:48.140 | 8. Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?

00:06:49.140 | 9. Is God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?

Does It Make God Evil to Ordain Evil?

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