Can God Ordain Evil Without Being Evil?

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

00:00:09.280 | episode you answered the question, 'How do you process public tragedy?'" That was

00:00:13.360 | episode 85. "To which your response was very to the point. God ordains these

00:00:17.600 | things to glorify himself through people being outraged at sin and responding to

00:00:21.440 | victims with compassion. A follow-up question that I'm now wrestling with is

00:00:25.200 | this, 'How does God ordain evil acts without himself becoming evil?'" We need a

00:00:31.240 | category in our minds that goes something like this, "God can will that

00:00:40.440 | sin be without sinning." It's not a sin for God to choose that sin should be,

00:00:51.680 | should exist. And I say that because the Bible pictures God giving us grace in

00:01:03.360 | Christ Jesus before the ages began, which means that he was planning for the fall

00:01:12.360 | which would then need to be redeemed by the crucified Christ through grace. And

00:01:18.720 | that was all being planned before anything had happened. So he's planning

00:01:22.440 | for the the downfall of man. Same thing in Revelations 13, 8 where there's this

00:01:28.520 | book that God's writing before the foundation of the world and the name of

00:01:32.480 | the book is the book of the life of the Lamb who was slain. So you have Jesus in

00:01:37.840 | the mind of God slain for sinners before there is even a world, which means that

00:01:43.680 | we need a category that God is planning that sin be without himself being a

00:01:51.520 | sinner. And we know from other passages that's in fact what God does. Genesis 50

00:01:58.680 | verse 20, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it," that is he

00:02:05.240 | meant the evil, "for good." So God can oversee and ordain and plan that evil

00:02:13.520 | happen without himself committing evil or loving evil or doing evil himself. So

00:02:20.360 | the question as I understand it is, can we know anything about how God does that?

00:02:26.400 | And here's—this is really tough, Tony—and here's just my best shot. I thought of

00:02:32.120 | three things. One, God has infinite wisdom and we don't have that, and so God is in a

00:02:41.440 | position to see how evil events can be woven together to bring about a greater

00:02:47.440 | good, and we dare not follow him in this and try to do evil that good may come.

00:02:53.160 | But God is infinitely wise and can see how it all fits together. A second thing

00:02:58.840 | is to say that when we sin, we sin sinfully. That is, we love sin. We do sin

00:03:08.120 | because it pleases us. When God ordains that sin be, he doesn't do it

00:03:15.320 | because he loves sin, he hates sin. We love what we're doing. We wouldn't do it.

00:03:20.760 | Nobody gets up in the morning and says, "I got to sin some today out of duty. I

00:03:24.160 | don't feel like sinning, but I really should sin some today." We don't ever do

00:03:27.960 | that. We embrace sin because it pleases us. God never, never ordains that sin

00:03:35.280 | happen because it pleases him. He is managing something to a much higher end,

00:03:41.680 | so his motives and his heart are pure through and through. And the last thing

00:03:47.520 | comes from James 1 where it says, "Let no one say when he's tempted, 'I am being

00:03:54.400 | tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts

00:04:00.200 | no one. But each person is tempted when he's lured and enticed by his own desire."

00:04:05.920 | And a lot of people quote that and say, "God tempts no one with evil, so he can't

00:04:11.600 | be ordaining that someone sin." But that's not quite what it says. It says that

00:04:20.400 | temptation is being lured and enticed by his own desire. God cannot experience

00:04:28.000 | that. He's never lured and enticed towards evil by his own desire, and

00:04:33.240 | therefore he doesn't do that to people, which means he does not commend sin to

00:04:38.280 | people, he does not approve sin in people, and he does not directly awaken sin in

00:04:44.480 | anybody. He hasn't directly awakened those lurings and those yearnings

00:04:49.640 | toward sin. However, he knows as God all the circumstances that a corrupt heart

00:04:59.560 | will respond to that way. He knows exactly how Satan functions and what

00:05:06.160 | Satan does in response to those kinds of things, and he may ordain that those

00:05:11.440 | circumstances and that Satan be in such a position that a corrupt heart will

00:05:17.240 | respond that way. And so I think those three things at least distinguish God

00:05:26.160 | from us, and I should say one other thing about the comfort that God's

00:05:32.320 | sovereignty is to us. A lot of people stumble over the sovereignty of God in

00:05:39.400 | the control that he has ultimately over all things, including our lives, but

00:05:46.640 | according to Paul there's a huge assurance in that as well, because he

00:05:52.320 | says, "God does not let us be tempted beyond what we are able, but with the

00:06:00.920 | temptation makes a way of escape that we may be able to endure it," which means

00:06:07.280 | that his sovereignty over what he allows into our lives is perfectly calculated

00:06:13.720 | so that none of his children is ever brought to destruction through

00:06:19.000 | temptation. Thank you, Pastor John, and for more on this topic, see Pastor John's

00:06:24.040 | book Desiring God, and especially Appendix Number Five, which is titled, "Is

00:06:27.640 | God Less Glorious Because He Ordained That Evil Be?" It can be found on pages

00:06:33.000 | 352 to 368 of the 25th anniversary edition of Desiring God, and at

00:06:38.520 | DesiringGod.org you'll find thousands of other free resources from John Piper.

00:06:42.280 | I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.

00:06:47.320 | you

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Can God Ordain Evil Without Being Evil?

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