Bible Studies

THE STUDY OF EVIL

by GLENN PEASE
05/18/22
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CONTENTS

1. THE ORIGIN OF EVIL
2. GOOD AND EVIL
3. GOOD AND EVIL II
4. THE FRUIT OF EVIL
5. SATANIC SUCCESS
6. TRICKED INTO A TREAT
7. EVIL EXAMINED
8. EVIL AND FREE WILL
9. EVIL AND GOD’S OMNIPOTENCE

1. THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

The first chapter of Genesis has only good and no evil, for all that God made was declared good. But in Gen. 2 we read, Ge 2:9 And out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Ge 2:17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.

What we learn from this is that evil goes back before the creation of the universe that we are aware of. God may have made many other universes before this one, and we know that he had created other beings before man, and so evil did not have its origin in time and in this universe where man began. What this implies is that by creating other beings God took the risk of evil becoming a reality. He is perfect and holy and has no evil in his nature, but as soon as he made any being, such as angels, of which Satan was apart, he made evil a potential. God could not make meaningful beings of free will who could love him without this risk. He took the same risk you take by becoming parents. You cannot have a child without the risk that it will become a matter of sorrow and hurt in your life. It is risk we take because it also has the potential of great blessing and meaning. God took the chance and got both good and evil in the deal.

He had already experienced evil in other beings, such as fallen angels, before he made man, and he knew that by making man he would risk the same results as he had with good and fallen angels. He knew both were possible and even likely, for they were to be real free beings and not robots. The knowledge of good and evil were preexistent to man, and he would have the chance to choose which he would follow. Evil then goes back into eternity and we know little about its origin and so there is mystery that we can never fully understand. All we know is that it is inevitable with free will beings.

There would be no evil if God was content to be eternally with himself and never create other beings. He alone is self-existent and all other beings are created. But God is all wise and all powerful and has a creative nature and so he could not resist creating any more than can creative people who are made in his image. Evil then is the inevitable result of creation or the creative activity of God. The choice is between a perfect reality with no being but God, or a reality with a mixture of good and evil with a host of other beings able to do great good or evil. Those who complain against God making evil possible forget that by doing so he also made them possible and good that will ultimately be the final product of his creation. With those two choices we must give our vote for what God chose to do, in spite of the risks and all the evil that results. The alternative is to give up all that makes existence and life real and meaningful.

Do we blame Ford for all the people that are killed because he invented the car? Do we blame Edison for all the people who have been electrocuted because he discovered electricity? Every invertor and discoverer of that which enhances and blesses modern life and brings so much good into the world also makes it possible for much evil to come to man. The good is worth the price that is paid, however, and so we praise these creators for their good work done for the good of man. So it is folly to blame God for evil because it was his creating of our universe that is the ultimate cause for there being evil in the world. You just as well curse the inventor of the wheel because so many wheels run over children and crush them. The evil results of good creations are no basis to be negative about the good creations. They are just inevitable results that cannot be avoided because every good thing can be abused and misused, and mistakes are always possible.

God created only what is good, but he could not do so without also making evil possible, for one of the greatest goods that he created is free will beings. All that makes life meaningful is due to the freedom of beings like angels and men. But this freedom can be used to disobey God and that is the essence of evil. Satan became the evil one because he disobeyed God and he became the key tempter to lead man to do the same, and made life a battle between good and evil. The cosmic battle was already going on before man, and man was caught up in this battle. God is the source of ultimate power, however, and so no matter how many things go bad in his creation, he is still the one in control and no evil can change his final plan for good. His goodness is the ultimate power and the battle with evil will play out and end in the victory of good for all eternity. The flood was God’s demonstration of this truth. He can start over any time he chooses and wipe the slate clean. He promised to never do it that way again, but by doing it He made it clear that He is the one in control, and evil will only be tolerated within certain limitations. It must end ultimately in judgment.

There are those who question if freedom is worth the price that man has to pay in suffering for this blessing. It is costly, and none will disagree with that, but the alternative is to be flesh and blood computers that are programed to do only what is right and good. This is a perfect world then, but a world without love. Love can only be real when it is a freely expressed gift from one person to another. I can buy a toy that is programmed to say, “I love you,” but I am not satisfied with such mechanical love. I want to be loved by one who chooses to love me, and who can express it with warmth and emotion. I cannot get any joy out of mechanical love, and neither can God. The only way that God, who is Love, can have freely expressed love come back to him is by taking the risk of creating beings in his image, who have the freedom of will necessary to choose to love another other than themselves. They can turn that capability inward and become selfish lovers of themselves only, which is the origin of evil, but it is the only way he can get the highest good of true love.

God is the greatest risk taker because he knows that all the evil of history is worth the end result of multitudes of beings who will dwell with him forever in a perfect environment with all of the negatives eliminated. Heaven is worth the hell it takes to get there. The father of the Prodigal gave him freedom to go, and even gave him the resources he needed to live a life of folly. God gave Adam and Eve the freedom to disobey. Freedom is worth the cost of all the folly of history. Freedom is dangerous, but necessary, for without it you do not have reality as we know it. You have a fake universe, much like you have in a movie. The acts and words of those on the screen are not free, for they are locked in and can never be free. You can watch the movie over and over and nothing will ever change, for all is determined. The outcome can never be different than what it has been. I know there are now dual endings possible in movies, but most have one choice, and it is absolutely determined. There is no freedom to learn by experience and change your attitude or action. You are programmed and you must do what the script has said you do. Movie characters are not real. The actors who do them are real and have many choices because they are. Good people on the screen can be fools off the screen, and the bad guys in the movies can be wonderful people in real life.

God could have made the history of man as a movie and used only screen people who are just images, but not images of him. They would be programmed by his script and all would be determined from beginning to end without a single free choice being made by free willed beings.
Some feel this is the way God has really done it, and so all of human history is just watching a movie with God. It is all just as he has written the script and nothing can ever happen different from what he has written. This does not fit the picture we get in the Bible at all. People in the Bible do not follow the script that God demands they follow. He is the director, but the actors do not pay attention to him. They do their own thing even when the director says don’t do it that way. In other words, the Bible says God is dealing with real people and not images on the screen. They are for real, and they can ignore and defy the director. The result of history being the record of real people made in the image of God is that you have a history of great evil and folly. It is terrible what man has had to suffer because of free will, but, on the other hand, all of the blessings of life are also due to this marvelous gift of God. You might say that free will is the greatest paradox in history, for it is the greatest curse and the greatest blessing. The forbidden tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is one tree and not two because when you have the knowledge of one you have the knowledge of the other. Good and evil go together even though they are opposites. You cannot have the one without the other.

You cannot have good music without the possibility of bad music. It can be used to worship God, or it can be used to entice people into immorality. Music is used to help us reach the heights of spirituality, and it is used also to lead us into the depth of immorality. Sexuality itself is one of life’s greatest God given pleasures, but there is no way to avoid the reality that its abuse is one of life’s greatest causes for sorrow, disease and broken hearts. Like so many goods, it becomes so bad when it is out of place. That is what sin is. It is good things out of place. It is like ice cream on the bathroom wall. Ice cream is good, but out of place it is bad. Dirt is just something good out of place. Dirt is good, for all of our food comes from the dirt in which all plants grow, but when you get it on your white shirt it is bad. All good things in the wrong place are bad things. Keep sex in the right place and it is the best. Put it in the wrong place, and that means places that God forbids, and you have a good thing that becomes sinful and bad.

God knew there would be great evil because of free will, but he also knew there would be marvelous good, and it was his judgment as an all knowing sovereign that the good was worth the risk of all the bad possibilities. That is why he put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden. It was a good thing to have this knowledge, and God would make it available in his good time after he tested Adam and Eve. But they failed the test and chose to disobey God and listen to the tempter. After eating of the tree they went from potential knowledge of evil to practical knowledge for they knew they had rebelled against the will of God right away. They felt guilt and shame right away, for they had experienced evil. This was the beginning of evil in the experience of mankind. The essence of it is in man focusing on his own desires rather that the desires of God for his best. It is choosing the self way rather than God’s way. It is a good thing to get your own way, but when you do it out of place, which means out of God’s will, then it becomes a bad thing. God wanted only the best for them, but they were persuaded that there was a better way, and so the essence of sin is in doubting God and his will. God says this is the best way to go for the ideal life, and man says I think I can do better, and that is what evil is all about. All evil behavior is choosing to do what God says is the wrong thing to do.

God had to give Adam and Eve the freedom to eat of the forbidden fruit, for without freedom there could be no obedience. You do not praise a man in prison because he has not robbed a bank for two months. He has had no choice to do such evil, for he is limited by the prison in which he is forced to live. He has no freedom to do such an evil and so he is not good for his not doing so. If Adam and Eve were not free to disobey God and eat of the tree, they were not being good by obeying God and not doing so. It would only be good behavior if they had the freedom but did not use their freedom to eat of it. It is only good behavior when we have a choice to act badly. It is the choice to do good when you could do evil that makes you a good person. They used their freedom to choose the bad way and disobey God, and they had to suffer the consequences. But you might ask, “Why didn’t God stop them? That would be the same as putting a man in prison and then honoring them as being righteous for not robbing banks. God could only get a loving and righteous response by allowing freedom to choose the wrong way. That is why all of us have temptation. All of us have to choose freely whether we will obey what we know is God’s way, or what is the way of the world, the flesh or the devil.

God could not stop them from sinning, but we see that God still had a choice, and that is where the sovereignty of God comes in and keeps him in control of the situation even when man does not obey him. At the end of Gen. 3 God acted to make sure that the fall of man would not be permanent. He put them out of the garden and protected the entrance with the cherubim and flaming sword. This was an act of great love and grace for he wanted to make sure they did not have access to the tree of life and live forever in their state of sin and separation from God. God had plans to restore man to the garden and have access to the tree of life. He had a plan to save and reconcile man and have an eternal kingdom where all sin would be eliminated forever. So the end result will be even with the freedom of will that he gave to mankind, that he will be the final victor over all of the evil that comes from that wondrous but dangerous gift.

What we see, then, is that free will is the cause for, the basis of, and the origin of evil. Free will is a great good, and possibly the greatest good that God has given to the beings that he has created in both the angelic and human realm. It is not evil but good, but it is that which makes evil a possibility. With free will comes the potential of evil. It is inherent in the very nature of free will. It is not truly free unless it can be used to do what is wrong, bad and evil. God created the potential for evil by creating free will beings, and so you can blame God if you choose to do so, but it is folly to do so, for all that is good is also due to his making us free will beings. Good and evil are inevitable by the very nature of such beings. God, however, never willed that any free will being ever choose the wrong way and do evil. All evil comes from those beings, like Satan and his angels, and humans, who make the choice, as did Adam and Eve, to disobey the will of God, which is always good and for the best. The origin of evil then is in the choices of free will beings and not God, whose will is that free will beings never use their free will to do what He forbids. God is never the author of evil, for even though it was his choice to make evil potential, he never willed that it become actual. But angelic beings like Satan and humans like Adam and Eve did will that evil become actual by choosing to do what God had forbidden. The bottom line is that evil has its origin in freedom of the will.

Man went on continually using his free will to disobey God until God could not tolerate it any longer. Gen. 6:5-6 says, "Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart" The result was that God destroyed the earth with the Flood. God also has a free will and he can respond to man’s foolish choices with the choice of judgment. He cannot make man free and stop him from sinning, but he can freely chose to make them pay for their folly. So God is always the one in control even though man is free to choose all the ways there are to rebel against his will and authority. All of history is the same story repeated over and over. God gives people the free choice of good or evil. He gave the same choice to his people in the Promised Land in Deut. 30:15,19, “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.... I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live" They did choose good often, but then they also chose evil and had to suffer judgment over and over again. All of the suffering we see in the history of God’s people is due to the abuse of their free will and the folly of their choosing evil rather than good. The story of Adam and Eve is repeated over and over in every generation and in every human life. Is there evil in the world today? It is here for the same reason it was in Eden and every previous generation. It is due to free will making the wrong choices. Of course, there is also good in the world today, because there are always many who are making the right choices. Both are always inevitable in a world of free will beings.

We need to give heed to the warning in Isa. 5:20, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Do not call God evil because he make us free to do evil. This freedom is good and not to be called evil. Evil is in the hearts and minds of creatures and not God. He never wills any being to make a choice that is out of his will, and that will lead to their judgment. It is evil angels and evil men who are the cause of all the evil in the world.. This is the primary and most effective defense of God against those who call God evil for allowing all the evil that is in the world. Many reject God because they blame him for all that is so horrible in human depravity. The cruelty of such men as Hitler and Stalin and others who have been guilty of mass murder is so terrible that many feel that they must hold God accountable for it, for he made it possible and did not prevent it. They build some powerful sounding arguments against God and atheism thrives on these arguments, but they are missing the point and are calling what is good evil. God has forbidden all of the terrible things they offer as evidence that he does not care. It is all out of his will, and the reason he does not prevent it is because he cannot rightly do so and let men be free to do evil. He does, however, have the freedom to judge all that evil behavior, and he does. No evil ruler has ever ended well, but all end in judgment, for God is the God of history and history will not allow any terrible person of evil to end well. They become a disgrace to their people and their time and almost always end up experiencing the wrath of God in time, and if not, certainly in eternity. Nobody wins who uses their free will to bring pain and suffering upon others.

God gave the ten commandments to make it clear that the ideal life if a good relationship with God and a good relationship with other people. The first 4 deal with our relationship to God and the last 6 with our relationship to others. Sin and evil are due to using our free will to chose anything that hinders our relationship to God and others, and which brings pain and suffering to God and others. It is of great value to have this knowledge of good and evil. It is to be like God to have it. We read in Gen. 3:5, “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."Knowing good and evil is part of God’s all knowing mind, and so knowing evil is not evil in itself. Knowing evil is not evil. It is doing evil that is evil. God knew the reality of evil before man and that is because evil was a part of his experience in eternity past. He knew what was just and fair and he knew what would be unjust and unfair as he related to the angelic beings before man. He knew all about dealing with evil and disobedient beings. Man was not his first experience in dealing with free will beings. I can have the knowledge of evil and know how to do a perfect crime and treat people unjustly and how to do all manner of evil things, but if I do not do them it is not sin.

It is God-like to know evil because one is only truly good who knows evil and yet never chooses it. God knows all evil that is possible, but he never chooses it because he is pure and holy and hates evil. Evil is everything that is contrary to his will and nature and wills never to choose what is contrary to his will and nature. A truly good person is not one who does not know the difference between good and evil. An infant does not know good and evil and so an infant cannot be morally good and pure. They do not make choices between what is good or evil. They steal toys from other children and have no sense of guilt or regret, for they do not know it is wrong to steal. Only when a person becomes mature and has the knowledge of good and evil can they be moral and righteous and pleasing to God by choosing what is good and rejecting what is evil. Satan enticed Adam and Eve to get the knowledge of good and evil before they were mature and able to discern the difference, and that is how he brought about the fall. It was like holding a shining silver coin before a 4 month old baby alongside a dull hundred dollar bill. The baby does not have any knowledge of the value of the two and so is likely to be enticed by the shining coin rather than the valued bill. So Adam and Eve not knowing the value of obedience over against disobedience chose the picture that Satan portrayed as being of such value, and they went for the coin of disobedience rather than the bill of obedience.

From this point on Satan continues to be the enemy of man and so seeks always to entice them to make the wrong choices. But it is folly to blame all evil on Satan, for man has the capacity to choose evil on his own without any seduction from Satan Scripture makes it clear that man alone is fully responsible for much, if not most, of the evil in the world. Look at just a few texts:
Job 15v14-16 says "What is man, that he could be pure, or one born of woman, that he could be righteous? If God places no trust in his holy ones, if even the heavens are not pure in his eyes, how much less man, who is vile and corrupt, who drinks up evil like water!"
Ecclesiastes 7v20, 29 says "For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not." "(v29) Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions."
Jeremiah 17v9 says "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"
In Mark 7v20-23 Jesus Christ says "What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean. For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man unclean." (NIV)
In Romans 7v14-21 the writer (Paul the Apostle) speaks of the continual battle in his mind - that of serving God and that of following his own tendencies to do evil. He says in v18-19 "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing." (NIV)
1. In Romans 7v21-23 Paul says "So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members." (NIV).

When looking for the origin of evil then, do not look too far afield, for it is far enough to look at your own heart and mind. We all have the knowledge of good and evil as soon as we reach maturity, and we have the same temptation as Adam and Eve to choose the appealing way of that which is out of God’s will. When we choose the way of evil it is almost always, if not always, because we have a feeling that it is the best way to go, just as did Adam and Eve. Every sin is chosen because people are convinced it is the best way to happiness. They really feel that killing people they hate is good, and that robbing from the rich to help the poor, namely themselves, is good. They are convinced that adultery is the best way to find happiness in life. People do not choose evil as evil, but as what they perceive as the best way to go for good. Adam and Eve were convinced they were choosing the way that would benefit them the most. This is the deceptive power of temptation. All is not gold that glitters, but we like the glitter, and that is why evil is always dressed in bright colors and glorious lights. The worldly life is full of glamor and beauty to appeal to the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, just like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Wise is the person who does not blame God for evil, for it is a false accusation. Wise is the person who does not blame Satan for evil, for though it is a true and valid accusation, it can lead the person to look outside of himself to externals and neglect to deal with the evil in his own heart. It is only when we see the origin of evil in ourselves that we will seek God’s solution to the problem of evil. God could not prevent man from using his free will to chose evil, but he could provide a way by which they could still become righteous and pure in his sight. He will not let evil ever have the last word, for he is also free to make choices, and he has chosen to make a way for man to be forgiven for his wrong choices and be reconciled to himself. He did this by sending his Son, the Lord Jesus into the world to face the same choices as all men face. The first Adam fell, but he became the second Adam, and that means the second chance for man to face the temptation of good and evil and make the right choice. Jesus as the second Adam did just that. He faced all temptations of man and chose to always go the way of pleasing his heavenly Father. The result was he became the only person to ever live who could make a sacrifice for the sins of mankind. He chose to do it freely and made it possible by his death on the cross for all men to come to God and be forgiven for all of their wrong choices. By trusting in Jesus as Savior we are reconciled to God and become his children with the promise that we will dwell with him forever. Free will was the origin of evil, but it was also the origin of the good, and especially the ultimate good of victory over all evil by the free will choice of Christ to die for our sin.

2. GOOD AND EVIL Based on Gen. 3:6

When Victor Hugo was at what seemed to be the height of his fame he came into disfavor with Napoleon III and was exiled for 19 years. It was only natural that Hugo would consider this as pure tragedy, but his immediate judgment was wrong. During those years he wrote far superior books, and he became twice the man he had been before. The day actually came when Hugo looked at that seemingly unhappy event and exclaimed, "Why was I not exiled before?" The evil that befell him actually resulted in a greater good.

It may seem ridiculous to suggest that man's fall and exile has also resulted in a greater good, but let me suggest it anyway. Biblical theology would seem to demand this conclusion, for we know that God is sovereign, and that in spite of his giving to man a free will, He will not end up when history is over with less than what He began with. God could allow the possibility of evil just because He is able to bring good out of it. Let us not get the impression that the fall was good. It was not, but it was a very definite and tragic evil. The point is, God is in control and permits only that evil to be possible out of which He can bring good.

It is often of small comfort in a tragic situation to say it could be worse, but it is of great comfort at the point of the fall of man. In one of Shakespeare's plays a character is made to say, "And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again." This is exactly what did not happen in the fall of Adam and Eve. They did not fall as Satan did. He fell by his own choice to defy God, but they were tempted by external persuasion. Therefore, their fall was not final, but rather was one where God has plans to restore them to a state of perfection. Without the fall we would not have a Savior, and however pleasant our life would be, it would be less than what we have ahead in eternity because of what Jesus accomplished for us.

All this amounts to is the logical conclusion we must come to as Christians because of our rejection of Dualism. We believe that God alone is sovereign, and He is the creator of all. We do not believe that there are two ultimate beings as the ancient Persians and Gnostics believed, with one being good and the other evil. We believe in a limited dualism in which light and darkness battle one another with Christ leading the forces of light and Satan the forces of darkness. We believe the evil forces had a beginning, and that they will have an end in defeat.

Evil we say is dependent upon the good for its very existence. Good can exist alone, but evil must have the presence of good to exist, for evil can have no meaning except by contrast to a standard of good. It would be impossible to ever do a thing in the wrong way if there was no right way to do it. But one could do it the right way even if it were impossible to do it wrong. Let me illustrate. Suppose you have a puzzle all together except for one piece of a very odd shape. There is only one right way for that piece to go in. It is just because there is a right way for it to fit that it is possible to try many wrong ways. You can hold it several different ways and turn it over before you finally hit the right way. All the wrong ways can only exist because of there being a right way. If there was no right way for it to fit, there would be no wrong ways, for anyway would do. Wrongness is dependant upon rightness for its very existence.

God and good are supreme and ultimate, but Satan and evil are temporary intruders. This is confirmed by the record we have here of the entrance of evil into the world. It got in by the misuse of that which was good, and thereby established the basic nature of evil as being the striving for a good by the wrong means. In other words, just as God can bring good out of evil, so Satan can bring evil out of good. C. S. Lewis said, "Badness is only spoiled goodness." If you examine any sin you will discover that some good is always the foundation of it. This is why sin if often so appealing. It appears to offer so much good. The greater the good involved, however, the greater the sin. If sex perversions are high on the list of sins, it is only because normal sex experience is so high on the list of God's blessings.

If bigotry is such a despised attitude, it is because conviction is such an honorable attitude. In other words, evil is basically a perverted good. Take orthodoxy for example, which means being sound and right in your beliefs. None can doubt that this is a good, and yet it has been the cause of so much evil because of its being converted and made an end in itself. Mark Guy Pearce writes, "Look back over the ages so far as we have any record of the world's religious history. We shall find that the cruelest thing that ever came into God's world is religion without love. It has kindled more fires for the burning of martyrs, it has invented more diabolical torches, it has wrought more dire and dreadful suffering, then wars and strong drink put together.

Jesus as the risen and reigning king said to the church of Ephesus that it was good that they tested men and found them to be false apostles. It was good that they were orthodox, but they had left their first love. He warned them that if they did not return to that love all their orthodoxy would be for naught, and he would remove their candlestick from its place. Christ stands squarely behind Paul's statement that though one has no knowledge and faith enough to remove mountains, but has not love, he is nothing. Jesus says by His rebuke to this church, and it is backed up by all of Scripture, and the pages of history reecho it that the end does not justify the means. No end however good, even that of being orthodox, can be attained or maintained by means inconsistent with love. If it is, the good is perverted and becomes an evil. The point that we need to grasp is that any good is the source of potential evil, for evil can only exist by perverting a good. This calls for constant examination and renewed commitment lest we be subtly led into sin in our very pursuit of the good.

This is what happened to Eve. God had made everything good, and there was nothing that was bad or evil on earth. The only possible way Satan could introduce evil into the world would be by some misuse of what was good. The paradox of the fall is that good surrounds it completely. C. Vaughn said, "The fall is a greater mystery than the redemption." We have been studying the cleverness of Satan in getting Eve to fall, and we have seen that Satan has used truth as one of his instruments of deception. Satan could not succeed without using good for his evil goal. We see Satan using wisdom and truth to deceive Eve into disobedience. Now as we look at the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which has by Satan's subtlety became the object of Eve's attention, we discover again that good is the only thing we can see, and that is all that Eve saw as well.

1. First she saw-The tree was good for food. God had made all things good, and this included the fruit of the forbidden tree. It did not just look good, it really was good for food. The only possible way evil could arise out of seeking this good food would be by gaining it in a way out of harmony with God's will. That is exactly what happened. We see, however, that the good itself was good. It was only the means to get it that made it evil. Satan's success was in getting her to gain a good by an evil means.

God was the author of taste, beauty, and desire for wisdom, and all of these are good. It is not an evil to desire good food, but it is natural and good. All of these good factors combined to produce an evil simply because they were directed toward a good but forbidden goal. Any good that has to be gained by disobeying God is a good out of which evil will come. To desire such a good when you know it cannot be gained in God's will is an evil lust. Desire is not wrong, but a lust for that which is forbidden is a desire that has gone out of God's will.

It was Eve's lust for the good fruit that led to the fall. Someone wrote, "Eve, with all the fruits of Eden blest, save only one, rather than leave that one unknown lost all the rest." Martin Luther wrote, "How rich a God is our God! He gives enough, but we do not heed this. He gave Adam the whole world, and that was nothing. He was only concerned about the one tree he had to ask why God had forbidden him to eat of it. So it is today. In his revealed word God has given us enough to learn. We leave that alone and search into His secret will, and yet we fail to learn it. It serves us right if we perish through such conduct." What greater folly can there be than to forsake the abundance of God's blessings and go in pursuit of what He has forbidden? The forbidden fruit was good for food, but then so was every other piece of fruit in the garden. Beware of being duped into pursuing anything just because it is good, for a good pursued out of God's will is an evil.

2. It was a delight to the eyes. Certainly no one would call aesthetics evil. That means the enjoyment of beauty. Beauty is God's doing, and so also is the love of beauty in the heart of man. Yet this good can also be used to draw us into the snare in gaining the good by a wrong means. Had the tree been ugly, and the fruit unappealing, and half rotten, the chances of the temptation succeeding would have been slim indeed. Evil we see again can only succeed when it has a good foundation on which to build. It cannot stand alone. It can only enter where a good standard is established. Adam and Eve could never have been tricked into doing an evil in itself. The only hope for evil to succeed was by using the good. It is still Satan's most effective means to get people to fall. If he can get us to focus our eyes on a good goal that must be gained by disobedience to God, he has a good chance of getting us to go ahead. We are prone to persuade ourselves that as long as the goal is good the means do not matter.

Many have fallen where they never expected they could simply because they continued to gaze at the forbidden. The poet has said,

The ill we deem we ne'er could do, in thought we dramatize;
What we should loathe, we learn to scan with speculative eyes.
Alas! For ignorance profound of our poor nature's bent!
The weakened sympathy with wrong becomes the will's consent.

All that glitters is not gold, and all that is beautiful is not thereby approved of by God. Joseph Parker said, "A beautiful gate it is that opens upon ruin! It is well-shaped, well-painted, and the word welcome illuminates it in vivid letters." We need to be fully conscience that evil's best tools are the good, the true and the beautiful. Spurgeon said that the serpent probably got Eve fascinated with it so that she liked it the most of all the creatures. To her it was beautiful and something to be treasured. Satan often uses beauty to lead us astray. These are three values that all men desire. People who think sin is always ugly and awful are usually very fine respectable people who will never be saved, for they do not believe they are sinners. We must be ever aware that evil is basically perverted good, for only then can we spot the sins that trap us when we think we are being righteous.

3. To be desired to make one wise. God certainly expected man to use the brain He gave him, and to grow wise is good. Eve desired to be wise and her hunger for knowledge was not evil. We see that a good was the object and goal, which was made to bring about man's fall. She had three good reasons to justify her act of eating. If she put all arguments for and against down in writing, there would only be one against it and three for it. This shows us the quantity of arguments is not a valid basis. No number of arguments weigh anything in the scale of decision when God's command is against it.

Eve let 3 good goals tip the scale, and she chose to go against God's command. Our interest in this message is to stress the fact that evil could not succeeded without the help of the good. Good is the foundation of evil, and without it evil cannot exist. This shows us that good is the original and evil is an intruder. All evil is a perversion of some good in God's totally good universe. One day the perverted will be destroyed, and all his perversions, and all will be good again. Meanwhile we need to grow in our discerning of good and evil that we might not be led into evil by way of the good, but that we might overcome evil with good.

3. GOOD AND EVIL II Based on Gen. 3:22-24

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children." This does not mean, however, that their truth telling is always pleasant. Especially if you have guests, or if you are like the Sunday School teacher who asked too many questions. One Sunday she told the story of the Good Samaritan, and she made it very vivid so the children could realize clearly what had happened. Then she asked, "If you saw a person lying on the roadside all wounded and bleeding what would you do?" A thoughtful little girl broke the hushed silence and said, "I think I'd throw up."

The truth is not only not always pleasant, but it can even be used to promote evil. William Blake wrote, "A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent." Satan is the father of lies, but he reveals right from the start that he recognizes that truth can often be even more effective than lies in accomplishing his purpose. If you think the devil never tells the truth, then you have not read Gen. 3 very closely. In verse 5 the subtle serpent tells Eve that when she eats of the forbidden fruit her eyes will be opened, and she will be like God knowing good and evil. No one can call this statement a lie without also accusing God, for in verse 22 God says the serpent's prophecy was literally fulfilled, and man did become like God knowing good and evil. Satan is not fussy. If the truth can be used to get men to disobey God, why bother inventing lies?

Truth is never an adequate reason to justify disobedience to God's revealed will. Satan will use the truth and nothing but the truth, and he will offer you the very best if he can persuade you to get it by disobeying God. Just because something is new does not mean that it is right, or that it is God's will. Adam and Eve assumed that if they could become more like God by disobeying God it must be the right thing to do. They got a good thing, but they paid too great a price, when by obedience they would have gotten not only the knowledge of good and evil, but eternal life as well. There is no doubt that God intended Adam and Eve to eat of both the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but it was to be only in His good time. This seems clear if we look closely at God's words in verse 22. These are really quite startling words, and they have led to some very radical developments in the history of theology.

God says, "Behold the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil." Many have looked at these words and said that it doesn't sound like a fall, but rather a rise. Man's first sin made him more like God than he was when he was innocent. That is an improvement, and it made man greater than he was before. Fallen man is more divine than innocent man, and so the fall must have been good. Many conclude that God intended man to fall just because it was the way for Him to become more godlike. They do not see tragedy in man's fall, but rather the beginning of the struggle of man to climb to the heights of perfection. What they are failing to see, however, is the fact that man got this good by disobedience, and so fell from a perfect relationship to God. It is true that eating of the forbidden fruit made them more godlike, and that is why it is reasonable to believe that God would have let them eat of it eventually after they had proven their loyalty to Him.

When God finished creation He said that all was good. That included the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree was not evil, nor was it bad to have the knowledge of good and evil. God has it, and no one can be like God without it. Animals do not have it, and so they are not moral beings. Man does have this knowledge and is a moral being, and is responsible for choosing good and avoiding evil. The Bible refers to the knowledge of good and evil as a precious gift. God admits here that it is a quality of His own nature, and so to have it is to partake of the divine nature. In I Kings 3:9 Solomon prays, "Give thy servant therefore an understanding mind to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and evil." In II Sam. 14:17 it is said of David, "...my lord the king is like the angel of God to discern good and evil."

If it was a good thing to have it, and if it made man like the angels of heaven and like God himself, why then did God not want them to live forever, and, therefore, put them out of the garden? The answer is really quite obvious. If man lives forever with the knowledge of good and evil, but with a will that is not committed to good and loyalty to God, he will be an eternal rebel. God already has eternal rebels in Satan and his fallen angels. He does not intend to allow man to become like them, and so His act of expelling them from the garden is an act of great mercy. If He allowed them to stay and eat and live forever, He would be condemning them to eternal separation from himself. But if He cast them out to die as mortal, He can provide a way of redeeming them and bringing them back into fellowship with himself. This way He can give them eternal life and win an ultimate victory over Satan.

God's plan is not to have men who are living forever, but to have men who are living forever in fellowship with Him. A Christ like person can have the knowledge of good and evil, but chose to follow the good. If we were Adam like for all eternity, there would be no guarantee that we wouldn't sometime chose evil and fall all over again. In order to achieve the best God had to prevent man from eating of the tree of life until after he was made completely like Christ. When we become like Him in eternity there will be no more chance of our disobeying God than there was of Christ disobeying. He had the knowledge of good and evil, but He always chose the good.

Death with the hope of eternal blessedness is certainly a better plan than eternal life with a sinful nature. Satan is an example of everlasting evilness. If God had not prevented it Adam could have become another Satan. Physical death was a blessing in comparison to eternal spiritual death of separation from God. What we have here then is God's grace in action. It may look cruel, but it is pure grace. Man was losing Eden so that God could redeem him and restore him to an even greater paradise. The devil can never die, but he is doomed forever. We can die, but we can also be delivered and live with God forever. Death was not the worst fate man could have had. The worst fate would be eternal life with a sinful nature.

Thank God for forcing man out of Eden. This was the greatest eviction that ever took place, and because of it we all can have the hope of returning to paradise through Jesus Christ. God did not destroy the tree of life. He just made sure that sinful man could not partake of it. In verse 23 we see God sending them out to labor in the ground from which they were taken, and to which they would return. They were driven out to die, for only those who can die can be resurrected and restored to perfection. When the angels fell God cast them into hell to await the judgment, but man is not put in a place of torment, but in a place of toil, and with a promise of deliverance.

Verse 24 uses stronger language and says that God drove them out. As tragic as the lost was men read too much into it. Some poet wrote,

One morning of the first sad fall,
Poor Adam and his bride
Sat in the shade of Eden's wall-
But on the outer side.

This was true, and the loss was real, but to add to this that they lost their relationship and fellowship with God is not true, for the next chapter goes on to show that they worshipped God and thank Him for blessings, and they offered sacrifice to Him. There is no comparison between the fall of angels and the fall of man. They fell from within, but men fell because of outside pressure, and so there was a radical difference in the nature of their fall, and in the nature of their judgment.

God shut the gate of paradise to Adam, but the Second Adam opened it again on the cross, and the very day of His death He promised a sinner that He would enter with Him into paradise. The closed gate with the flaming sword of the angel guarding it is no longer the true picture. Now Jesus stands at the gate inviting all to trust Him and enter in. It was a terrifying experience for Adam and Eve, for the cherubim were frightening looking creatures. They were not cute little baby angels as the artist portray them, but they were great and dreadful creatures that would frighten anyone. Adam would have tried climbing over the gate at night to get a bite of that life-giving fruit if he was not scared to death of that cherubim. There is no way back to eternal life unless God takes away this awesome guard.

The New Testament Gospel is the good news that this guard is gone. Jesus now stands before the tree of life, and He now offers man the chance to freely partake of the tree and live forever. They need simply to yield to His Lordship and accept His atonement for the cleansing of their sin. Christians need to let the world know that the gate to paradise and eternal life is now open.

4. FRUIT OF EVIL Based on Gen. 3:6-7

We have seen in our study of verse 6 that the fall of man was brought about by Satan’s subtlety in getting Eve to gain a good end by a bad means. The danger of allowing the end to justify the means is a real danger all of us need to be aware of, for none are immune to the virus of this danger. We can throw it off time after time when it concerns a goal we are not greatly interested in, or committed to, but when it comes to a goal we feel is essential, then we face a real test. Edmund Cooke warns us against pride by writing,

So you tell yourself you are pretty fine clay
To have tricked temptation and turned it away,
But wait my friend, for a different day;
Wait till you want to want to.

In other words, as someone else has said, “It is easy to resist where none invade.” It is no victory to stand where there is no pressure to fall. This is why Jesus had to get His human nature in a weakened condition so He could really feel the pressure of Satan’s temptation. Had Jesus faced the temptation to turn a stone into bread when He was in perfect condition and fully fed, it would have been a farce. He had to be in a condition where He really wanted what the tempter offered in order to make it a true victory. The test is only real when you deeply desire that which you resist because you desire even more to obey God’s will.

This is the test that Eve failed, and then Adam followed. The first sin of man, like the first sin in the life of most everyone, was very simple and not sensational. The original sin seems so trivial that even though wrong it would seem that the consequences would be equally trivial. The fruits of this evil, however, were great and affected the whole world from that moment on. We need to learn from this that the trivial can be tragic. We do not need to commit horrible crimes or diabolical sins to wined up in deep debt. Paul Dunbar wrote,

This is the debt I pay, just for one riotous day.
Years of regret and grief; sorrow without relief.
Slight was the thing I bought; small was the debt I thought.
Poor was the loan at best….God! But the interest!

It is the interest that spoils the loan of the pleasure of sin. Could we only count the cost before hand, we would hesitate to invest our life in such a costly venture of disobedience to God. All of us are still paying on the interest of Adam and Eve’s costly experiment in disobedience. Had not Christ entered history to pay off the principle all men would be in unrelieved debt forever. Thank God that through Christ we can pray forgive us our debts. Even so we must still eat the fruit of evil acts and experience the bitter consequences, even though forgiven. It is of value to study the consequences of the first sin so as to be aware how great a matter a little fire can kindle. We need this awareness lest we, like our first parents, allow the trivial to be the door through which great evil enters our lives.

Notice how brief and simple is the record of the first sin. She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband and he ate. It is almost as if it was an incidental remark, and yet it began the history of all evil in the world. This shows us that it may not be the sin itself but the consequences of it that are so tragic. Sin itself may be a trivial matter of thoughtlessness of which one is hardly conscience, and yet the consequences can be terrible. A mother can tell her child not to pick up a firecracker, but as he watches it, and it seems to be harmless, he goes to pick it up and it goes off. It was a trivial act of disobedience, and yet he loses a finger or an eye. The consequences can be all out of proportion in relationship to the evilness of the act.

It is the fruit of evil that is so burdensome. Sin itself can be so appealing because people do not look beyond it to the consequences. Eve could say one less piece of fruit in the garden won’t hurt anyone, and she was right, but it was still an act of disobedience. It is man’s shortsightedness that enables the tempter to be so successful. One has to look at the long run to see the folly of sin, for the immediate picture, which leaves out the consequences, can appear almost innocent and inviting. It is the soft and friendly whisper to grasp a present value that led Eve into tragic consequences, and this is still Satan’s method today.

In the castle of Chillan on Lake Geneva there is an old dungeon with a well shaft in it called the way of liberty. When it was being used a prisoner whom the authority did not want to live was put into this dark dungeon with the well shaft. The jailor upon locking the door would whisper in a friendly voice, “Take 3 steps to liberty.” The prisoner thinking this was the council of a friend would begin to move about in hope in finding a way out. He would soon find it by falling down the open shaft which, unfortunately, led to sharp spikes protruding from the sides. His mutilated body would be washed out to sea. He was free, but dead. This is the kind of subtlety employed by the tempter. He suggests steps to take to gain a recognized value, but fails to point out the tragic consequences of taking those steps. His way of liberty leads to death.

If Satan can keep us blind to the fruits of evil he will be able to persuade us to go ahead and eat the forbidden fruit. We must learn to be stubbornly persistent in our obedience to God regardless of the apparent values that are offered by following a different voice. Thomas Hood wrote,

When Eve upon the first of men
The apple pressed with specious cant,
O, what a thousand pities then
That Adam was not Adamant.

It is when the appeal is so seemingly innocent, and even profitable, that we need to be adamant, which means hard and unbreakable in our determination to obey God. Adam was far from adamant. According to the brief record he responded in disobedience with less persuasion than Eve. He appears to jump on the bandwagon just to please Eve. Eve is usually blamed for the fall, but this is not fair. The New Testament does recognize that she was deceived and not Adam, but Adam holds the greatest responsibility for the fall. Paul says, “As in Adam all die so in Christ shall all be made alive.” It was by one man that sin entered into the world, and Adam was that man.

The fall of Eve was but a means of Satan to get Adam to sin, for he was the head and the one responsible to maintain the will of God. It was his fall that was most disastrous. It is useless to speculate as to what would have happened had Adam resisted and not sinned, but the implication seems to be that if Adam had not sinned Satan’s victory over Eve would not have been sufficient to bring man to ruin. Adam as the head of the race had to fall himself, and Eve was but a means to that end. Just as Mary was a means by which the Second Adam entered human flesh, but only he alone, as the new head of the race, could gain back what Adam lost. Women played great roles in both scenes, but they are second to the roles of the two Adams.

The point of all this is that the Bible does not hold Eve more guilty than Adam for the fall of man, and so we ought not to do so either. The ancient Greeks supposed that man began wifeless in a state of ignorance, but innocent and happy. Prometheus stole fire from heaven and taught men to use it. Jupiter was so angry at this that he ordered Vulcan to form a woman of clay, and he ordered the gods to bestow on her every grace and beauty, but to fill her heart with vanity and cunning. The woman was called Pandora, and she was given to man to marry, and from that moment disease and evil began on the earth. We see elements of the true tradition passed down from the beginning, but we see that it becomes perverted. Woman is seen as a curse on man, but the Bible represents her as a blessing of God, but used by Satan to bring about a curse.

The whole picture as we see it in the Bible compels us to reject as irrelevant the conflict of the sexes as to who is most to blame for the evil in the world. Both are to blame, and it is only escapism to try and throw off guilt by each accusing the other. The fact that this conflict does exist shows us one of the consequences of sin. The battle of the sexes is often just for fun, but it is also one of the great sources of sorrow in the world, and all of it is the fruit of the first sin. Bulwer-Lytton wrote,

Preach as we will, in this wrong world of ours
Man’s fate and women’s are contending powers;
Each strives to dupe the other in the game,
Guilt to the victor-to the vanquished shame.

In other words, neither can win the conflict, and their attempt to do so only adds to the folly of our sinful world. God made the two sexes to compliment one another, and not to conflict with one another. It is of interest to note, however, that not all women haters are men. Queen Christina of Sweden once said, “I love men, not because they are men, but because they are not women.” Madam de Stael said, “I am glad that I am not a man, as I should be obliged to marry a woman.” Possibly they had some legitimate reasons for disgust with the feminine sex, but as Christians our attitude must be consistent with the biblical balance, which holds both sexes equality guilty for the evil in our world. All of us share in the bitter fruits of evil because all of us make our contribution of seed to the field of disobedience. In Christ we escape the eternal consequences of sin, but still we must endure the temporal consequences. Even these, however, can be eliminated if we can only learn by our study of the mistakes of the past to listen to no other voice but the voice of God. We escape the bitter fruit of evil by eating consistently the sweet fruit of obedience.

5. SATANIC SUCCESS Based on Gen. 3:1-7

William Congreve said, “If I were a painter I would draw the devil like an idiot, a driveller with a bib and bells.” All I can say to that is that I am glad he is not a painter, for he would only serve the devil’s cause by painting him as a driveling idiot. I agree with Thomas Lodge who said, “Devil’s are not so black as they are painted.” The Bible pictures Satan as extremely capable, and never as a mere dunce only good for laughs. Satan would be delighted if we thought of him as an idiot, for this would give him another advantage in his perpetual plot to deceive. Degrade the devil and you deceive yourself. This does not mean we are to exalt the devil, but we are to recognize the facts about his capabilities and subtlety.

We can no more follow the devil is dead nonsense then we can the God is dead nonsense. It is true that he is a defeated foe, and those in Christ can resist him and make him flea in retreat, but it is also true that if we are dreaming that the devil is a dimwitted demon devoid of dynamic deceptive ability, we are asleep to reality. We can only defeat him and escape his subtle deception by being fully aware of his abilities. This will drive us to dependence upon Christ whose guidance and wisdom can outwit the subtle serpent.

Satan would like us to have our guard down, and have the attitude toward him as expressed by the 17th century poet Dryden toward a certain Shadwell. He wrote-

The rest to some faint meaning make pretense,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense.
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,
Strike through and make a lucid interval;
But Shadwell’s genuine night admits no ray,
His rising fog prevails against the day.

This is the way Congreve wanted to paint Satan, but it is a great mistake, for as long as men think of Satan as stupid, ugly and repulsive they will never recognize him. It is this negative attitude that has cause many to doubt his very existence, for they never confront him in that image. If you picture Satan as the subtle serpent that he is, however, then you can see his trail winding all through history. If you recognize his ability to become an angel of light, and recognize, as the temptation of Christ reveals, and as Shakespeare said, “The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose,” then you can see his subtle slithering even among the very elect. In other words, the first step in recognizing the reality of Satan is to become aware of his amazing abilities. Heine tells us in poetry of his surprise at discovering the real nature of Satan:

I call’d the devil, and he came, and with wonder his form did I closely scan;
He is not ugly, and is not lame, but really a handsome and charming man.
A man in the prime of life is the devil, obliging, a man of the world, and civil,
A diplomatist too, well skilled in debate, he talks quite glibly of church and state.

The Christian must forget tradition and art, and build his concept of Satan on the only reliable source of information, and that is the Bible. It is obvious that Shakespeare knew the biblical view, for he wrote, “The prince of darkness is a gentleman.” A Dutch proverb also catches the biblical image-“Never was hood so holy but the devil could get his head in it.” I am convinced that the reason God has preserved the account of the fall of Adam and Eve is that so all who follow His Word might be fully aware of the cunning enemy that seeks their downfall. The most practical value we can get from the study of the fall is awareness of the methods of Satanic deception. We want to see how he succeeds so that by not being ignorant of his devices we can counter his attack with the wisdom of Christ, and so stand where others have fallen. The first thing we see is-

THE SUBTLETY OF HIS APPROACH.

One of the ideas in the definition of subtlety is the ability to make fine distinctions. We see it here in Satan’s choice of approaching the woman rather than the man. It is just good sense to strike at the weakest point. By this I do not mean that Eve was the weaker sex, for that is irrelevant, for strength has nothing to do with this temptation. Eve was the weakest point simply because she had been in existence only a matter of hours. She had far less knowledge and experience than Adam. Even the command from God not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil came to her second hand through Adam. These might seem like minor points, but Satan must have thought them to be significant. So did Luther, and he gives full credit to Satan’s wisdom in choosing to approach the woman. He said, “I believe that had Satan first tempted the man, Adam would have gained the victory.” We can never be sure of this, but we know that Satan made the wisest choice from his point of view, for he succeeded.

The fact that Satan approached by a talking serpent sounds quite far fetched to our modern ears, but nothing could have been more appropriate for the circumstances. Let us not read our experience back into Eden, for there is no comparison. The devil would never attempt to tempt anyone today in such a manner, for he is not so stupid as to think he could get anywhere that way. If a snake spoke to any woman today, it is highly unlikely she would reply with anything but a scream and a burst of speed in the opposite direction. Eve, however, stood and talked to it calmly, but why shouldn’t she? As we said, she had only been alive a matter of hours, and there was nothing unusual about a talking serpent. There was noting unusual about anything. How could there be? She did not even know of any such distinction between what was usual or unusual. She only knew what was.

If any animal, or even a tree, would have spoken it could hardly have been a shock. This is why it seems so strange to us. We know serpents don’t talk, and if Eve would have known it, she would have thought it to be fantastic too. This just demonstrates the subtlety of Satan, for he would not likely have been able to fool Adam. He had been around longer and had contact with all the animals of the garden. A speaking serpent would have aroused his suspicion immediately, and Satan would have gotten nowhere. Therefore, he approaches the one who was most innocent, and took full advantage of Eve’s limited experience. You can be sure he has not forsaken a method that was so successful. He continues to strike at the weak points. When Satan tempted Christ he struck at the most opportune time, and he directed his appeal to the weakest points.

Jesus had been fasting for 40 days, and at this point the strongest desire of His body would be for food, and that is why Satan suggested that He turn a stone into bread. Let us never think that Satan is against us fulfilling our desires and ambitions. He is not only for us succeeding, but he will suggest many ideas to help us succeed. He knew Jesus wanted to win people to Himself, and so he encouraged Jesus to jump off the temple and thereby bring a flock of people to Him. He knew Jesus came to regain the lost world, and so he offered it all to Him if He would bow down and worship Satan. He knew Eve would want to get all the knowledge she could and be as great as possible, and he was willing cooperate and see that she got it. He knows that all of us desire some degree of importance. He knows we long for power, possessions and popularity. He knows that we can count on him for giving suggestions for success. The catch, of course, is that he does not tell you the consequences of being successful by his methods.

The anticipated sweetness of following Satan’s suggestion turns to bitterness in the actual experience, for we soon recognize that the cost is the loss of God’s favor. It is extremely important that we recognize our weak points, for you can be sure that Satan does, and it will be there that he will apply pressure. Everyone has a weak spot. The fool and the wise man both have this in common, but the difference is that the wise man sets a double guard at that point, while the fool leaves it unguarded all together. A Christian needs to know himself and recognize his weaknesses. He needs to recognize that it is where he is ignorant, or where he has his greatest ambition, that Satan will make his approach.

A wise New England farmer knew his weak spot, for he said, “Whenever I say the Lord’s Prayer I add ‘don’t let a five thousand dollar temptation come my way.’” He was honest enough to know where he could fall, and so he knew where to keep guard. So often people dismiss their weaknesses as if they were not accountable for falling where they are weak. But Milton put it well when he said, “If weakness may excuse what murderer, what traitor, parricide, incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it? All wickedness is weakness; that plea, therefore, with God or man will gain thee no remission.” We are responsible for our weakness, and since we see Satan is subtle in his approach, and will surely strike at the weakest point, we have an obligation to know what our weak point is, and make full use of God’s provision to guard it well. Eve did not have the advantage we have of knowing this. She was altogether ignorant of the existence of the subtle deceiver, and so her guilt is less than ours if we too are ensnared by his subtle approach. The next thing we see is-

THE SUBTLETY OF HIS ATTACK.

We have seen how he approaches in such a way as to make sure there are no barriers set up between him and the victim. Now we need to see how he attacks the Word of God in such a way as to bring a barrier between the victim and God. He begins with a question and asks, “Has God said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” He is expressing surprise that they would think God has really forbidden them to eat of any tree. “You certainly must be kidding to say God has imposed some limitation on your freedom.” This is subtle attempt to break down respect for the command of God. It is a very common and successful method of creating rebellion.

A young person, for example, is given orders not to go to the mall after school, but to get right home. His companion wants him to go, however, and is not interested in parent-child relationships. So he seeks to shake the youths respect for his parents command. He says, “Don’t tell me your old man said you couldn’t go to the mall, just like you were a baby or something, you must be kidding, aren’t you?” This makes one wonder if the command is somehow unjust. It puts doubt in the mind as to whether it is legitimate and worthy of respect and obedience.

This was Satan’s purpose to create some doubt as to God’s goodness. Another aspect of the subtlety of his attack with this question is that it centered Eve’s attention on the forbidden. If Satan can get you to concentrate on the forbidden his chances are good of getting you to experiment with it. He is only doing what any smart salesman does. They know you have to get your product before the people and get them to thinking about it in order to have any hope of getting them to use it. Eve probably would never have thought about the forbidden tree if Satan had just carried on a general conversation. But he knew how a simple question to direct a conversation toward the forbidden could capture her interest.

We can learn even from the devil and fulfill the command to be as wise as a serpent. Satan’s method of leading men to evil work as well in leading them to concentrate on Christ and that which is good. Each of us who wants to be an effective witness for Christ must learn how to ask questions in such a way so as to lead men's thoughts to concentration on spiritual matters. If you can get people to think about anything, their curiosity often leads them to pursue it. This works both for good and evil. Someone said, “Too much curiosity lost paradise.” This could well be true, for as Burke said, “The first and simplest emotion we discover in the human mind is curiosity.”

Satan knew that if he could get Eve’s mind on the forbidden fruit it would be like getting a child’s mind on a freshly frosted cake. There is bound to be some kind of action, and the chances are that it will be in favor of an evil action rather than a good one. Rev. Harold E. Kohn has written about the power of curiosity. He told the story of the severe tough-minded woman who called the county sheriff and complained about several boys who were swimming in the nude in a stream, which she could see from her porch. It was a disgrace she claimed, and she demanded he put a stop to it. The sheriff told the boys to move up stream, and they did. A few days later the woman called again and the sheriff asked, “Haven’t they moved up stream yet?” “Yes they have,” she said, “But if I go upstairs I can still them from my bedroom window.” This, of course was silly, but it is no laughing matter when Satan can get us to be curious about the forbidden. The compulsive power of curiosity led Eve to fall, and through history has done more damage than just killing the cat, as the proverb tells us.

It is the responsibility of each of us to constantly examine ourselves in the light of what we know in Satan’s subtle approach in aiming at our weak points, and in his subtle attack of creating doubt about God’s commands, and in his stimulating curiosity toward the forbidden. Pride goes before fall, and the worse pride is that of thinking we can outwit the subtle serpent on our own. The more we learn of satanic subtlety, the more we ought to commit our lives to Christ and let His mind and Spirit guide us.

6. TRICKED INTO A TREAT Based on Gen. 3:1-6

On Halloween night the streets are filled with masked children out to get treats and to play a few tricks. Their masks may hide their identity from us, but we are only moderately fooled because we know that underneath there are children and not assorted demons, or at least not supernatural demons. This was not so on one of the first days of history. It was not a Halloween, but it was a day of tricks and treats. Satan was out to trick Eve into a treat that would bring about the fall of man. Eve was not even aware that Satan was using the serpent as a mask.

Satan's first role on the stage of history was that of a hypocrite. A hypocrite is one who wears a mask and who plays a role externally which does not correspond to his internal character. By the mask of hypocrisy Eve was tricked into the first sin. It seems as if the odds were so great against her that she didn't stand a chance. Milton says in Paradise Lost, "For neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone." Satan appears to have all the advantage, and Eve stands helpless before his cunning temptation. Except for one thing this was true. Satan then and now has the advantage over man, and man in his own wisdom will never outwit the subtle serpent. One of the very first lessons we learn from the account of the fall is that there is only one way to victory over evil and that is by obedience to the Word of God. Eve in her ignorance still had no excuse for her sin because she knew God's command and was free to obey it. Milton again has God speak concerning man:

"I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all the ethereal Powers
And Spirits, both them who stood, and them who failed.
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.

Verses 2 and 3 tell us that Eve had all she needed to gain the victory had she chosen to live according to her knowledge. She did not know the reason for God's command, however, and it was at this point of ignorance that Satan worked and sought to get her to doubt.

A children's story about an ancient king who wanted to find a faithful servant illustrates the need for obedience in spite of reasons. The king wanted to make sure he had a servant who would obey him, and so he ordered two men who applied for the position to draw water out of a well and poor it into a basket. It was not long before one of the men threw his pain away in a rage. He shouted, "This is foolish work. I will do no more of it." The other said, "This is the work the king commanded us to do, and for which he is paying us." He went on dipping his pail into the basket. When the water was nearly gone he saw a glittering of something in the mud at the bottom. He brought it up and found it to be a diamond ring. Then he understood why the king had given them that apparently foolish work. If the ring would have been brought up it could have been found in the basket. He took the ring to the king, and the king gave it back to him as a gift saying, "You are a man I can trust, because you obeyed and trusted me when you did not understand my reasons. I see I can trust you in greater things."

This simple story carries the same profound truth as the story of the Garden of Eden. If man has the knowledge of God's will that is all he needs, for he can obey what he knows regardless of the lack of reasons and the pressure to not obey. The test of the king was the same test that God gave to Adam and Eve. The test was to determine if they could obey without reasons, and even when the subtle one made it seem unreasonable. In verse 4 Satan comes right out and denies that God has spoken the truth. You will not die as God has said were his words. This left Eve standing where all of us stand, for she was between two conflicting voices. Every command of God is challenged by the voice of doubt. The first sin of man is usually thought to be disobedience, but it is likely that doubt likely deserves the dubious honor of being the first sin. Disobedience was the first sinful act, but before the act Eve was deceased into doubting God's Word. Once Satan gets a person to doubt he has them in his power.

Doubt is one of Satan's most powerful weapons simply because it is so easy to create. By the very nature of our limitations we are easy targets for the arrows of doubt. There are so many things we do not know for sure, just as Eve did not know, and unless we are willing to except many things on God's Word alone we can be duped into doubting. Doubt lost paradise, and it has lost many blessings of God sense. The Greeks recognized the great power of doubt in bringing loss to man. One of their most pathetic stories is that of Orpheus who was in love with a beautiful maiden Eurydice. She died and he was plunged into deep grief. He besought the gods to restore her, but to no avail, and so he decided to descend to the underworld himself and bring her back. Down he went through the gloomy way haunted by ghosts and phantoms till he stood before the throne of Pluto, god of the underworld. He made such a passionate entreaty that Pluto called Eurydice and bade Orpheus to lead her back to the light.

Pluto imposed one condition on Orpheus. He said, "Lead on in front, while she behind must follow, nor dare to doubt or look even once behind until the upper air is reached, else the boon is null and forfeit." Gladly he accepted the conditions and striking his lyre in joyful notes, he began to climb toward the light. As he came near the top a fear fell upon his heart. Had his loved one followed, or had she dropped by the way? Was she really behind him, or had Pluto only deceived him? So strong was the voice of doubt that he could stand it no longer. He turned to see if indeed his love was there. She was and with joy he clasped her, but alas, even as he did she began to fade. "Oh! What! She cried, what madness hath undone me! And, O wretched! The, my Orpheus, too." The madness that seized them was the same madness that brought ruin into the world, and it was the madness of doubt. Eve like Orpheus could not trust and leave the unknown to God.

Satan says in verse 5 that God knows if you eat of the forbidden fruit your eyes will be open and you will be like God knowing good and evil. Satan seeks to change completely her concept of God. He is saying that all you think about God being good and loving is a myth. His prohibiting you is not for your good at all, but it is a hindrance to what is best for you. Satan has to wage an attack on God's character in order to get Eve to doubt his motives. The most amazing aspect of this whole attack on the character of God is that it is all done with true statements. Nowhere can a better example be found of how truth can be used for evil ends. It can be used to give false impressions, or to lead one to false implications and conclusions.

Satan said they would not die, and we know that they did not literally die, but lived for centuries after their sin. He said their eyes would be opened, and this came true. He said they would be as God knowing good and evil, and this is confirmed by God himself in verse 22 where He says, "Behold the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil." There is not a single statement of Satan that was an outright lie. The lie consisted in the total impression he conveyed, they were true statements, but only half-truths because they were stated in such a way as to give a false impression. Shakespeare said, "Oh what authority and show of truth can cunning sin cover itself withal." Allston said, "The most intangible, and therefore the worst kind of lie, is a half-truth."

Satan conveyed to Eve the impression that God was the enemy of her highest well-being, and that he himself was coming to her as the great liberator showing her the way to freedom from God's unjust restraint. Milton expresses the devil's delight in his clear deception:

I under fair pretense of friendly ends,
And well-placed words of glazing courtesy
Baited with reasons not unplausible,
Wined me into the easy-hearted man,
And hugged him into snares.

If we learn nothing else, we must learn that the most dangerous lies are half-truths that give us false impressions. Let us never underestimate the powers of evil as to think their lives are always an obviously false. Shakespeare knew his Bible and history, and so he knew of what he was speaking when he wrote,

Often times, to win us to our harm,
The instrument of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence.

It is not enough that an idea be true for us to follow it, for there is not a cult, philosophy or religion in existence that does not contain some truth. One of our basic doctrines is that the Bible is our soul authority for faith and conduct. This is our protection against half-truths. There is much we do not know, even as Eve did not, but like her we have an objective authority to be our guide. If we do not doubt it, but seek only to obey it even when we do not fully understand all the reasons for God's will, then we can be assured that Satan's cunning will not be able to trick us into treating ourselves to forbidden fruit.

It is important that we recognize that Satan will even use the good to keep us from the best. What he said about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was true, for it did open their eyes, and they did become more like God. In their innocence they were not like God, for they did not know good and evil as God does. The first sin actually made man more God-like in making them true moral agents. Good came of their disobedience, but it was good at the expense of the best. There can be no doubt that if Adam and Eve would have stood the test and obeyed God would have permitted them to eat of that tree freely.

I am convinced that Satan's subtlety is best demonstrated in his getting men to arrive at a right end by the use of wrong means. Scripture makes it clear that the knowledge of good and evil is a good thing. It is said of David in II Sam. 14:17, "The word of my lord the king will set me at rest, for my lord the king is like the angel of God to discern good and evil." It was this God-like ability that Solomon prayed for in I Kings 3:9. "Give thy servant therefore an understanding mind to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and evil."

We see then that Satan tricked Eve into a treat that could have been a treat of victory, but it became a treat of defeat because it was gotten by an evil means. The very first sin teaches us of the danger of letting the end justify the means. It is by this philosophy that Satan can trick us into treats. He can offer us true and valuable goals, but when they are attained by means contrary to the will of God they are sinful. The knowledge of good and evil was a good, and it was a real treat, but to gain it by disobeying God spoiled it and left only bitter consequences. When Satan tempted Christ it was in each case to get a good end by an inappropriate means. Satan is tricking masses into treats of defeat by getting them to thinking that knowledge is the answer to all problems. God uses knowledge to lead men to higher ground, but Satan has tricked men into making knowledge an end in itself, or as a means to making them think they are gods. God is left out and a good thing is made the enemy of the best. To avoid being tricked into a treat of forbidden fruit we must always make sure that the means to a good goal is also good, and that it is consistent with the revealed will of God. Do not be tricked into getting to a good goal by a route that God has forbidden.

7. EVIL EXAMINED Based on Matt. 13:24-30, 36-43

One of the most perplexing problems in the minds of men of every generation is the problem of evil. Why is the world in such a mess? Philosophers have speculated and come up with some barren theories that hardly any one ever reads. In our modern age of anxiety men have taken a new approach that is reaching millions through peace of mind literature. It began many years ago with Joshua Liebman's book Peace Of Mind. This was followed by another book by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, and then they began to flood the market. Everyone had the answers as to how to live with peace, poise and power in an evil world. Charles B. Templeton says that the claims of this type of literature reached its zenith when in an advertisement in the New York Times there was printed in large bold type, "Now you can have peace of mind in ten minutes." All you had to do was send in $3.98 and they would ship this paper panacea post paid.

Although there may be some value in such literature, it is obviously superficial and unrealistic to expect instant peace in a world of complex problems and pressures. They just do not disappear through the performing of some mental gymnastics. Evil is not so easily eliminated. In our text we see that Jesus makes it quite clear that evil is real. He does not give any theory to explain it. He just states a simple fact, but he does not explain it away either. It is not an illusion, but it is very real and we need to face it. Jesus was very realistic in His teaching about the fact of evil, the fight against evil, and the future of evil. We want to look at each of these.

I. THE FACT OF EVIL. v. 27,28, 39

When the householder was asked where the tares came from he stated the simple fact that an enemy had done it. Jesus explains that that enemy is the devil. In the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century man had become so optimistic about his progress that he felt he was the master of his fate. The idea of a personal devil rapidly declined, and he became nothing more than a mild superstition. Then he went one step further than God, who cast him out of heaven, and cast him out of existence, or at least into the category of the bogy man.

In the 1910 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica under devil it says that belief in him is no longer an essential article of the Christian faith. But we must ask, what about the words of Jesus? He was not wrong, but according to this theory He was just accommodating himself to language and concepts of his day. He knew better, but the people thought there was a devil, and so he spoke that way. Men actually believed they had a wheat field with hardly any tares, and it was just a matter of time before they would all be gone.

Satan made a great come back, however, in the two World Wars. Man's optimism was shaken, and they begin to ask again where do these tares come from?

They may say the devil has never lived.
They may say the devil is gone.
But simple people would like to know
Who carries his business on?

Dr. C. E. M. Joad was an agnostic for 30 years. He was so shaken by the evils of World War I that he rethought his position and concluded that evil is real, and that the only hope is a God who can deliver us from it. Most would still rather think that evil is an impersonal force, but they do not conceive that God is a personality either, and so it is understandable. But for those who believe in Jesus it is no problem to accept the fact of a personal enemy who is the source of evil. We recognize that we will never have a perfect world until history is completed, and no part of it will ever be perfect. Jesus said the field is the world. The Gospel is needed everywhere because sin and evil is everywhere. In other words, a realistic view of evil recognizes that tares will be found even in the church. Counterfeit Christians must be expected, and even true believers will often be spotted by the world.

The fact of evil in every field of life needs to be recognized if we are going to be realistic. Hypocrisy in the church is no excuse to leave it or ignore it, for it is a part of reality in all areas of life, and we are to face it and fight it, and not flee from it. It is in politics, business, sports and everywhere. It is a fact of life that we must accept as the real world in which we must live. A very old man was asked by a reporter to what he attributed his old age? He said he didn't know yet because he was still dickering with two breakfast food companies. This is hypocrisy, but we don't on that account give up breakfast food. The world is filled with tares, and we must face this fact in every area of life.

II. THE FIGHT AGAINST EVIL. v. 28-29

The servants ask if they should pull the tares out. This seems like the most obvious solution, but we have to remember that we are not talking about literal weeds here. We are talking about people who are children of the evil one. Jesus here, as with the sons of thunder who wanted to call fire down on evil men, forbids violence in the fight against evil. Jesus said to Pilate that if His kingdom was of this world His followers would have fought for Him, but that His kingdom was not of this world. Peter tried to use force, but Jesus stopped him and told him to put his sword away.

Paul said that we wrestle not against flesh and blood. If that was the case then force would be effective, but we wrestle against principalities and powers. Our weapons are to be spiritual and not material. You cannot stop evil by killing the victims of it. Violence will injure the weak as well as the tares. The early church realized this, and they did not storm the jail and kill the guards to get Peter out. They met for prayer and God delivered him. The church has not always been so patient. But you never hear of Paul, Peter or John organizing mobs to destroy heretics. Later on the church did not obey the principles of Christ, and it began to persecute and even kill those it judged to be tares. The result of this disobedience was that the church became an organization of tares rooting up the wheat.

In verse 29 Jesus made it clear that men trying to do the work of God in judging who was a tare will make mistakes and destroy the wheat as well. The tares are so much like wheat that one can hardly tell them apart until they ripen. Thompson in his book The Land And The Book writes, "Even the farmers, who in this country generally weed their fields, do not attempt to separate the one from the other." The implication is that some non-Christians can be so like Christians that the only thing to do is leave it up to God to judge. There are always those, however, who are willing to do for God what He commands them not to do.

Jerome, who translated the Latin Vulgate, said, "We are exhorted not quickly to cut off a brother, because it can happen that he who today is depraved by noxious doctrine may tomorrow begin to defend the faith." Not all would heed this advice, and the church began to color the pages of history red with the blood of heretics. In the 13th century two groups called the Catheri and Waldenses wanted Bibles for all men. They began to spread rapidly in Southern France and Northern Italy and Spain. Pope Innocent III proclaimed them to be heretics and organized a crusade, which for 20 years fought these groups until they wiped them out completely.

After this the inquisition was set up, which was like a court, to condemn and burn heretics. They kept the fires burning constantly, for all the authorities shared the property of those who were condemned as heretics. The church became a tool of evil because it refused to obey the words of Jesus. While Columbus sailed the high seas a man of God by the name of Savonarola began a reform movement in the corrupt city of Florence, Italy. With his powerful preaching he drove vice from the city and obtained a government that acknowledged Christ as its head. Then he began to reform the church. He wrote to the kings of England, France, Spain and Hungry to help him fight against the corrupt Pope Alexander VI.

The Pope intercepted one of the letters and proceeded to excommunicate him from the church. He was arrested and put through unbelievable torture for one month, and then condemned to die. He was executed in the city square where all could watch. He was asked if he expected to die in peace, and he responded, "My Savior, though innocent, died for my sins and should I not give up this poor body out of love for Him?" The Pope's representative stood before him and pronounced these solemn words: "I exclude thee from the militant and triumphant church." He responded, "From the church militant thou mayes't, but from the church triumphant thou cans't not." The faggots where lit and the trap on the gallous was sprung, and another stalk of wheat was destroyed by the tares.

What is the point of all this? It is that Jesus meant what He said about not gathering up tares because you will root up the wheat also. History proves that when the church failed to obey Jesus they ceased to be His church. Does this mean we have to sit back and let evil reign, and let heresy and false cults flood the world? God forbid! No, we are not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. The Christian attitude is to be positive. Jesus said to pray for your enemies. He did not say go into all the world and condemn them, but go and teach them to observe all that He commanded. We are to go and sow good seed. It is what we are for and not what we are against that counts.

President Wilson once said, "There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right." When a nation or a church needs to use force to prove it is right, it is wrong. The church is never to use persecution, but it is to use prayer, persuasion, and the performance of godly deeds to reach people. Jesus teaches that we fight evil by doing good, and not by adding more evil. We are to take care of the wheat rather than spending all of our time trying to get rid of the weeds. We are to do this in our own lives as well. We are to dedicate ourselves to the advancement of the wheat rather than focus on the tares. We are to concentrate on doing the Lord's will and choke out the weeds by denying them any source of energy. We overcome the negative by focusing on the positive. Some people spend their life fighting weeds and never raise any wheat. It is faith and not force that is the victory that overcomes the world.

III. THE FUTURE OF EVIL. v. 30

A question constantly debated is whether the world is getting better or worse. Jesus says the answer is yes, it is getting better and worse. Both are to grow until the harvest. The kingdom of God has grown and like leaven it has infiltrated all areas of life, and it will continue to do so until the end. But the kingdom of evil will also get worse and worse until the last days. Good and evil will both make progress to the very end. The future is as bright as the promises of God, but it is also as dark as the lies of the devil. The Christian is not to despair because the world is so evil, for the wheat is also constantly growing. No matter how evil the world gets the kingdom of God is still advancing.

The attitude of optimism that says we will rid the world of evil, and the pessimism which says the world is so evil there is no use in trying, are both contrary to the attitude of Christ. Edward P. Morgan once said that the best word to describe the times is "Futility." This is not to be the attitude of the Christian. Yes the world is a mess, and yes evil is spreading, but this is to be expected. To give up and throw in the towel is as foolish as the attitude of Groucho Marx who resigned as manager of a ball team playing for charity because the first batter struck out. He told the batter to hit a homerun, and when he struck out he resigned saying, "How can I manage a team that won't follow instructions?" Christians sometimes get frustrated when life won't go the way they want it to, but they need to remember that when the battle is over it is the wheat that will be harvested and the tares will be cast into the fire. The Christian never gives up, for in the end he will shine rather than burn.

8. EVIL AND FREE WILL

Freedom is the ultimate cause for why there is evil in the world. It was God’s freedom to create beings who could choose to do what he did not will them to do that led to creatures like angels and people doing what was evil. If God had no free will and had to do only what would lead to creating what was impossible to go wrong, then we would have a perfect world with no sin and evil of any kind. But God is free and he wanted other beings who were free to love him and have fellowship with him. It was a costly choice, but for God it was worth it. He may have other world where there is no freedom to choose as we have in this world, but in this world free will is basic to all we enjoy.

Out world is based on the balance of opposites. It is darkness that makes light so precious. If you have ever stepped into a room that is completely dark you know how wonderful it is to flip on the light and be able to enjoy the values of seeing all in that room. If their was no such thing as darkness we would not really appreciate the light like we do. Opposites help us to define and understand and appreciate things. It is because we have felt the pain of coldness that we can enjoy the comfort of being warm. It is because we have felt the sadness of being rejected that we can treasure the joy of being accepted. It is because we have tasted the sourness that we can appreciate the sweetness. There are endless examples of how opposites are essential for us to appreciate life.

And so it is with right and wrong. If there is no wrong way to do a thing then every way is right. You can only know what is right if there is a wrong. God had to establish that there was something wrong for Adam and Eve to do. It was wrong and bad to eat of the forbidden fruit. It was good to have this wrong thing to do, for it meant they could now do what was right and avoid the wrong. They had a boundary that separated wrong from right. They had two roads they could follow. One was evil, for it was out of God’s will, and the other was good, for it was in his will. God gave them the freedom to choose which they would follow, for that was the only way they could truly be good, and be loving and loyal friends of his. No one can be good who does not have the freedom to do evil. God is perfectly good because he has the freedom to do evil, but chooses not to. The only way we can be like God is to have the freedom to choose evil but not do so, just as he does.

This explains why there is evil in the world. Man was made with the freedom to choose what is not God’s will. Free will is the primary argument in the defense of God. Defending God because of all the evil in the world is called theodicy. The argument of atheism is that there could not be an all powerful and loving God in a world so full of evil. If he was really loving and all powerful he would not allow evil to be so powerful in making life so miserable for masses of people. On this basis they reject the reality of God. It is a strong argument, and even believers sometimes have their faith challenged by the horrible evils that prevail. How can God be defended for allowing so much evil? The answer is freedom of the will. God limited his sovereignty when he created beings with free will. Just as God cannot make a square circle because it is an absolute contradiction, so he cannot make people free and at the same time make them conform to his will. If they are truly free, then they can choose evil and God cannot prevent it. Just as it is impossible for God to lie, so it is impossible for God to let people be free to choose and still force them to choose only what is good. By necessity man is free to choose evil, and the result is a history of terrible evil where man’s inhumanity to man is the greatest scandal of history. It all started with Cain killing Abel and continued on to such horrors as Hitler killing millions.

No matter how much you complain about the terrible consequences of free will, you would not want it any other way. Nobody wants a world of mechanical people where you hit a switch and they walk and talk just as they are programed to do. It is a completely safe world with no problems of anyone choosing evil, for they cannot do anything but what they are programed to do. But there is no real good being done, for they are robots with no choice to do evil. You can only be good is you have the choice to do evil, but do not choose it. That is what temptation is all about. It is a good thing for it tests your goodness. If you are tempted to do evil but do not choose it then you are good and pleasing to God. If there is no temptation to go wrong then it is no virtue to go right. In a world of programed robots there is no goodness and no love, for there is never a choice to do what is good, right and pleasing to the creator. It is all determined.

There are many believers who are convinced that our world and history is all predetermined also. God in his sovereignty has predestined everything just as it is and free will is an illusion. The problem with this view is that it eliminates the whole point of God’s creating in the first place. His goal was to have beings made in his image with the knowledge of good and evil, but with a will that would choose only the good. If he made man predetermined then there is no basis for goodness or love. If I force my child to say, “I love you daddy,” I am being deceived by thinking that is love. If God made me so that I have to say that I love him and want to do his will, then I have no choice and am nothing but a glorified computer programed to say and do what the programmer has put into me. You do not want that from people you want to love you, and neither does God. If he predestined all that we are and do then reality is just a game with God and we are mere puppets.

My point is, free will is an essential part of what makes the story of man a real life story and not a mere mechanical fiction that the creator has produced. Nothing is authentic without free will. If Hitler had to do what he did because God predestined him to do it, and he had no choice in the matter, then why do we blame him for his evil. He was doing nothing different than others, like Cory Ten Boom, who tried to save the Jews from his horrible scheme. Everyone, good and bad, are just playing their part that God has written, and they are following the script, and so the director should be just as happy about the way the evil parts are played as the good parts. The director of a Mafia movie is happy about the way the robbery is pulled off and the murder is committed. It is all just as the script intended it to be, and so he is delighted. This is what determinism does to the image of God. It makes God sit in heaven and take delight in all the evil schemes of men, for they are carrying out his script just as he wrote it and determined it to be. Take free will out of the picture and you have a God who is just what atheists claim he must be-a God who delights in evil and who then must be evil himself and the author of all evil. The bottom line is, when you reject free will, you reject the God revealed in the Bible. If God predestined all that is, then no one is to blame for all evil but God. The only defense against such slanderous heresy is the free will defense.

The free will defense simply says that evil is the result of free willed beings like angels and men choosing that which is contrary to the will of God. God wanted beings who were able to freely choose to love him, just as we do when we have children, but there was no way to have such beings without the risk of them choosing to not love him and his will. That is the risk he took and evil was inevitable because of it, but God is not the cause of the evil, but the free choices of angels and men are the cause. To blame God is the same as blaming Hitler’s father for all of his evil. God wanted nothing but good and loving children, just like any father, but just having children means taking the risk of bringing more evil into the world It is a paradox, but the only way to have the highest good of freedom of will is to have the potential for evil. Evil is the result of abusing and misusing the good. Steel is good, but it can be used to kill and injure, words are good, but they can be used to hurt people badly. Fire is good, but it can be used to destroy lives and property. Sex is good, but it can be used to hurt and damage others lives and dignity. We could go on endlessly showing that all good things can be misused and have evil results. Would it be worth it to eliminate all good because evil can result from misuse of good? That would be folly, and all would agree. So we dare not blame God or accuse him of not caring because he made evil possible by creating free will beings.

Our greatest good is to be free, for that is what makes us human, and that is what makes us beings in the image of God. All that makes being alive and able to relate to God and others is due to the gift of free will. Thank God for freedom, but thank God also for his love that made it possible to be forgiven when we abuse and misuse our freedom and bring more evil into the world. God hates evil, even though he made it possible, and in love he made it possible for those who make bad choices to be forgiven and reconciled to himself. He knew that evil would result by giving man free will, but he was willing to pay the cost of dealing with the problem that would result. Jesus was crucified before the world began the Bible says, and that means that even before man was made with his free will God provided a Savior who would die for all his wrong choices. In other words, God had a back up plan to overcome the evil that would result from free will. He did not just say, “Well, that is tough the way this experiment turned out and the world is such a messed up place of evil, sorrow, pain and death.” No! He made a way out so that fallen man could be redeemed and still get in on a world where all evil would be eliminated. Jesus’s life, death and resurrection were already a part of the plan even before evil was made potential. It was not an afterthought as if God was taken by surprise and had no clue as to the problems that would result because of free will. God never wills evil, but he does will that all evil be overcome and defeated in its effects. The goodness of God is the ultimate basis for optimism, and the hope that evil will never have the last word.

God seeks to prevent as much evil as possible by his law. He says do not kill and do not steal, and by obedience to his law much destruction of life and property is prevented. Millions obey the laws of God to a great degree, and by so doing eliminate massive amounts of evil in the world. The fact that God says we are not to kill and steal and covet and lie and commit adultery and many other such evils makes it clear that man has a free will. It is only because we can choose to do all of these evils that God says don’t do them. It would be folly for God to command us not to do something that he has made it impossible to do, or that he has made it impossible to avoid. If God determines our behavior, then we sin by necessity and God only is to blame. If we obey these laws because God has determined that we will, then only God is the cause and there is not value or merit in our obedience, for it is by necessity and not choice. The concepts of law and morality and obedience are all based on the reality of free will. Without free will there is no right or wrong, for then each person does what he has to do by necessity and there is no one to blame but God who has determined it all. And if he has determined it all, then it was much ado about nothing to give man the law and have any commandments at all. Commandments are based on the reality of freedom, and if there is no freedom commandments are meaningless. It is like commanding a doll programmed to sing a sacred song to never sing secular music. It has no choice, and so such a command is meaningless. If all is determined then God wasted his time and effort and ours as well by giving us the Bible. It is meaningless to give guidance to those who are already programed as to where they should go. The Bible only makes sense if man is free to obey it’s laws, wisdom and guidance.

Much of what we are is determined by inheritance, genes and environment, but we are free when it comes to how we respond to the will of God as revealed in his Word. He says we are to love one another, and we are responsible when we cheat one another, lie to one another, steal from one another, and do all manner of hurtful things to one another. These choice to do harm are not determined, but are the result of our moral responsibility being neglected and abused. That is why judgment is valid. If we were determined to do mean and hurtful things then the one who determined them is to blame and not us. But if we are free to make choices and we chose to do what is mean and hurtful then we deserve judgment. Discipline, punishment and judgment are all based on the reality of free will. All of them are meaningless if you deny the reality of free will. There may be a background that makes certain persons more easily tempted to lie, steal, kill and be immoral sexually, but the fact is, they still have a choice and they are the ones responsible when they yield to the temptation. Others may be involved in the guilt of their choices, but they are still accountable for their use of their freedom. If someone has a gun on them and they are forced to steal or lie or be killed they are not free but are compelled to do evil, and they are not held responsible. In such a case the one compelling them is guilty of the evil. That is why it is folly to hold God as the one who determines all evil behavior, for if it is so, then God only is the author of evil, and there is no defense of his goodness. Free will is the only defense that leaves God free from the contamination of his nature. God’s goodness and love can only be preserved by the reality of free will.

That is why it is such a great mystery to me why so many Christians do not believe in the reality of free will. Many great theologians believe that free will destroys the sovereignty of God. They are convinced that the only way to maintain the sovereignty of God is to make him the author of all that is. If man is free then God does not have control and man is made too powerful. In order to keep God in full control they believe that he must be made the only one who makes any decisions as to what will be. This means that all is determined by God and not by any other will of man or angels or demons. This is the view of millions of the greatest Christians in history, and it goes way back to Augustine in the third century. They argue that once you allow free will you destroy the sovereign God revealed in the Bible. He is all knowing and therefore everything has to be just as he knows it is to be, and he could only know it if he determined it to be. Predestination then is the key doctrine of those who reject free will. All has to be predetermined for God to be sovereign. Before we look at other theories dealing with the problem of evil I want to share my thinking about the sovereignty of God and his omnipotence, and show that it is best preserved, not by rejecting free will, but by recognizing free will as the key to preserving his omnipotence. This is a message found in my book BEHOLD THE GLORY OF GOD.

Alfred North Whitehead, one of the philosophical giants of the 20th century, said, "The glorification of power has broken more hearts than it has healed." He warns against the glorifying of even God's power. For the abuse of power all through history makes this attribute produce fear rather than faith.

If the authority figures in one's life have been people who abused power, than power will be seen as negative. For people who have lived with a tyrant father, or under a political tyrant, the concept of an all-powerful God is frightening. Whitehead points out that power is not good or evil in itself. It can be used for both, and so it is not worthy of worship in itself. Satan too has great power, but he is not worthy of worship because of that power, for his power is devoted to evil, and the destruction of all that is good.

Back in ancient Greek history men knew that power was dangerous, and that it was not a good thing even in the hands of the gods. Aesclyus wrote Prometheus Bound, and in it he tells of how Prometheus helped Zeus dethrone the Titans, and become the supreme God. But soon Prometheus was disillusioned, for Zeus used his power to rule lawlessly. He cared not for what was good for man, but only about sheer power. He was nothing but a big bully abusing his power. Prometheus loved man, and he saw sought to help men by giving him fire and general help in the use of his gifts and reason.

Zeus despised him for his love of man, and he chained him and tortured him.Prometheus would not bow to the power of Zeus. He became the hero of all who fight and resist tyranny. He said, "Worship, adore, court him who is now in power, But I, for Zeus less than naught do I care." He predicted that the chief God was doomed to fall in spite of his power, for power corrupts and leads to weakness. He said again,

"Then bravely there
Let him sit trusting in his heavenly thunders,
With hands that brandish his fire-breathing blot.
Naught shall avail these to prevent his falling
Ignoble with a fall intolerable."

Here is a pagan poet teaching us that power is not worthy of worship. If the pagan mind can come to this conclusion, then we need to be extremely careful in how we promote the omnipotence of God. It has often been so portrayed that it stimulates rebellion toward God rather than attraction. That which makes God attractive and worthy of worship is not His power, but His goodness. The Bible does not exalt power for power's sake, but, rather, exalts the moral qualities of God. It is the goodness, holiness, righteousness, and love that control the power of God. His power is always devoted to overcoming evil with good.

He has the power to judge and condemn, but that is always the last choice after He has exhausted every avenue to prevent it by His grace and mercy. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. In His grace He has made it possible for all to repent and be forgiven. His first use of power is always positive. It is used to prevent the negative use of power. The primary task of the prophets was to warn Israel and the other nations round about, so they could respond in repentance and obedience and not have to endure the power of God's judgment.

The whole Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. It is the story of God's power in providing a Savior, and God's power in overcoming Satan and death that there might be adequate provision for every sinner to become a child of God, and escape the judgment of God. God's power is directed toward a positive purpose, and it is limited by love. In other words, although God is all powerful, He cannot use that power for that which is inconsistent with His moral attributes. He cannot be unloving and unholy, and in any way be inconsistent with those attributes that make Him honorable, admirable, and worthy of our worship.

The God of the Bible cannot be a Zeus, who arbitrarily uses power to achieve selfish ends regardless of who gets hurt, and how unjust and immoral it might be. God cannot be a tyrant. All of His power must enhance the goals of love, and this is what makes the God of the Bible the God who alone is worthy of our love and worship. We only love God because He first loved us. If we do not present to men a God whom they can love, they will not love Him. That is why it is so important for us to understand the omnipotence of God. Lack of understanding, and misunderstanding, does great harm to the cause of God in the minds of men.

It is possible to pay God such great compliments that you destroy His glory in the minds of men. God is indeed almighty. This is one of the familiar names for God in the book of Revelation. John uses it 8 times. It is used only one other time in the entire New Testament. Paul uses it in II Cor. 6:18 as he quotes God saying, "I will be a father to you and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." The Greek word is pantokrater, which means all-powerful. In the Old Testament the Hebrew word for almighty is used 48 times. All together God is called Almighty 57 times. These are sufficient to make it a part of the Apostle's Creed, which is quoted by millions of Christians all over the world as they repeat, "I believe in God the Father Almighty."

The problem comes when these millions of Christians assume that what they mean by this is that God can do anything. If that is what they really mean, then they have rejected the God of the Bible, and they have substituted a god of their own creation, and in doing so they make millions of people reject the God of the Bible in the process, because they are saying that their god is the God of the Bible. If God can do anything, then He is not worthy of our worship, for He can lie, deceive, break His promises, do evil, and give us no assurance that He will always be good. A God who can do anything is a God to be feared and not loved, for He can by mere whim decide to prefer evil over good. He can abuse His power just as Zeus did, and like Zeus, be rejected as unworthy of worship.

Thank God that the Bible does not reveal a God who can do anything. All His power is power with a purpose, and that purpose is determined by His total nature, and not just His strength. Power is not His primary characteristic. God is holy, good, just, and righteous, and all of His power is directed according to these qualities. His nature limits Him so that He cannot do what violates His nature. He is truth, and so He cannot lie. He is holy, and so He cannot do evil. R. A. Torrey in his book What The Bible Teaches writes, "The exercise of God's omnipotence is limited by His own wise and holy and loving will. God can do anything, but will do only what infinite wisdom, holiness, and love dictate."

Only limited power is good power, and only that kind of power can be honored and admired. You would not admire me if I used my power to do all the things of which I am capable. I have the power to throw a brick through the neighbors window. I have the power to stand on the organ and stomp its keys until they break. I have enormous power to be destructive, but I keep that power under control because it is a foolish use of power. It is not wise, helpful, or loving, and so I choose not to do what I could do. In sane people power is always under the control of their higher attributes of reason and common sense. Nobody who is sane does all they have the power to do.

The power to do evil is not a strength, but a weakness and defect if you choose to use it that way. When we become totally like Christ in our resurrected bodies, we too will be perfected, and it will be impossible for us to lie, or choose any other evil, for our nature will hate all evil. What we need to see is that there is a great paradox here, and that true omnipotence is not being able to do everything, but being able to do anything that is good, true, and beautiful, with the negative ability to be able not to do anything that is destructive of the good, the true, and the beautiful. It is the very impossibility of God to do anything that destroys and hinders His perfect purpose that makes Him truly omnipotent.
A God who can do anything is not nearly as powerful as a God who can do only what achieves His purpose.

The God who can do anything can do that which destroys and hinders His purpose, and this makes Him weak, fallible, and a dangerous power. The God who can do only what achieves His goal is a joy and pleasure to Himself, and such a safe and secure God for man that He is ever worthy of worship and praise. This is the God of the Bible. He is the God who cannot do what is immoral, illogical, absurd, stupid, or self-contradictory.

If power is the ability to achieve purpose, then being all powerful, as God is, is the ability to achieve all His purposes with no defect that could taint the purpose, and achieve it in any way that is inconsistent with His nature. Nothing is power that does not achieve His purpose, and so any evil in God, or inconsistency, or deviation from the goal which is unholy and unloving would not be power, but weakness. God has no such weakness. All His limitations are a part of His power. What He can't do is a major aspect of His omnipotence. Could He do anything that was not consistent with His purpose and nature, He would not be omnipotent.

This means that the list of things God cannot do are all valuable aspects of His power, for they define His purpose and make it clear. It is because He cannot be or do anything contrary to His purpose and character that He will achieve all of His purpose. If He could lie, He would have a weakness that could hinder His goal of truth, and He would not be omnipotent. What God cannot do is just as vital to His omnipotence, as is what He can do. I can tell the truth, but I can also lie, and because I can lie I have the ability to not achieve the goal of always being truthful, and so I have a defect and weakness in achieving this goal. It is not an absolute certainty that I will. God cannot lie, and so it is an absolute certainty that He will achieve the goal of always being truthful. That is what omnipotence is. It is the absolute power to achieve a purpose.

The most powerful are those who have the ability to limit their power. The absolute dictator is really very weak. He has to keep a gun and a knife at everyone's throat constantly, for soon as he fails to keep control of everyone he risks losing his power. He is a slave to his power as much as all those he enslaves by his power. There is no comparison to the man who gives his power away and lets his people share it. He is loved, and has far greater power than the greedy dictator who grabs and grasps for power. Self-limitation is the key to true power, and is the finest expression of power. Which is the greater power? The miser who hoards his wealth so no one else can be blest by its power, or the philanthropist who gives money to others that they might share in the blessings of his wealth?

All truly great power, and good power, is power that is limited by values that are greater than power. If I choose to relate to a dog or cat I limit my power. I am obligated to care for, feed, and provide shelter for these lesser creatures. My freedom is conditioned by my love and care. There can be a great price to pay in this choice to care for pets. They often do not do what it is your will for them to do, and more often than not it is on the carpet. People do not have to put up with this sort of thing, but by the millions they do. They deliberately choose to limit their power in order to relate to an inferior creature.

We could follow through and show how every relationship that is developed with friends, mates, groups, and neighbors imposes limitations on your power. But in love we choose all of these limitations because the values of love are greater than the value of totally independent power. We feel this way because we are made in the image of God. God did not have to create man, nor did He need to create him as a being with freedom. He could have maintained total power and control on this earth had He made man like the planets. They are easy to control, and they obey the laws of God perfectly, and He has no problem whatever with them. But God choose to limit His absolute power and control by making creatures who were free to even say no to Him. The only reason for such a choice is because God's nature is dominated more by love than by mere power. Had power been the ultimate in God there never would have been the risk of creating beings like man. We only exist because God is love.

Once you love, you put a limit on your power, and it no longer becomes the dominant issue. When you marry you make a covenant of love, and this means power can no longer be the main issue in your relationship. If power was number one, then I could always have my way for I have no doubt I can take Lavonne in a fight. By shear power alone I can win any dispute and have total control of all that we do. But power is not the issue. Love is the issue, and if power is not loving, then it has to be set aside or shared. Power is always limited by love.

This is the key to understanding the power of God. If His omnipotence was exercised without regard for His love, and His sharing of freedom with man, there would not be any evil in the world. An all-powerful God could rid the world of all evil in seconds. Like lightening, God could solve all the problems created by evil in this world. But since He does not do this, it leads to complex questions about His power. Take murder for example. Everyone agrees murder is evil. God either wills murder, or He does not. If He wills it, then He is not the God the Bible reveals, for the God of the Bible forbids murder, for it is contrary to His will. But if God does not will murder, as the Bible says, why then is there still murder if He is all powerful? And all-powerful God who does not want murder to be a part of reality should be able to prevent it from every happening, but God does not prevent it from happening. It would seem that God is not all-powerful. In order to avoid this conclusion many have gone to the extreme position of saying that God is the cause of evil as well as good. All that is, is because God has willed it to be as it is.

This kind of thinking leads to exalting God's power above all of His other attributes, and destroys all that makes His love and goodness superior to power. Even a non-Christian like Albert Einstein could see where this kind of omnipotence in God leads- to a God that does not fit the Bible description. He wrote, "Nobody, certainly, will deny that the idea of the existence of an omnipotent, just and omnibeneficent personal God is able to accord man solace, help, and guidance; also by virtue of its simplicity it is accessible to the most undeveloped mind. But, on the other hand, there are decisive weaknesses attached to this idea in itself, which have been painfully felt since the beginning of history. That is, if this being is omnipotent-that every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?"

He is asking, how can you have your cake and eat it too? How can you say God is all-powerful, and so all that is and happens is His will, and yet say that He condemns those who do what He does not will? There is a clear contradiction here that forces us to recognize God has had to limit His omnipotence in terms of its control of free-willed beings. He controls their destiny, and so there is no way they can escape His power, but He does not control their choices. He has limited His power to control their choices. It is not that He lacks power to do so, but He does not use it because His goal is not achievable by mere power. If God had to make everybody do what He wills, He would be so power oriented that He would not be free to achieve His goal of having a vast family of children who freely love Him by choice.

Mere power cannot achieve this goal, and so if God was all powerful in the sense that He made everything to be as it is, then He would not be omnipotent in the biblical sense, for in the biblical sense God's omnipotence is His ability to achieve His purpose. This means the ability to limit His power and share it with others, and so risk sin, disobedience, and evil, with the assurance of reaching the goal of a vast family of men who freely love Him and worship Him, and serve Him forever and ever. The God who has full control of every event, and who by sheer force of His strength makes everything go His way, is no match for the God of the Bible who can limit His power by love, and risk even rebellion, and yet come out a winner with redeemed people out of every tribe, tongue, and nation praising and serving Him for all eternity. This is biblical omnipotence. It is God's power to achieve His loving purpose without inconsistency in His love, holiness, and goodness.

The only way God could achieve His purpose was by the power of love. If He had not had the power to choose to sacrifice His Son, and had Jesus not had the power to lay down His life and pay the ultimate price for sin, the whole plan with free will beings would have become a disaster, and God would have been proven to be impotent in this experiment. But God had the power to win, and His omnipotence is established forever. He can do anything that He wills to do. Thank God there is much He does not will to do, and thank God He is not compelled by His power to do anything contrary to His nature.

It would have been easy for God to have willed to make man a machine, and then control him by law like the rest of the universe. But God chose the infinitely harder task of making man free. The cost to God was infinitely greater by choosing this way, but He had the power to pay that cost and achieve His purpose. So God took both roads. He took the easy way of law to control His creation, and the hard way of love to control man, and He arrives where He wills by both routes. That is what omnipotence is all about. It is the power to get where you want to go regardless of the difficulty of the route you choose. That is the only kind of power that really matter in the long run, and that is the kind of power the Bible reveals to be the power of Him we will call forever, the Almighty. This issue is continued in chapter 9

9. EVIL AND GOD’S OMNIPOTENCE

It is a great paradox, but the fact is, the real test of omnipotence is what it can do when it limits itself, and gives up absolute and total control. Absolute and total control means the power is not shared with other beings. All is just as you will, and there can be no freedom of choice made by any other will. That is one concept of omnipotence, and it is a powerful picture, for there is no power other than the one with this kind of omnipotence. This would seem, on the surface of things, to be the ultimate in power. To have all power so completely that there is no other source of power in existence. It would seem that you could go no higher, or could there be a higher way?

Yes there could be! Just do as God does in the Bible. He creates other beings who also have power. Some of them have very great power, like the angels and archangels. Satan had enough power to challenge his creator, and even take a vast host of other beings with him in rebellion. Then God created man with the power of free will, and it is also capable of choices that are not His will. This is all so risky, for it puts God's omnipotence to the test. The God who takes no such risk, but keeps all in His own control, is no where near as powerful as the God of the Bible, who can take these kinds of risks, and still be able to have ultimate control, and victory in achieving His purpose.

The God of the Bible has the ability to give up control, and still win and achieve His goal. God takes on enormous limitations to His power. He cannot let men be free to choose, and at the same time force them to choose only good. He could have, had He made them mere machines, but He made them persons in His own image, and so they are free. This puts a limit on His power. God says that they are not to steal, but gives them the power to steal. They will have to pay for their disobedience, but they are free to choose. Cannot God stop people from stealing? Yes He can, but He will not, for His purpose is not to force people into obedience, but to persuade them to choose obedience.

If God has really created beings who can choose, then there is a multiplicity of power sources in the world. He can no longer then be the only cause for all that is. There are now other power sources who can cause things to be that He does not will to be. Since He chose this sharing of power, He can also freely change it if He chooses. His limiting of His own power does not in any way change His sovereignty, He is still the source of all power, and He can make all other sources of power cease to be. But by going through with the plan to the end, God will demonstrate a far greater omnipotence than a God who fears to take a chance, and holds onto all power for Himself. That would be taking the easy way out, but the God of the Bible is a risk taker.

If love, justice, holiness, truth, and beauty are the end result for all eternity after the risk of evil, hate, war, injustice, and all the ugliness of sin, then God will have demonstrated an omnipotence that is not a mere victory of power, but of love and wisdom, and this is the kind of omnipotence that is worthy of our love, worship, and praise.

So now we have a logical answer to all of the why questions. Why doesn't God do something to stop or prevent all the evil? All such questions are based on the omnipotent God concept which we have shown is a philosophical illusion, and is not the God of biblical revelation. All such questions imply that God can do whatever He wants. This leads to all sorts of false conclusions. God can do whatever He wants, but He does not want to take full control of all power and end His experiment of giving freedom to other powers. Those who condemn God for doing so would not want the alternative of all humans being mere robots programmed to do everything as God wills. We do not like the evil that freedom produces, but we also would not want to give up our freedom, and so we live in a world where much is evil, and not what God wills.

The biblical concept of omnipotence reveals a God who not only cares about the suffering that evil produces, He enters into the suffering Himself. We seldom think of it, but God has problems that He must solve also. The problem He had was in how to save fallen man, and the only way He could justly do it was to enter the world of suffering Himself. The cross was the price that God had to pay for allowing man to be free. It was that important to God to keep men free. Jesus was the only one who could pay the price to redeem man, and He did it with joy because of the eternal fellowship He would have with all of those who would receive His salvation by faith.

An omnipotent God who can do as He pleases, and who would still send His perfect Son into the world to die and endure hell for sins not His own, would be a sadistic tyrant impossible to admire. If He could save man by sheer power, and then chose the way of the cross, it would be as immoral as I would be if I had a rope tied to my valuables as my house was burning, and all I would have to do is pull it and they would be spared, but instead I would send my son into the flames to get them, and he dies in the effort. Do not say God can do anything He pleases lightly, for if He could have saved man any other way, He had a moral obligation to choose it. His Son even prayed, "If there is another way let this cup pass from me." God had no other choice.

In His omnipotence He could have sent ten thousand angels to spare His Son, but there was nothing that power could do to save the world of sinners. Only love could do that, and not all the power of heaven. But that is the very point I am making. Power limited by love is not less power, but it is greater power. The mere power concept of omnipotence could not save man. It was only the love limited power of the God of the Bible that could. Love limited power has to be distinguished from total power. If might is right, then God can do anything. But if what is right is a matter of respect for the freedom of other persons, then God cannot have His own way by the mere fact of being the strongest of persons. God has to play by the rules of His own making. He has to allow His opponents to play by those same rules, and this means they have the right to will what He does not will.

Those who have a concept of the absolute omnipotence of God with no limits so not realize that logic forces them to accept some limits. If God can make rules that bind him to them, then He has limited Himself by those rules. If He cannot make such rules, and must be always free to do anything, then He is also limited by not being able to make such rules. Either way, God cannot be conceived as having no limit whatever to His omnipotence. If He is a God who cannot make other creatures who have wills that can freely obey or disobey Him, then He is limited in His omnipotence. There is no way to have a biblical image of God without self-limitations to His omnipotence, and again, thank God it is so.

God had the absolute omnipotence before He created the universe. He was free to make any decision that was possible, and there was nothing existing to hinder that absolute control. But once He chose to make other creatures with a will of their own, He gave up total control, and imposed limits on His power to get His own will done all the time. Unqualified omnipotence is what He was willing to give up in order to have an eternal family of children who freely chose to love Him. So history is filled with much that is not His will, because He cannot let man be free and still force him to do only what is right and good.

Do men have rights that God cannot dissolve by sheer power? Of course they do. It is God's own gift to them, and He is no Indian giver who will take it back as soon as they express the right to choose what is not pleasing to Him. That would be like me giving you a gift of a radio with the demand that you listen only to Christian stations. You are free to use it as you wish, but as soon as you turn to any other than a Christian station, I will take it back. If it is truly a gift, and you are truly free to use it as you wish, then I cannot control your use of this gift. I may have the power to so control it, but if I love you, I will not exercise that power, but leave you free to make your own choice.

So God respects our freedom to choose that which is not Christian, and not according to His will. It is not that He cannot for lack of power prevent our foolish choices, but He will not for His is not the omnipotence of the tyrant, but the omnipotence of love. The omnipotence of the tyrant is most costly to the subjects. The omnipotence of love is most costly to the King.

The true image of God is always the highest conceivable by man. He will always be more than we can conceive, but never less, and so the highest conception is always closest to the truth. Is it the highest conception to imagine God as a ruler over puppets who can do nothing but what He decides, or is it a higher conception of God's power and wisdom to imagine Him ruling over a world of free beings who can choose to cooperate or compete with Him? We could put this on a more human level and ask, which is the greatest trade-to operate a machine, or to raise a child? You have the choice of a God who operates by sheer power, or a God who operates on the basis of love, and if you are choosing the God of the Bible, you will be choosing a God who operates on love, for God is love.

We need to stress that the love of God does not weaken His omnipotence. It is the view of those who make His omnipotence absolute who make Him weak. They reject the idea of freedom in any other. There is no freedom but in God, and all is in His control. This seems like a God exalting view, but it degrades God terribly. It means that even though God has all power and is the only will that can determine what is, we still have a world that is full of evil, suffering and folly beyond measure. This makes God look like an omni-incompetent rather than an all wise ruler. What king can be adored who has full control of all power, and yet has a kingdom filled with evil and suffering that is destroying his people. There is nothing exalting in the view that God is fully in change and responsible for everything being just as it is. If this is true of God, then He is also the One who wills for some of us to undermine this view and exalt Him as the God who has the courage to let other wills make choices in the freedom He grants in love. A self-limited God is a God who is lovable, but an all -powerful God who can do anything He chooses, but does not choose to prevent the evils we see daily in this world, is the God so many atheists do not believe in, for they would rather there be no God at all than such a God as that.

A father can gain the obedience of his children by sheer power. He can make it clear that they will suffer instantly if they step out of line. He can follow his threat with instant and severe punishment to the first offense. His children will live in fear, and they will conform to his will, even though they may be filled with resentment and even hate. By sheer power he has them in control. Another father may take the approach of warning, but be more open to forgiving if the children come and confess their disobedience. He may allow them more liberty, and less severity when they do fall, encouraging them in love to learn from their mistakes to avoid future falls. They may be like the father of the Prodigal and give them freedom to be very foolish, but always have an open door for them to return and be forgiven. If you study the discipline and judgment of God all through the Bible you discover He is like the second father. He gives much warning and time to repent before He punishes. He allows much freedom, and is ever open to the repentant sinner to return and be restored to fellowship. In other words, we see omnipotence of love rather than omnipotence of just power.

I want to conclude this study of God's omnipotence with a focus on His self-imposed limitations based on His character and essence as love. Thank God He is limited, or rather that He has limited Himself. If He was not limited, it would mean that everything in the world is just as He wills it and desires it to be. Even all the evil and tragedy of life is just as God wants it. This is hard to swallow, and so we know that much in life is not God's will, and, therefore, God has chosen to limit Himself, and not always have everything just as He desires. Those who will not accept the reality of God's limitations make God the author of all evil.

The reason people have a problem with the limitations of God is because they jump to the false conclusion that if He has limits, it means that He is not all powerful, and He is not God Almighty. This is foolishness, for you can have limits because you are weak, as is the case with all of us, but you can also have limits because you chose to limit yourself. You can have self-imposed limits. I do not read my sons mail, not because I am weak and cannot do it, but because I choose not to do all I am capable of doing. God has the power to do many things that He does not chose to do. He has the power to send a sinner to hell as soon as he sins, but He chooses to give the sinner time to repent and be forgiven, and to escape judgment. It is not because He is weak, but because He is love, and not willing that any should perish.

When God created free willed being He chose to limit His own will. He made it possible for other wills to choose things that He would not. He gave them power to defy His will even. He could not make this choice without limiting His own will. God cannot make us free and then still force us to do only what He wills, for then we are not free. God does not make our choices for us, but allows us to make them, and this means His will is not always done. Why would Jesus teach us to pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," if it was always done anyway? It is not always done, and that means God does not always get His way in the world.

But what about texts like Luke 1:37 which says, "Nothing is impossible with God." Or Matt. 19:26, "With God all things are possible." There is no conflict when you look at the context, for these texts are dealing with what man cannot do, but which God alone can. They are saying what is impossible with man is possible with God. He can do anything that can be conceivably necessary to achieve His purpose. They do not mean that He can even do what is contrary to His nature and what destroys His purpose. Those are the limitations that we are focusing on, and not that there is anything impossible for God to do to achieve His purpose.

These texts are for the encouragement of man. They are not telling us that God is capable of folly and sinful actions contrary to His nature, for that would be discouraging. The texts that tell us what God cannot do are for the same purpose, so that we can count on Him to never change, but always be good and loving and just, and never evil. It is impossible for God to make blunders that do what destroys His chances to achieve His purpose. The two sets of verses that say all things are possible, and those who say some things are impossible are for the same purpose. They are two sides of the one coin of God's omnipotence. He can do anything consistent with His purpose and nature, and He cannot do anything that is inconsistent with His purpose and nature. He is covered both ways for the assurance of His people. We can have absolute assurance in such a God.

The Bible gives us a number of things that God cannot do. He is limited by two things. He cannot do what is contrary to His nature, and He cannot do what He has chosen not to do. The ability to do something does not mean one has to use that ability. There are many things that God could do, but He chooses not to do them. He is free to not do whatever He does not choose to do. John the Baptist said to the Pharisees in Matt. 3:9, "I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham." As far as we know God never did that, and likely never will. It would be a marvelous miracle, but there is no reason why He could not choose to do it. But now we want to look at things that God cannot do because of the self-imposed limitations of His omnipotence.

1. He cannot lie according to Heb. 6:17-19 and I Sam. 15:29, and so cannot destroy the world with another flood, for He promised not to.
2. He cannot deny Himself says II Tim. 3:13.
3. He cannot have respect for persons, or show favoritism-Rom. 2:11, James 2:9
4. He cannot save man without a Savior, who is Jesus. John 14:6. If there would have been another way to save man without the sacrifice of His Son, God would have taken it, but there was no other way.
5. He cannot be pleased apart from faith, for, "..without faith it is impossible to please God.." Heb. 11:6, James 1:5-8
6. He cannot refuse to forgive one who confesses and repents. I John 1:9.
7. He cannot be tempted by evil, nor can He tempt to do evil. James 1:13-15. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, and so God cannot do anything that is sinful and contrary to His nature of holiness. If He could sin He would deny Himself, which is impossible.
8. He cannot do certain things until other circumstances are in favor of it, or in other words, He cannot break His promise. Gen. 19:22
9. He cannot do away with the freedom of man to choose the path of sin over the path of obedience. Rom. 6:16; Rom. 8:5-13; Gal. 5:19-21. This means He cannot make a choice men make not to have been made. He cannot make one who has murdered not to have murdered, or restore a prostitute to virginity.
10. He cannot make any other of His sons equal to the eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. John 1:1, 14, 18

You can call these the top ten things God cannot do, but there are many other specifics, because He cannot do anything that is contrary to His nature, and which enables the forces of evil to finally win the war of good and evil. In other words God cannot lose. He is a winner, and He will in His sovereignty win the war against evil and accomplish His purpose for history and for men. The self-imposed limitations do not make Him weak, but instead, make Him a loving victor. It is because He is omnipotent that He could risk letting other beings be free. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "To sin is to fall short of a perfect action; hence to be able to sin is to be able to fall short in action, which is repugnant to omnipotence. Therefore it is that God cannot sin, because of His omnipotence." If He was not omnipotent it would have been a foolish risk, for He could have ended up losing to evil forces and Satan would end up ruling the universe. He knew that could never happen, because He always had the ultimate power to overcome all evil, because He could never be tempted to yield to evil. He will demonstrate His ultimate power in the final judgment, but meanwhile He patiently endures the folly of evil because many will come out of darkness into light when they hear the Gospel of His free offer of forgiveness in Christ.

Let me illustrate once more how self-imposed limitations are not a loss of power, but are rather an expression of power. The man with no money has no power to give money to others, or to loan it and invest it. The man with money has the power to limit what he does with his money. He can give it away, loan it, or set up a trust fund for someone. In other words, he can limit his control of his money, and share the power to use it with others. Does this mean that he has less power than one who is a miser and just keeps all control to himself? Not at all! By giving up control he has expressed the power of love to include others in his abundance. His power is used as a means of expressing love for others. That is a far greater power than that of maintaining full control of one's money for pure selfish end.

It is the person whose power is under the control of love who is the most worthy person. And so it is with the omnipotence of God whose power is always under the control of His love. God will only do what power can do lovingly, and this means that judgment of evil is love for the good. Nothing in God's judgments is contrary to His love and goodness. His greatest judgment on sin was at the cross, and it was also His greatest expression of love. God had to win men by means of love and sacrifice for power cannot do it. Someone said, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still" In other words, you can force a man to conform to your will, but you do not control his inner man. You do not win his love. God was willing to limit Himself, and even go to the cross in order to win man's inner heart to love. The love of Jesus expressed in His sacrifice for sin accomplished this when nothing else could. That is omnipotence in action, and that is the Bible image of God's omnipotence.