This is part 8 of my Actual Good News series of articles on the topic of biblical soteriology (the study of salvation). Part 7 is available here: Unmerited suffering and God
Please note that I’m including many of my scriptural references in the links (which are are the underlined words throughout the article), and they also link to studies with extended details that I couldn’t fit into the article, so please be sure to click all the supporting links in order to get the full picture, as well as all the Scripture references.
In my last article, I mentioned that those of us in the body of Christ believe God is 100% in control of absolutely everything, and that the “absolutely everything” He’s in control of includes evil and the suffering it can result in (since evil and suffering are a part of “absolutely everything”). It’s easy enough to prove that God is ultimately responsible for the evil that exists in the world (even without being evil Himself, since He does it for the greater good of everyone rather than for malicious reasons), not only because it’s the only possible way that unmerited suffering could coexist with a loving and omnipotent God (as I demonstrated in that article, so please go read it if you haven’t already), but also because He takes the credit for it in Scripture anyway. But it isn’t just evil that God takes credit for. If Scripture is to be believed, He ultimately takes credit for — wait for it — absolutely everything, which would also have to include sin (unless sin somehow doesn’t fall under the category of “absolutely everything”).
This idea can seem confusing to most people when they first hear it, because it would seem logical that God doesn’t want us to sin, and in fact He seems to tell people not to do so in Scripture. Well, the truth is, He doesn’t want us to sin, and He does indeed tell people not to. But at the same time, He still wills us to sin. This might sound like a contradiction at first, but it’s really not. Just as with the nine options I provided for solving “the problem of evil” in the last article, it comes down to understanding the difference between God wanting something to happen (in the sense of enjoying something that might occur) and willing something to happen (in the sense of allowing, or even causing, something He doesn’t necessarily enjoy, but knows needs to happen, to take place).
As an example, someone might not want to go to work on a given day, because they might prefer to lie in bed and watch TV, but they can still will themselves to go to work if they need to earn money to pay their bills. Simply put, someone (even God) can will themselves to do something they take no pleasure in and would prefer not to do if they recognize that the end result of doing that thing will be better than not having done it, as we just discussed. Some of you are now thinking, that’s all well and good, as far as what God “wants” versus what He “wills” goes, but what about His commandments? Isn’t it His will that humans obey them, meaning that we don’t sin? Well, this comes down to not recognizing another difference, which is the difference between His absolute will and His relative will (or, to put it another way, the difference between His preceptive will and His providential will), meaning the difference between His public commandments (or His precepts) and His hidden intentions (or plans). Not recognizing the difference between these two different types of “wills” leads Christians to believe that God never intended for people (beginning with Adam) to disobey Him in the first place, when the truth is that He secretly intended for people to rebel against His commandments all along. A great example of this is His commandment against murder. God made murder a sin, yet He had the murder of Christ planned from the foundation of the world, knowing full well when He gave the commandment against murder that without it there would be no salvation for anyone (and I’m sure it should go without saying that God didn’t actually enjoy seeing His Son tortured and killed, but He still willed it to happen because He knew it had to happen in order to accomplish His purposes — and before anyone brings up Isaiah 53:10, that’s obviously a very figurative verse referring to God considering Jesus’ suffering and death to be a satisfactory ransom for sin, since there’s no way God would literally take joy in watching His Son be tortured for no reason other than the sake of taking pleasure in watching it happen, as though He’s some sort of sadist, because that definitely would make Him evil — not to mention a sinner — if that was the case).
A less obvious, yet no less helpful, example (and one which explains how it all began in the first place) would be His commandment to Adam and Eve to avoid eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When we consider the facts — that while He told them not to eat of it, He all the while placed the tree right in the centre of the garden with nothing to make it difficult to get at (when He didn’t have to place it in the garden, or even anywhere on the planet, at all if He really didn’t want anyone to sin), made it look like good food and pleasant to the eyes and to be desired to make one wise, and even placed the serpent right there to tempt them (since nobody is anywhere that God didn’t specifically place them; and remember, being both omniscient and omnipotent and then allowing either something to happen or someone to be in a specific location is no different, morally speaking, than directly causing it or placing them there — although the story of Micaiah tells us that God does send spiritual beings to lead people astray in order to complete His purposes anyway), not to mention the fact that, without eating it, humanity would not only never understand evil but would never truly understand the contrasting goodness either (it wasn’t called just “the tree of the knowledge of evil,” it was called “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”) — it becomes obvious that God actually intended for them to disobey Him so that death and sin could enter the world (and, again, had already intended to have His Son killed prior to this, which would be a strange plan if He didn’t also intend for sin and death to exist; God doesn’t make contingency plans — each plan He makes is something that He fully intends to take place and that will indeed happen, so the death of His Son wasn’t just something He had in mind to do if humanity happened to sin, but was instead a plan He fully intended to implement long before Adam ever sinned, and in fact the reason Adam sinned was so that humanity would be mortal in order that God could implement His plan).
And, of course, the main reason He even gave Israel the Mosaic law in the first place was so that they would sin all the more. It might seem hard to believe, and some even try to deny it by making the assertion — one which is not only found nowhere in Scripture but which is actually contradicted by it — that “God is not the author of sin,” but the Bible actually tells us that God has not only purposely locked up His human creation in unbelief, but that He has also purposely locked us up in sin, in vanity, and in corruption (meaning in decay, humiliation, and death), all in order that He can later set us all free (and He can’t free us if we aren’t first locked up).
This means that, while sin is still sinful, it’s not something that surprised God, or even something that He didn’t actually secretly intend to come into existence in the first place (again, for the purpose of revealing goodness and grace — since, again, without evil we could never truly appreciate goodness, and without sin we could never truly understand God’s grace; contrast is often necessary to fully comprehend things, as we’ve already learned, and knowing this helps us come to understand that the existence of sin was actually necessary in order for God to complete His purposes).
Of course, some Christians will quickly quote what James wrote, saying, “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” And it is true, God doesn’t directly tempt anyone to sin. But we’re talking about what God does from an absolute perspective in this article, in order to make sure that we’re not only tempted to sin but that we do indeed sometimes give in to that temptation, and not about the temptation itself (which happens only from a relative perspective — and if you aren’t familiar with the difference between the relative and absolute perspectives in Scripture, please go read Part 1 of this series). And if you believe that God wouldn’t ever do something from an absolute perspective to cause someone to be tempted, you might need to read Matthew 4:1 a little more carefully.
I should probably add, knowing the meaning of the word “sin” might help make what I’m saying seem a little less blasphemous to those reading this who are horrified by the idea of the necessity of the existence of sin. You see, the Hebrew verb חָטָא/”khaw-taw’,” along with its Greek translation of ἁμαρτάνω/“ham-ar-tan’-o,” which we often translate as “sin” in English (with the noun versions being חַטָּאָת/“khat-taw-aw’” and ἁμαρτία/”ham-ar-tee’-ah,” respectively), is a word that simply means “to miss the mark” — for example, to not hit the bullseye on a target with an arrow, or to miss a target with a stone thrown from a sling — as the book of Judges made clear when it mentioned seven-hundred lefthanded men who “could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not miss,” with the word “miss” in that verse being the same Hebrew word חָטָא that is translated as “sin” in other passages. So yes, Adam missed the mark (sinned) by failing to avoid eating the forbidden fruit, but God hit the bullseye perfectly when Adam missed the mark because that was His plan for Adam from the beginning, which means that even though God is responsible for sin from an absolute perspective, He didn’t sin by ultimately being behind it all because He didn’t miss the mark Himself at all, since sin and death entering the world through Adam’s sin was His intended “mark” all along (and for those who insist that God would never give anyone a rule that He actually wanted them to break, if His plan was for Adam to sin, He had to make a rule for Adam to break or else Adam couldn’t have fulfilled His intention that sin enter the world, although Romans 5:20 also tells us that God absolutely would do this anyway). This also means that, if Adam hadn’t sinned, God would then have been the sinner instead, because it would mean He had failed to accomplish His intended goal of sin entering the world — and for those who want to insist that God’s intended goal was a world where humanity never sinned, that would also make God a sinner because Adam did sin, which means that God would have also missed the mark if that sin-free world was actually His intended mark. And if His plan was simply to let Adam do whatever he wanted and to simply sit back and watch what happens, as some seem to believe, having no particular intended goal for the world at all, and the death of Christ simply being His contingency plan to use if Adam did happen to sin, that would still make God culpable for both the existence of sin and evil (since the nine options we went over in Part 7 of this series would be just as applicable here, considering the fact that God is omniscient and would have known even before He created the world that it would definitely happen, but also considering the fact that an omniscient, omnipotent being who doesn’t stop evil from coming into existence — which God would have known would be the end result of sin coming into existence — is just as morally responsible as said being would be if they had directly caused it anyway), but His sovereignty would then also be a lie, as would be all the passages of Scripture that tell us He’s completely in control and that all is of Him.
And Scripture does tell us that He’s completely in control. In fact, the complete sovereignty of God and His purposes for creation from before it all began is one of the most important factors in Scripture, and is taught throughout the Bible. And while most Christians would claim to believe in His sovereignty, not very many actually do, because very few of them actually believe He has a good reason for causing absolutely everything that has happened in creation, and that He has had very specific plans for the ages (and for every one of the people living in each age) from the very beginning. Instead of knowing (and glorifying) God as God, which would involve them understanding that He is completely in control, placing everything where He intends it to be and subjecting all to His will, nearly all Christians believe that God really hoped Adam wouldn’t actually sin (even though He would have known before creating Adam that he would sin, making this idea completely nonsensical and hence not worth considering), but that God is now on Plan B because Adam did end up sinning. They just don’t believe Paul when he wrote in Ephesians 1:11 that God works all things after the counsel of His own will, not just some things. But the fact is that He really does, which means that everything about creation — be it good and evil, righteousness and sin, pleasure and suffering, faith and unbelief, and even the crucifixion and the devil (who was created the way he is today, contrary to popular opinion, since he’s been a murderer, and, to put it simply, a sinner, at least in his heart, from his very beginning, for the purpose of getting Adam to sin and for bringing evil into the world in general) — was all intended by God from before the beginning of creation. And this isn’t just about God being able to see the future and then accounting for it in His plans either, because while God is indeed able to see the future, He also declares what is going to be done from the beginning, and what He intends to be done will be done. Which means that if God’s intended “mark” truly was a world without any evil or sin, no evil or sin could have possibly ever occurred without God becoming a sinner Himself. To put it simply, everything that has happened and will happen occurs exactly as God planned it, because God is still on Plan A.
Part 9: The impossibility of “free will”