The Problem of Evil

I don’t mean to oversimplify this issue, though this is how I see it and I believe this is how God sees it: the problem of evil:

At the first simplistic level, we must understand that God is correct. We are evil at the heart and we initiated evil from the beginning of creation. The results of evil in Genesis 3 were that Adam blamed his wife, his wife blamed the snake and both hid from God. Now, our proclivity as fallen creatures (to speak of ‘evil’ in mild terms) is to blame somebody for evil except ourselves. Therefore, the problem of evil lies within us. We would rather blame God than blame ourselves. 

No matter whatever philosophical acrobatics you do with your mind concerning the problem of evil, the fundamental principle remains the same (and don’t you feel a sense of this?): we are sinners and God is perfect. God is perfectly good and yet we don’t trust Him. Isn’t this the real source behind the problem of evil? We don’t trust God, although He’s good. Although He’s good, and clearly we’re bad, we’re the evil ones, we don’t trust Him and yet we trust ourselves. God would tell us not to trust our own reasoning. We can’t even understand the Gospel or spiritual things unless God grants us the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 2, Matt. 11:27). So do you think us fallen creatures who dwell with deceitful hearts (Jer. 17:9) have the ability to assess evil? (We can’t even assess God’s good news correctly!) So we always assess evil in scrutiny of God’s goodness as if He could be the bad One. Well if He could be, then our only God is the Devil in which case all of us are little Hellions, literally, we are the children of Satan and the whole world was made by Him too.

And yet that would bring up a greater dilemma: “The problem of good!” Nobody likes to ask that question because we attribute the good so naturally to us, leaving God out of the equation. But we attribute the question of evil to God, and leave us out of the equation! Every debate that I hear on the question of evil is focused on God. I can’t help but think that even Christians like to put God on trial. I cannot think of a better answer to the problem of evil than, ‘faith.’ Take God at His Word. I am condemned as a sinner. God is completely sovereign and permits evil. You may well say that He caused it then because He’s omnipotent and decided not to stop it. Yet, it’s absurd to attribute Him with evil, for then God’s attribute would be evil, and hence the devil himself. God is Holy, not evil, and eternal at that. So His purposes far outreach our limited perspective. 

Plus, I always come back to this simple reasoning when trying to condemn God for evil in the world that He created. Could I make a world any better? Do I really have the right to critique Somebody Who made me (Rom. 9:20!), first of all, and Who has made a world much more wonderful than I’m capable of, and what’s more, who could prove that any human being would make a world as beautiful and lovely and less evil than the one that God’s world became? We assume that we could make a world better than God when we point the finger of blame at Him for what it has become. Yet, we who complain about the problem of evil are born adding to the problem–fighting with siblings, disobeying parents, etc. And if it wasn’t for the preventative grace of God, we would all turn out much worse than we have. Therefore, if we created a world, would we really create it without evil? (look at the families we produce!) So no, we could never, since we are as human beings the first responsible cause for evil (not including Satan) and an additional thrust to evil.

I will say this. The problem of evil is not a problem to God at all, since He permitted it. He throws into Hell, and that won’t bother Him forever. It saddens Him, albeit true (look at Gen. 6!), but He doesn’t lose sleep over a lost creation. Why? Because although people are made in God’s image, we are still made and we are not His image. We are NOT God! I think it’s a very hard thing to grasp because we are people who love ourselves more than God. But the problem of evil can be summarized with just that too: we love ourselves first, and then love God. If we were to love God and then people, we would rejoice in His glory, His justice, and His way. But instead we make the problem of evil one that only exploits our evil. We are inclined to blame God for it. However logical that may be in our head, it’s fallen reason, it’s abominable logic, it’s abysmal arguments, and we are the one’s to blame.

It’s a wonder that the world is still as beautiful as it is, filled with love and any amount of justice. That’s called grace and without evil, we would know nothing of it like we do today. 

Praise be to God for bringing the greatest evil on His Son Jesus Christ on our behalf! The problem of evil brings us to the wonder of love. And in my estimation, that is the solution to our problem of evil. Look to Christ and look no further. He carried our evil on Himself. And that is called gracious justice.

You can either have straight justice in which we would all be condemned. Or you can experience gracious justice, where God in His love took it upon Himself to bear our guilt and blame for us. He didn’t need to do that. But praise God He did!

Fire!

I constantly find myself hearing myself tell my sons when getting close to our stove, “don’t touch the stove, it’s hot.” And I’ll repeat myself and say again, “don’t touch the stove, it will burn you!” My 2.5 year old son Micah will constantly repeat this warning out loud by saying, “Daddy, we don’t want to touch the fire, it will burn me!” 

The reason that I tell my children not to touch that hot surface is because first of all, they don’t realize it’s hot, second, it will hurt them severely, and thirdly, I love them. 

Not only is there hidden fire lurking behind a beautiful glossy ceramic stove top, but beneath the surface of this beautiful God given life is unthinkable, unimaginable, danger that will burn us if we don’t heed our heavenly Father’s warnings. 

I find myself thinking about this hidden reality called Hell quite a lot every time I inadvertently tell my sons, “don’t touch this surface, it’s hot!”

I’m moved by the thought, just the thought of the enemies of Jesus burning in Hell for all of eternity, not just a hand on the stove, but a body thrown into a furnace, not just a hand on a stove that flinches backwards, but a soul that abides in the fire without any escape. 

We often think of our evangelism in terms of God’s love but contrast that against His warnings of Hell. I’m beginning to see, as my sons prove to me, that warning is the greatest proof of your love.

Why wouldn’t we be willing to warn people of the fire of Hell? In most cases I believe it’s because we hardly believe it, we haven’t given it enough thought, and we’re selfish. We care more about what that person will think of me than what will happen to them. 

Hell is probably the hardest biblical subject and truth for me to understand, digest, and speak (although Christ’s suffering should boggle me more than mankind’s punishment). Nevertheless, if indeed all of Christ’s words are true and He wasn’t a crazy lunatic, then Hell is a place of unquenchable fire where the worm does not die and the soul doesn’t either. They remain in torment forever. 

The realities of God are paradoxical, more terrible than you can imagine but also better than we can fathom. He is good and terrifying as the Holy God that He is. 

Just as this earth–His creation–is filled with terrifying realities like tsunamis and tornados and, oh, fires too–so it is with our Creator. 

He is good, but we have much to fear. Of course, He is holy, we are not, therefore we deserve only bad, yet He gives much common grace to all. 

Yet one remaining fact stands with God’s character, and that is the triumphant love that Jesus shows as He conquered death for our sins, even more, paid the Hellish fire for our sins, somehow in His way compressing an eternity of God’s fiery wrath on Himself for all of us in 6 hours. 

And in His love, He warns us. Jesus spoke of Hell in more specific and terrifying language than any other person or part of Scripture. Yet He is God’s expression of love, isn’t He? 

I don’t claim to say that I’m very good at even mentioning Hell to people in my evangelistic efforts yet alone warning them of it because their life is hanging off the precipice, but I believe that I can do better. 

To speak of a fire that will burn you and tell your friends who are without Christ, “don’t touch the fire, don’t go there, lest you get burnt” is not an unloving thing to do, but a naturally loving thing to do IF THAT IS THE TRUTH. You might say it like this: ‘my friend, I don’t want you to experience everlasting torment, I really don’t, so let me tell you about Hell and God’s love for you that quenched it.”

In Jude 23 he writes, “save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.” It speaks of our obligation to warn our fellow humans that there is hidden fire lurking behind our nonchalant sin, behind our everyday actions, and it should come from our deep deep love for them to warn them and tell them, 

“Don’t touch the stove, it’s hot–don’t grip onto wrong-doing, even worse, unbelief, it will burn you, forever.” 

Freedom

What is freedom?

In our culture, freedom is the ability to say yes to anything you want and be able to do anything that you want to do. Yet the Bible says something very different.

The Bible says that freedom is your decision to say no to bad things and yes to good things.

That’s what Genesis 2:16-17 tells us as God gives mankind the very first command in Scripture. Notice how it’s a command of freedom.

Genesis 2:16-17 says, “¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Notice how this is a command of freedom. 

V16 of Genesis 2 is worded very particularly like this: “you may surely eat of every tree of the garden.”

Yet notice that God says that as His command. Therefore, God gives a command of freedom here. 

And from this verse, we meet our definition of freedom:

It means to be able to choose life (v16) over death (v17).

I’ve often heard that freedom means choosing to refuse that which is harmful for you, and that’s true according to Genesis 2:17 as God tells Adam, the first man, to refuse the fruit of a tree that will kill him. God is essentially saying, “Adam, say no to that which will hurt you!”

Therefore, freedom is not merely saying yes to everything, but it means saying no to that which will harm you. 

However, even more foundationally, freedom means the ability to choose. 

But in choosing, you get to choose, not independence as our culture is known for teaching, but you get to choose what to follow, either life or death. You see that as Adam gets to choose if he will eat from all of the good trees, and live, or eat from that one —and only one–other tree and die. It’s his choice and it’s also our choice.

More specifically though, notice that Adam’s access to life would come through food and his choice to eat it, while Adam’s punishment of death would come, likewise, through food and his choice to eat it.

Essentially, God offers the first diet plan here in Genesis 2:16-17. 

Think about it. If you say yes to every good food and say no to the unhealthy ones, then you will enjoy life and freedom through a body that has better movement and quicker mobility. However, if you never say no to any good looking food, then you become very unhealthy which will ultimately lead you to be able to do less and potentially cut your life short. 

Therefore, you can see how the very foundational every day to day nature of life is outlined in these verses of God’s first command. 

Really, we exercise the decision of v16 and the discretion of v17 everyday that we live our life as we decide to eat this healthy food but decide (hopefully) to deny that unhealthy food. 

And in choosing food that is on limits, we choose life and freedom! But if you never say no to any kind of food, you’ll become enslaved to an overweight body that is restricted from moving and unable to be able to move around freely. 

And all of that experience can be seen in God’s first command! 

Do you see how practical God’s Word is to us? It’s for our life and freedom, not for our death and slavery.

So then, you can see that our freedom is based upon our decision that involves something outside of ourself–a decision to eat this food or that food.

And ultimately, our freedom is based upon the outside command of God and obeying Him. Literally, if we obey God, then we’ll experience life (v16), but if we disobey God, then we’ll experience death (v17).

Now the question is, do you trust God and His words?

Psalm 19:7 says, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;” Indeed it is! Literally, the first command to Adam was one that would revive his soul as he ate from the healthy and delicious trees.

God’s words are also freeing in Jesus as He said in John 8:31, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, ³² and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Here’s the truth, God’s Words–all of them–are for our freedom to enjoy life and not restrict it.

Have you noticed that the only restrictions that God ever places on humans are the ones that hurt us?…just like the first one that said, “do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil because in the day you eat of it you will surely die.”

Well that makes sense!

For that reason, all of God’s “shall nots” are so that we can say yes to everything else.

In other words, God says no so that we can say yes to everything else.

For instance, “you shall not murder” is the 6th commandment, and it only exists so that we can live life. If you say, I don’t want to follow that “no” part of God’s law, then you’ll disallow somebody else from being able to enjoy the freedom of all of life’s “yes’s”, and perhaps somebody else will cut off your life too!

Yet, God does give us the option. He allows us to choose life or death just as Deuteronomy 30:11 & 15-16 says, “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off…See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. ¹⁶ If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today…”

Yet God allows us to choose and that too is why God’s first command is one of freedom. In fact, there would have been no freedom if verse 17 didn’t exist and God didn’t give Adam the option to choose to eat from that tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It’s really the “tree of trust” because Adam is left to either trust God’s Word that says, “the ingredients of that fruit will kill you” or not trust those words.

It’s like Adam has a choice of believing like you and I have the choice in believing that the nutritional information is correct or not on food labels.

Therefore, the tree of knowledge of good and evil is a “tree of trust.”

Though, let me suggest that it’s also a tree of pleasure too.

God tells Adam not to eat from it, and that’s for his good, but Adam was allowed to touch it, look at it, admire it’s beauty, climb it and even smell it.

For instance, I don’t need to eat a donut in order to still enjoy the smell of a donut shop or the beaitiful appearance of that frosting!

My point is that that there was nothing evil about the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil.” It was a good tree because “everything created by God is good” (1 Timothy 4:4).

It was just a tree of trust. God wanted man to trust Him like I want my son to trust me when I tell him, “don’t touch that!” He doesn’t have a “knowledge of good and evil” yet. No, he doesn’t know that it will hurt him to touch our fire place. He just feels the warmth from a far and sees the beauty of the flames. So he assumes, I can touch it. But I tell him, “don’t touch that, and certainly don’t jump into the fire because in the day that you do, you will surely burn yourself, or worse, die. So don’t do it!”

I know he won’t understand it, but I want him to trust me as his father who loves him.

Do you realize that God loves us in the same way? He tells us that some things are off limits because they’ll hurt us. We don’t understand his reasoning (the knowledge), but that’s okay and in fact, that’s the whole point, because God wants to give us an occasion to trust Him!

He wants us to trust Him and His knowledge on good and evil, because we, left to ourselves, aren’t good at discerning right from wrong. We need God’s knowledge, even when we don’t understand it. Yet trust Him.

Will you trust Him? Will you trust God who “did not spare His only Son but gave Him up for us. And He who did not spare His only Son but gave Him up for us, how much more will He give us all other good things (Romans 8:31)?

He’s the God who sent His Son Jesus to die on a tree for us and take the consequence for our sin.

You see, Jesus experienced v17 for us: “In the day that you eat of that tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die.”

Although Jesus lives the perfect life, Jesus died on the tree of Calvary! And as He did, he cried out, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?” It seems that Jesus emptied Himself of all deity on the cross (Phil. 2:6-7) and He didn’t understand every piece of knowledge on that tree either. Yet nevertheless, Jesus summitted to the Father’s will, in our place, and He died for us.

As Jesus said in John 10:10, “I have come so that they may have life, and life abundantly.”

Indeed He did and still does because He rose from the grave and He’s alive to give us life. He is our life (John 14:6, Col. 3:4).

As John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.”

Will you trust Christ today? Because “Whom the Son sets free will be free indeed” (John 8:36).

And that sounds like a freeing God to me!

Sharing in Suffering

I think I’m beginning to understand what it’s like to feel an eternal fraction of the pain that our Father God felt when He lost His Son. Jesus Christ died, but God lost His Son. That is to say, Jesus Christ felt one kind of loss and God the Father felt another type of loss. Jesus lost His body, but God lost His Son.

We often think about the one who suffers in their body from a disease and we pray for them. But we often forget about the parent of that child who suffers. And we often empathize for the husband who has brain cancer, but we overlook his wife.

Or might I say that we at least look at the one who has a chronic disease and assume that their physical pain is greater than their spouse’s emotional pain.

And then remember, God the Father lost His Son. As the good hymn says,

“How deep the Father’s love for us
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory”

In other words, Christ suffered as His Father turned His face away but how great the pain of searing loss as God the Father lost His Son!

For that reason, I think when people go through physical pain, they experience God the Son’s pain. And when the sibling, parent or spouse of the one undergoing physical pain feels a knot in their stomach, they’re experiencing the Father’s pain. What a beautiful unity of pain that our Father and Son share for us!

I think that John 10:30 is a great verse that explains how God the Father and God the Son felt the pain of death and sickness together. Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.”

Therefore, they were also one in their affliction. Christ lost His Body but His Father lost His Son!

We are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26) and one of the greatest ways that we mirror God’s image is by when a husband and wife unite together as a one flesh relationship. “…and they shall become one flesh” as Genesis 2:24 says.

In other words, just as God the Father and God the Son are one (John 10:30), He created marriage so that a man and woman can experience the oneness that God the Father and Son experience.

Therefore, when a husband or wife suffers, they both suffer together as one–one flesh. When the wife suffers, the husband suffers and when the husband suffers, the wife suffers just like when God the Son suffered, the Father suffered.

Of course, the suffering looks differently for the spouse who is healthy and the spouse who is sick as the one endures the physical pain and the other experiences a type of secondary pain. Although the pain shared feels different, it is still very real.

Just as Jesus Christ endured the loss of His body and His Father endured the loss of His Son–and they were one–a spouse will endure the loss of his/her body while the other will endure the loss of his/her spouse, and because they are one, this pain is shared.

But here is yet another dimension of how God designed the sharing of suffering:

Just as God the Father and God the Son are one (John 10:30), and a wife and husband are one (Genesis 2:24), the Church also is one with Christ (Ephesians 5:31-32).

Ephesians 5:31-32 very clearly explains how, just as a marriage union is a reflection of the Father and Son’s union, the marriage union between a husband and wife is also a reflection of the Church’s union with Christ. It says, “‘therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church.” 

Therefore, the same united experience of pain that God the Father and His Son felt, and the same shared experience of pain that a husband and wife feel, is the same union of suffering that the Church and Christ feel.

What this means is that the Church should share in Christ’s sufferings too.

There are a whole slew of verses that reiterate this like:

1 Peter 2:21 says, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.”

2 Timothy 3:12 says, “ Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,”

Philippians 1:29 says, “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake…”

2 Corinthians 4:10 says, “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”

Colossians 1:24 says, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,”

And finally, 1 Corinthians 12:26 says, “If one member suffers, all suffer together;

You can hear the language of oneness in all of these verses. In particular, you can notice how the Church shares in Christ’s sufferings because of our oneness with Him.

In Ephesians 1:3-13, we as God’s Church are described as “in Christ” 10 times. I say that to say that because we are in Christ, we share in His sufferings and He still suffers through us. Colossians 1:24 makes this apparent.

We are Christ’s Body, which means that He feels all of our suffering. But Christ is our Head, which means that we ought to also feel all of His sufferings too.

In 1 Corinthians 12:26, it makes the connection between suffering and union. “If one member suffers, all suffer together.” That means that as a Church Body of Christ, not only are we united to Christ alone, but we are united to Christ together. Therefore, we are united to one-another and that is why “if one member suffers, all suffer together.”

So I end with this question: Do we suffer as the Bride of Christ knowing what our Groom went through for us? You can be sure that Christ suffers for His Bride when every or any member of Her suffers.

And do we suffer when a member of Christ’s Body suffers? We should because we are united together in a spiritual one flesh relationship. We are united through our union with Christ by His Spirit.

Jesus lost His body but the Father lost His Son. A spouse may suffer in their body but the other spouse shares that pain. And one Church member will suffer but the rest of the Body feels that pain.

This is God’s union of pain. And not only is this a fact of life, but it’s a command from God:

“Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” -2 Timothy 2:3

The Loving Hate of God

“The opposite of love is not wrath but indifference.” -A. G. Hebert

God hates you as a sinner, much more than you feel, therefore He loves you as a sinner, much much more than you realize. This is what the message of Malachi 1:2-5 says:  “’I have loved you,’” says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have you loved us?’ ‘Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.’  If Edom says, ‘We are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins,’ the Lord of hosts says, “They may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called ‘the wicked country,’ and ‘the people with whom the Lord is angry forever.’’ ⁵ Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, ‘Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!'”

God loves and hates very passionately, therefore He doesn’t lack any amount of passionate care for you. To lack care means to be indifferent, and to be indifferent means to lack love. God is deeply concerned for you, and that is proof of His love for you. God cares so very much for you, that He can’t help but to hate your sin also. If God were indifferent about your sin, then He would not love you, because indifference is the absence of love.

To never think or form an opinion about your lover, means that you really don’t love the one you claim to love. They are dead to you. God cares so much for you, enough to hate your sin in order to love you as the sinner.

Are you skeptical of this truth…that God would hate you and love you all at once? Then ask yourself WHY and How, “for our sake Jesus became sin who knew no sin so that we could become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21)?

WHY did Jesus become sin? He became sin “for us.” In other words, He both hated and loved us as sinners so much that He was willing to do something about His hatred towards our sin. It was God’s hatred of our sin that gave His love an opportunity to showcase itself by becoming that sinner for us in our place through Jesus. If God never passionately hated our sinfulness, then He would have never been able to so passionately love us by becoming the sinner for us on the cross.

Now think about HOW Jesus loved us by becoming sin for us on that cross. He loved us by becoming absolutely hated on the cross. Jesus was crucified as a sinner, although He had no sin, through a repudiating hate from humanity. It was a hate-crime from humanity that crucified Jesus on the cross for us and our sins. While Jesus was crucified on the cross because humanity hated His righteousness, all of us deserve to be crucified on Christ’s cross because God hates our sin.

Because we love our sin & hate God’s righteousness, but God hates our sin and loves His righteousness, we reject the notion that God’s love really can hate. We would rather believe that God is indifferent in His love towards us so that we can continue loving our sin and living in it. However, thank God that He is not indifferent towards us and demonstrates this by hating our sin. Through hating our sin, He shows us His love by misdirecting all of His wrathful sin-hate on us by sending it on Jesus. Jesus endured the righteous God hate that we deserve from His Father God as He hung on the cross and yelled “my God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Jesus was forsaken so that we would not be. Jesus endured absolutely no indifference from the Father on that cross. The Father made the absolute decision to turn His presence away from Jesus. He decided to give Him the “cold shoulder,” an expression of hate. God the Father abandoned His Son, again another expression of hate. However, by hating Jesus for a time, God loves us for all of time. And through Jesus submission to His Father on our behalf, Jesus loved us. Therefore, embrace God’s hate for your sin so that you can embrace the extravagant love of God for you on the cross.

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

Romans 5:8 “But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”