The Origin of Evil

Isaiah 45:7

(KJV) I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

(ESV) I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things.

Lamentations 3:38

(NLT) Does not the Most High send both calamity and good?

(ESV) Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?

Jeremiah 32:42

(ESV) Just as I have brought all this great disaster upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good that I promise them.

Jeremiah 12:1, Ecclesiastes 7:15, Psalm 37, 73 & 102, Job 12:6, 21:7-17, Habakkuk  

"Why do the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper?"

https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/job-when-the-righteous-suffer-part-1 

https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/job-the-revelation-of-god-in-suffering 

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones “The Origin of Evil” in his series on Ephesians 6:10-13

https://www.mljtrust.org/sermons/book-of-ephesians/the-origin-of-evil/

The Bible starts with God in the beginning. God. God overall. God from everlasting to everlasting. God self-subsistent and existent within himself. But God in his own inscrutable, determining to create.

And first and foremost creating the hosts of heaven. Great God created the host of heaven for his own purpose, for his own ends in order that they might serve certain purposes and functions and that they might carry out his behests off through the epistle to the Hebrews as are they not all ministering spirits. He is referring to the angels.

In other words the Bible teaches that God created first and foremost. The heavens and these denizens or citizens of the heavenly regions which seem to be divided into angels and principalities and powers. Now these were all made and created by God and they were all of course perfect and complete and entire.

How do you explain the origin of evil? Where have evil and sin come from? Now the answer that is given here is that there is what we may describe as a pre-cosmic fall.

When I say cosmic I'm thinking of this universe that you and I dwell in and inhabit the universe as we know it but according to the Bible before this cosmos was created there was a tremendous calamity, a fall, a pre-cosmic fall. What does that mean? Well it's the thing that is described you see in Ezekiel 28 again and Isaiah 14. If you want a reference to it in the New Testament you'll find it in the first Epistle to Timothy in the third chapter and the sixth verse where you read this.

The apostle is telling Timothy not to ordain a novice as an elder or as a bishop. He says not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. The most significant statement.

Take that with the two passages from the prophets and this is what you find. Here amidst all these bright angelic beings was this outstanding one Lucifer son of the morning, one of the greatest the ablest the most powerful of them all. He became ambitious.

The term ambition you remember was used concerning him. He became dissatisfied with his position of subservience to God. He desired to be as God himself so he rebelled against God.

He raised himself against God with his ambition lifted up with pride as Paul puts it there in one Timothy lifted up with pride. He with stood God he became a rebel and the result of this was that he fell. 

Here is the great principle which we must lay hold of. God again in his own inscrutable wisdom allowed this to happen and it doesn't seem to me to be very difficult to understand if one may speak with reverence why God allowed that. I have reminded you that these beings were created perfect and anything that is perfect must have absolute freedom of will.

Adam as created perfect had free will. Nobody else has ever had it since, but Adam had it and it is this very quality of freedom that shows the possibility of rebellion and a falling and of therefore the origin of evil. Thus it came to pass that God having created this being perfect; he exercised the freedom of his will in a wrong direction through pride and being lifted up; and so he fell under condemnation and fell under punishment.

Remember this is before the creation of the world. The devil influences these others and together they rebel against God and so they fall. They become evil and they are under God's condemnation but they are sufficiently great in power and in number to form and to establish a kingdom of evil, a kingdom of darkness, and the hell.

The ambition and the object of all the activities of the devil and his cohorts is to be against God. The devil lifted up with pride fell and now of course because of his fall he is animated by a hatred an intense hatred of God. He has only one ambition and that is to destroy God's works to produce chaos. God is a God of order the devil is intent upon producing chaos.  

Now you see you begin to see the relevance of all this. The world has been a place of chaos hasn't it and we know it has a place of chaos today. Here it is you see these great powers. They've established a kingdom and now there is a great warfare. God and his bright angelic hosts and the heaven against the kingdom of the devil the kingdom of darkness the forces the spirits of evil that are set against. There in its essence is the biblical explanation of the origin of evil. That is how it has ever come into being at all. This tremendous event there in the angelic and in the heavenly realm right above us all together. I'm emphasizing this again for this self-same reason the whole tragedy of the world today as I see it is that we are so utterly earthbound. We start with men. We start with the world. It's ourselves and especially the 20th century. My dear friend if you want to understand the 20th century the first thing you've got to do is not only to go back to the beginning in Eden; you've got to go back into eternity before the world was ever made and there you'll see this great alignment of forces; good and evil; light and darkness; god and the devil and their forces.

The thing that we must be clear about is this. That there before the cosmos as we know it now was this tremendous event and you've got your powers and forces of evil. The next step is this one God creating the world as you and I now know it. I mean by that God creating this present cosmos. What is described there in the first chapter of Genesis and God made it perfect as all God's works are perfect. God made it perfect. Everything was perfect, man included. So here is a perfect creation, paradise. God looked upon it all and saw that it was good and god was pleased and was satisfied with it. There is god's perfect world and all was harmony and peace and men living in fellowship with god.

But then the question arises well then if that was so how is the world as we see it now? And you're familiar with the answer aren't you? Oh yes, God has made this and he delights in it. He sees it's good but the forces of evil, the devil, and the fallen angels, and the principalities and powers with their evil desire and their unhealthy ambition and their hatred of God. They look upon it and they're determined to destroy it. The devil came and tempted the woman and through the woman the man. You know the words “the fall of men”. Everything that we have described in the third chapter of the book of Genesis. Evil didn't start there. It was already there. The devil, satan came in taking this guise of a serpent. But it was he who did it and we see his object. It's against god, and man of course is the object now of attack because he's God's perfect creation and God has made men in his own image and he's made men lord of creation. But the devil came in and he tempted him and men responded and he fell.

What's the result? That men by listening to the devil became the slave of the devil. He became a citizen of the devil's kingdom. He got under the power of the devil. You will find the devil described in the bible as the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. This is the result of men's fall. He has put himself under the power of the devil and his evil agencies. He belongs to the devil now.

The bible is full of these descriptions. You remember Saul meeting our Lord on the road to Damascus and being commissioned to go and do his work. What was he told to do? Jesus said I'm sending you to be a minister and a witness unto the people. What for? He says to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto god. The implication is that as they are they're under the power of Satan and so it's not surprising that when Paul comes to write to the Colossians he says this: “who has delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of his dear son”. Man is in the kingdom of darkness. He's in the kingdom of the devil. He's under the power of the devil. Under the dominion of sin.

Listen to our Lord's description. He said “when a strong man armed keepeth his palace his goods are in peace”. That is the Lord Jesus Christ’s description of the world apart from himself. The strong man armed is the devil; the world his palace; the goods he keeps in peace is mankind as the result of sin.  

So the terrible consequence of the fall was that man is not himself any longer. He's a slave of the devil. He's the goods of the strong man armed. He's under the power and the dominion of Satan and sin and evil.

Take the apostle John's description of it again in the First Epistle chapter five verse 19. He says “the whole world lies in the wicked one.” What a terrible description the whole world, apart from Christian people, is in the embrace of the wicked one; is in the arms of Satan. He's got them and he's holding them and he's dominating over the whole of their life. That's what the bible tells us about the origin of evil and of sin. That's why men is as he is. You see that pre-cosmic fall led to the cosmic fall of men and what's the result the whole course of men's history. The whole of his story has been entirely changed. Man from the moment he fell through listening to Satan is no longer free. He's the slave of Satan. He's the underling of the god of this world. He is no longer the lord of creation. He is the slave of the devil and of hell.

You have to realize that the real problem of the world is only really and truly understood in the light of this great spiritual conflict; between god and the devil.  Man's merely the instrument that's being used. He's the pawn upon the table as it were, but it's at the back of men you see these other forces. The forces that are determined to produce a state of chaos; to upset god's universe and there I say is the starting point of all our considerations.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood. We can deal with men because they're of like powers with ourselves, but we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities against powers against the world rulers of this darkness against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. The devil is infinitely more powerful than we are. Read your Old Testament. He's defeated every saint, every prophet. There is none righteous no not one. All have sinned and come short of the glory of god. No man has ever been able to stand up against the devil. He's too powerful. He is this bright spirit son of the morning; Lucifer, great in his power, great in his understanding, great in his authority, great in the forces which he can marshal.

And men are helpless in his hands.

I find it to be most encouraging because I understand what's happening. I know that the Lord reigneth. He is over all and he has sent somebody into this world who has been able to master the strong man armed and to rob him of his armor. The Christian not only is aware of the forces arranged against him, but he is one who is able to be strong in the lord and in the power of his might. He can put on the whole armor of god and though he's fighting Lucifer Star of the Morning the Devil and principalities and powers, he can stand and continue to stand and be finally more than conqueror. May God give us grace and wisdom to consider these things. To meditate upon them that we may take unto ourselves the whole armor of God that we may be able to stand in the evil day and having done all things, to stand.

Westminster Confession of Faith, 5.4

…sinfulness proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.

Exposition

It is indisputable that God cannot be the author nor approver of sin. To solve the difficulty connected with this point, theologians distinguish between an action and its quality. The action, abstractly considered, is from God, for no action can be performed without the concurrence of Providence; but the sinfulness of the action proceeds entirely from the creature. As to the manner in which the providence of God is concerned about the sinful actions of creatures, it is usually stated, that God permit them, that he limits them, and that he overrules them for the accomplishment of his own holy ends. But the full elucidation of this abstruse subject, so as to remove every difficulty, surpasses the human faculties. We are certain that God is concerned in all the actions of his creatures; we are equally certain that God cannot be the author of sin; and here we ought to rest. 

Catechism of the Catholic Church 2851

Evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The devil (dia-bolos) is the one who “throws himself across” God's plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ.

John Piper  

"Can God Ordain Evil Without Being Evil?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh395jUOLXs 

"Where Did Satan's First Desire for Evil Come From?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECPCLhe3UQo 

CARM

https://carm.org/about-demons/what-is-the-origin-of-evil-where-did-evil-come-from/

Theodore Cabal Southern Seminary (SBC) "Honest Answers" Series "Did God Create Evil?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_IDDPhWYC0 

John MacArthur

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/90-235/the-origin-of-evil

God is not evil.  God does not do evil.  He cannot be tempted to do evil.  He never tempts anybody else to do evil.  God is not responsible for evil.  The source of evil, the source of sin is outside God.  

Evil is not the presence of something, evil is the absence of righteousness.  You can’t create evil because evil doesn’t exist as a created entity.  It doesn’t exist as a created reality.  Evil is a negative.  Evil is the absence of perfection.  It’s the absence of holiness.  It’s the absence of goodness.  It’s the absence of righteousness.  Evil became a reality only when creatures chose to do disobey.  Evil came into existence initially then in the fall of angels and then next, in the fall of Adam and Eve.

Evil is not a created thing.  Evil is not a substance.  Evil is not an entity.  Evil is not a being.  Evil is not a force.  Evil is not some floating spirit.  Evil is a lack of moral perfection.  God created absolute perfection.  Wherever a lack of that exists, sin exists.  And that cannot exist in the nature of God or in anything that God makes.  Evil comes into existence when God’s creatures fall short of the standard of moral perfection. 

God did not create evil, He did not author evil, He did not make evil.  But God did decree to use evil as a part of His eternal plan. He will not be culpable for it.  He did not bring it into existence.  That would be impossible because God is good, all good, and only good.  

John Samson

https://effectualgrace.com/2011/12/06/a-good-hard-look-at-evil/

Since God is both omnipotent and good, we must conclude that in His omnipotence and goodness there must be a place for the existence of evil. We know that God Himself never does that which is evil. Nevertheless, He also ordains whatsoever comes to pass. Though He does not do evil and does not create evil, He does ordain that evil exists. (???) 

If it does exist, and if God is sovereign, then obviously He must have been able to prevent its existence. If He allowed evil to enter into this universe, it could only be by His sovereign decision. Since His sovereign decisions always follow the perfection of His being, we must conclude that His decision to allow evil to exist is a good decision.

God ordains evil without being liable for it...in order to further His ultimate, good plan. Evil acts themselves are always evil, but His plan and goal are (for good). The Lord permits deeds that He hates because this wickedness ultimately contributes to our good and His glory (Rom. 8:28; James 1:2–4).