The Origin of Evil
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2018 · 2 December 2018
Our world is certainly preoccupied with the issue of origins. God has given us the story of origins in the book of Genesis. In Genesis 1 and 2 is the origin of the physical universe, as we know it. In Genesis 3:1-7 is the origin of evil. After the six days of God’s creation, He rested. Everything He had made, according to Genesis 1:31 was very good and God rested. He had created a perfect universe.
But we do not live in a perfect universe. And there’s a reason. Genesis 3 shows us the reason why the world is the way it is. We see how the serpent lied to Eve and said that if she would eat of the forbidden fruit she would be like God, knowing good and evil and that she would not die. So Eve took the fruit and ate and gave it to Adam who also ate it. Then they realized that they were naked.
The true diagnosis of the human condition stems from that event. God, the creator of the universe, is all good and only good. And the goodness of His creation was a reflection of the goodness of His nature. God is not the author of evil. If God created evil, then God would be both good and evil. And there would be no hope for the ultimate triumph of good, which the Bible promises.
So this makes the source of evil outside of God. Only if the source of evil is outside can God conquer evil and can God save sinners from evil. Evolution is dependent on decay and death, all effects or reflections of evil. And if God used any form of evolution, then His creation was not all good because of decay and death. Our God is not evil.
God is all good and only good. So where did evil come from? We only know what we know from the Bible. It is really useless to speculate about that. Nobody would argue that there is evil in the world. Not everybody admits that we are totally depraved and that we have original sin in us. But everyone admits there is evil in the world.
For Albert Einstein the toughest intellectual barrier to the Christian faith was not the question of God creating the world. He saw that the universe was designed so it had to have a designer. “The universe reveals an intelligence of such superiority that it overshadows all human intelligence.” But Einstein couldn’t resolve the problem of evil and suffering with a good God and so he turned away from the God of the Bible.
Einstein was wrong. He didn’t even fully understood God as the force in creation, that’s why he was never satisfied and died never having really identified the true power in the universe. And Einstein was wrong about God; God is a personal God. And God is not responsible for evil. And the problem with Einstein is he would not believe his own Scriptures of Judaism.
When it comes to the origin of evil, there are several options. You can take Einstein’s option, that there is a cosmic power: some kind of rational power out there with no personality, no relationship, no ability to connect to us, but some rational power that launched everything in our universe. Or you can take the view that God does not even exist. That is the view of the intellectual atheist.
And since there is no God, there is no evil and there is no good in reality. Those are only subjected determinations that human beings invent, but there is no true good or evil. Or you can take the view that suffering, and evil, and death don’t really exist. Christian Science believes that, and they are not Christian nor scientific. So, you can take some mystical approach to the reality of evil.
Or, you can take the view that is becoming more popular today that God has limited power. This is a new theology among evangelical Christianity and is called “process theology.” God is in process. Bad things happen because God can’t stop them. Rabbi Kushner who wrote “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” believes that God wasn’t quite sovereign yet.
One other view is that God created evil. And there are people who teach that God created evil for good purposes. He wanted to affect some good purposes and he needed evil to do it, so he created evil for good purposes. None of those is true. In spite of what Einstein thought, God is personal, and God is relational, and God is good. God does exist, so does sin, so does suffering, and so does death exist.
The truth is that God is not responsible for evil; His creatures are. Everything that God created was very good. This is affirmed throughout the Scripture. Habakkuk 1:13 says, “God is of purer eyes than to approve evil or behold evil. He cannot look on wickedness.” 1 Corinthians 14:33 says, “God is not the author of confusion.” 1 John 1:5 says, “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.”
James 1:13 says, “God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempts He any man.” First John 2:16 says, “All that is in the world,” all evil categorically, “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father.” Psalm 5:4, “You are not of God who has pleasure in wickedness, neither will evil dwell with you.” And in Isaiah 6 we hear the cry of the angels that God was holy, holy, holy.
You see a glimpse of that, when Jesus came into the world, God in human flesh. He was holy, undefiled, and separate from sinners. God is not evil. He cannot be tempted to do evil. God is not responsible for evil. The source of evil, the source of sin is outside God. When God created angels and God created humans, He gave them intelligence, He gave them reason, and He gave them choice.
Intelligence gave them the ability to understand things. Reason gave them the ability to process that understanding toward behavior. And choice gave them the freedom to determine that behavior. Intelligence, reason, and choice. And with the ability they had to process that information, they would make a choice. And whether angels or men, they would have the choice either to obey God or not to obey God.
And to disobey God was to initiate evil. Evil is not the presence of something, evil is the absence of righteousness. Evil is a negative. Evil is the absence of perfection. It’s the absence of holiness. It’s the absence of righteousness. Evil became a reality only when creatures chose to do disobey. Evil came into existence initially in the fall of angels and then in the fall of Adam and Eve.
Evil is not a being. Evil is not a force. 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. But God did decree to use evil as a part of His eternal plan.
Scripture written by God always assigns the guilt and responsibility for all sin to creatures, never to God. We do know that God is holy, He’s too pure to look on iniquity, He can’t tolerate evil. We know He tempts no man, neither is tempted by any man. He is all light and no darkness. God is not the author of confusion. Sin comes into existence when the standard of moral perfection is not met.
Why would God allow sin? Number one, it brought about the salvation of sinners. God had to allow sin in order that He might save sinners. Why did God want to save sinners? To put on display His attributes that otherwise never would have been manifest. How is God going to show His grace if there aren’t any sinners? How is God going to show His mercy if there aren’t any sinners?
That was a part of God’s nature that God wanted to display for His own glory throughout all eternity. He also wanted to show love, love that is so far reaching that it can reach even His own enemies who hate Him. How is He going to show that if He doesn’t have any enemies? So, God allows evil in order that He might demonstrate grace and mercy and forgiveness and salvation.
Secondly, He allows evil in order that He might display His wrath. How would God reveal that part of His eternal nature if there were not an opportunity to judge sinners? Look at redemptive history and you see the salvation of sinners and the damnation of sinners. And you see ultimately a place prepared for those who are damned and a place prepared for those who are saved.
Thirdly, God allowed sin in order that He might forever destroy it. As long as His creatures have any measure of freedom, as long as His creatures have intelligence, that is they can know and reason, that is they can process that knowledge toward behavior. As long as they can choose what to do, and as long as they have that capacity, there is a potential to fall short of the standard of God.
We don’t know how long it was before Lucifer made the wrong choice before God. We don’t know how long it was even in the Garden before Adam and Eve made the wrong choice, but it was certainly before they had any children. So, there is the potential of a wrong choice is here. A measure of freedom is given to the creatures by which they can choose to honor God, or choose to dishonor Him.
Lucifer was the source of evil initially in the angelic realm and as we will see, and he got a third of the other angels to join him. Now, since angels don’t procreate, Lucifer didn’t pass-on his sin because angels don’t marry are not given in marriage, as Jesus said. They were all created at one time. But when Satan made a bad choice, he managed to seduce a third of the rest of the angels.
So, there are twice as many holy angels as demons since one third fell, two thirds did not. But they fell, by choice. The same happened with Adam and Eve, only it had a different effect. With angels they all sinned their own sin and their sin did not pass to anybody else because they don’t procreate. When Adam and Eve made the wrong choice, all humanity became sinful because we are all their descendants.
In Genesis 3 we meet a serpent, nachash in Hebrew. Later in verse 14, part of the curse on this serpent was that he was going to go on his belly and eat dust. So, when the serpent first appeared in the Garden, he is not yet slithering around on his belly. There’s another Old Testament word used to speak of reptiles, tannin and they are used interchangeably, although tannin is the word for dragon or sea monster.
In the New Testament, Satan in Revelation 12 and Revelation 20, is called the serpent and the dragon both. Now, this is a special reptile because this one talks. There are wonders in the Garden, and Adam and Eve are still discovering the wonders. Eve doesn’t appear to be shocked when this reptile came and starts a conversation. The serpent said, “Has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the Garden?”
This particular animal knows about God and has a devious, evil mind. This is not a story with a moral. Jewish rabbis said the serpent wasn’t really talking to Eve but the writer, Moses, uses a serpent as a symbol of evil impulses rising in Eve’s heart. Then, why did God curse the reptile? Why can’t people just take the Bible for what it says? This is exactly the way it happened because we can trust God’s Word.
Being crafty is not a reference to the character of snakes. He is comparing this reptile to all other animals and saying this one is wiser than any other animal. But this is a crafty, wicked animal because it is being used by a superhuman intelligence to lead Eve and Adam into a choice for evil that this personality already made. And the devil inside that animal knew the effect of the choice Adam and Eve were going to make.
The devil had more knowledge. He knew about the prohibition. He knew that God had said, don’t eat of that tree. He claimed to know more than Eve. In verse 4 the serpent said to Eve, “You surely shall not die.” I know more than you. But the devil knows that when you seek to be like God, the end result is shame, degradation, misery and damnation. That’s what he himself has experienced.
In 2 Corinthians 11:3 Paul says, “I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted.” This is a New Testament affirmation to the reality of the Genesis account. This is important because this proves that this is an accurate historic representation. It supports that the man is the head of the woman, and when acting independently, she is more susceptible to deception.
It is also true in 1 Timothy 2:13-14, that the pattern of what happened in the Garden is sustained by the New Testament. 1 Timothy 2:13, “It was not Adam who was deceived,” Adam wasn’t deceived, who was deceived? Eve. She was deceived, and Adam just says, hey, if you’re going to do that I’m going to do that too. There was no deception. That affirms the story exactly the way it lays out in Genesis.
The devil can’t make you sin. When you sin, you bear the responsibility. And Adam and Eve are fully guilty for their sin. The devil thought he could be like God. But he’s not omniscient, he’s not omnipotent, and he’s not omnipresent. And he’s not immutable nor sovereign. He’s utterly as much unlike God as a creature could be. He functions only within the sovereign purposes of God to save sinners and to destroy evil.
The devil’s primary name is Satan. He is called Satan in Revelation 12:9 and Revelation 20:2, and he is also called that in the Old Testament. Three times in three passages, he is identified by the name Satan. Satan is a word that means adversary, or opponent. He is the adversary of God, and he’s the adversary of man. And he will continually try to lure us into destruction.
Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. But according to John 8:44, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” Do what Ephesians 6:11 says, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil,” especially now. Let us pray.