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| Why Evil Is Allowed The Reasons Why Sin, Death, and Suffering Remained After Adam and Eve |
God knew Adam and Eve would be tricked into sinning. But why? Sin allows us to disobey as if we were
like God and could forge our own decisions. That is what was meant by being "like
God" as Satan promised them-- it has to do with autonomy and free choice which
stems from Satan's pride. But sin also has a flipside, because with the knowledge of
sin came the knowledge of goodness. Without sin, genuine love from us as "free"
beings would be very different. In fact, many people even believe that without
sin, true love would not be as self-sacrificing from us as "childlike" beings, and God wants that very much.
Adam and Eve were clueless about things we live with on a daily basis. Love for God is obedience, as 1 John 5:1-10 says, but what about love for Adam and Eve? They did not even know disobedience was even possible until Satan tricked them.
Now let's look at how our Savior Jesus showed His love for us: He was born by the Spirit, He lived a humble life, then lived as a vagabond ministering constantly to us and then sacrificed Himself for us. And 1 Peter 2:21-25 Jesus leads us by example. He did not say, OBEY! He showed us how to follow Him by example. So there is something important in not just the heart of a man but his actions as well. Adam and Eve could not have done this for God. We could never do that without the knowledge of sin in the same genuine way. So
in a way, although Satan tried to destroy us, he actually forged the
possibility that our love for God could be perfected! And because of Satan,
Jesus Christ was also set into motion before creation itself. Yes, God knew
everything. He knows everything past, present and future. He has a plan, and
sin is not a hiccup to His plan. Evil itself is turned to good because of His power--
LOVE!
With sin, our love is
perfected in trials of fire and faith and passion and hope and strife. There is power in overcoming the odds against us, and love conquers all! It is because there is the will to choose love and to fight for love and to die
for love that this power was born in humanity. Power! The power of love! If Adam and Eve wanted to be like a God, then they should have loved! For love is the ultimate power of the universe and it is the defining power of God. Love is power to conquer all evil.
So without sin, love would be very different for us all on the earth. I encourage you to dwell
on this for a little while and I bet you'll understand why God allows sin to
exist! Keep reading as well, because there is more to it.
Why is evil allowed an actual reign over the earth? It's one thing to allow sin, but evil doesn't simply exist, it seems to prevail somehow. Why, why, why? The above paragraphs are very helpful but there might be more to it than that.
When I think of evil, I think of the unseen effects of sin on people seen in the above picture to this article. A lot of people feel like the woman above. Yet our God who "says" He loves us still allows sin and evil to persist...why, why, why? How can He love us when He lets us live in sadness and misery? The below quote gives one reason why...
READ THIS VERSE AND THEN I'LL HELP EXPLAIN IT:
Matthew 13:24-30 24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
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| Harvesters separating the wheat from the weeds. The weeds are burning toward the left in the background |
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BACK TO ADAM AND EVE:
What the above means is that God is the perfect judge, and as a perfect judge who upholds all laws flawlessly, how could He condemn only Satan for deceiving Adam and Eve when they were fully capable of resisting sin themselves? They chose to act alone (prideful disobedience) without God, and fell into sin from the devil as a result. The outcome they had hoped for was not attained, and they were banished from the Garden of Eden for their sins. It is precisely because God is a perfect judge that he was faced with a difficult decision: to Destroy all evil that had appeared on the earth (which would also kill his precious creation Adam and Eve, i.e. - pluck the weeds anyway and in doing so kill the wheat also), or choose not to punish anyone (let the weeds and wheat grow together until harvest, where the weeds will be burned and the wheat stored in the barn, i.e. - heaven).
What the above means is that God is the perfect judge, and as a perfect judge who upholds all laws flawlessly, how could He condemn only Satan for deceiving Adam and Eve when they were fully capable of resisting sin themselves? They chose to act alone (prideful disobedience) without God, and fell into sin from the devil as a result. The outcome they had hoped for was not attained, and they were banished from the Garden of Eden for their sins. It is precisely because God is a perfect judge that he was faced with a difficult decision: to Destroy all evil that had appeared on the earth (which would also kill his precious creation Adam and Eve, i.e. - pluck the weeds anyway and in doing so kill the wheat also), or choose not to punish anyone (let the weeds and wheat grow together until harvest, where the weeds will be burned and the wheat stored in the barn, i.e. - heaven).
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He chose the ladder, and thus we are here and so is sin. We are the wheat growing amidst many weeds until our Great Sower comes in power for His Harvest. Our punishment was more indirect, for because we chose autonomy from God (disobedience) we are now separated from God and we must live our lives with all the weeds (sins).
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The quote from Matthew above simply demonstrates that God Himself cannot uproot evil without killing humanity, since we ourselves are very evil. Instead, He gave us His son Jesus Christ to atone for our sins and the power to obey (yes, a real power, like how the X-Men have powers, the ability to resist sin at all is a supreme power given to us by Christ). By professing our sins we are made separate from the regular sinners who care little for good. This is the harvest mentioned in Matthew. -Sin was allowed not because God's creation went sour or because God is negligent or uncaring...quite the opposite, because it actually comes down solely to the fact that God refused to kill us that we are here at all. He chose not to "redo" His creation, so now we have to do our best to atone in this life in our struggle against the grain to become fully alive as we were meant to be. He loved us all so much that He allowed us to choose: Sin and separation or Life in Christ.
The quote from Matthew above simply demonstrates that God Himself cannot uproot evil without killing humanity, since we ourselves are very evil. Instead, He gave us His son Jesus Christ to atone for our sins and the power to obey (yes, a real power, like how the X-Men have powers, the ability to resist sin at all is a supreme power given to us by Christ). By professing our sins we are made separate from the regular sinners who care little for good. This is the harvest mentioned in Matthew. -Sin was allowed not because God's creation went sour or because God is negligent or uncaring...quite the opposite, because it actually comes down solely to the fact that God refused to kill us that we are here at all. He chose not to "redo" His creation, so now we have to do our best to atone in this life in our struggle against the grain to become fully alive as we were meant to be. He loved us all so much that He allowed us to choose: Sin and separation or Life in Christ.
Have you chosen Christ today?
Have you been made separate by the blood of Christ?
(This was a very short article on sin, so for a far more detailed article on sin read my article Satan: The Corrupted Dawn Star
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The end!
