We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Good From Evil
The Bible is very clear that God has nothing to do with evil. There is “no darkness” in God. (I Jn 1:5). Far from intentionally bringing about evil, God’s “eyes are too pure to look on evil” (Hab. 1:13). All evil, therefore, must be ultimately traced back to decisions made by free agents other than God. Some of these agents are human. Some of these agents are angelic. Either way, evil originates in their willing, not God’s.
This isn’t to say that God can’t bring good out of evil. Scripture teaches that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him…” (Rom 8:28). As I read this passage, the phrase “works for” (sunergēo) is all important. In the Greek, “sun” is a prefix meaning “with” or “alongside of.” “Ergēo” means to work to bring something about (we get the word “energy” from it). So the term literally means to work with or along side other things or other people to bring something about. So, it seems that in this passage God is promising to work with us and alongside the circumstances he finds us in to bring good out of evil.
But think about this in terms of how many conceive of God predetermining every circumstance of history. If “all things” were already an expression of God’s will, because God is supposedly behind everything, why would God have to work with us and alongside circumstances to bring good about? If all things are already an expression of God’s will, there’s nothing outside of God’s will for him to work with or along side of.
In this light, I suggest this passage is teaching us not that all things happen for a divine purpose, as though God wills all that comes to pass, but that all things happen with a divine purpose. Whatever comes to pass, however much against God’s will it may be, God works to brings a good purpose to it.
He is, after all, an infinitely intelligent God who is able to anticipate each and every possible event as if it were a certainty. Whatever comes to pass, therefore, God has an eternally prepared plan in place on how best to respond to it. I believe this is why the Bible depicts Gods’ providence not only as a rule of power, but even more so as a rule of wisdom. If God himself brought things about or faced an eternally pre-settled future, devoid of possibilities, he’d need no wisdom in steering the world toward his objectives.
Wherever you are today … whatever challenges you are facing … wherever you face evil … God is with you, working with you and alongside your circumstances to bring about good. God did not bring about that evil, but he is working to bring good out of it. Even as you read this, ask the Holy Spirit to give you eyes to see this reality.
Image by Justin Luebke via Unsplash
Category: General
Tags: Evil, God's Character, God's Will, Open Theism, Warfare Worldview
Related Reading
Quotes to Chew On: Prayer and Finitude
“We pray as we live: in a sea of ambiguity. This is not because we are fallen but because we are finite. And we are inclined to forget we are finite. We ignore the ambiguity that accompanies our finitude, and thus we claim to know what we can’t know. We reduce the unfathomable complexity of…
God’s Regrets and Divine Foreknowledge
One aspect of the portrait of God in Scripture that suggests the future is partly open is the fact that God sometimes regrets how things turn out, even prior decisions that he himself made. For example, in the light of the depravity that characterized humanity prior to the flood, the Bible says that “The Lord…
What’s the significance of Isaiah 63:8-10?
The Lord said (or “thought”) to himself, “Surely they are my people, chidren who will not deal falsely.” So, the text says, “He became their savior” (Isa. 63: 8). But “they rebelled and grieved his holy spirit.” So the Lord “became their enemy” (9-10). If the future is exhaustively settled from all eternity, how could…
What is the significance of Numbers 11:1–2?
The Lord was in the process of judging Israel by fire when Moses interceded in prayer “and the fire abated.” A common sense reading of the verse suggests that the fire would have continued had Moses not prayed. Scripture is full of examples of God changing his plans in response to human prayer and repentance.…
How God is Glorified
Peter wrote, “[God] has given us … his precious and very great promises, so that through them … [we] may become participants of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). With the coming of Christ, God has made a way for us to participate in the triune love that is the “divine nature.” We see this…
War in the Heavens!
What does spiritual warfare look like from the perspective of the physical world? Our friend David D. Flowers speculated on that question in a post he entitled Dark Matter vs Dark Energy: War in the Heavens. Referencing Greg’s Satan and the Problem of Evil, David considers the possibility that the interaction between dark matter and dark energy that…