God did not kind of just allow sin to sneak into the world. He, who gains no knowledge nor is taken by surprise, knew it would happen. And yes, He permitted it. He permitted it because He made man with the ability to make choices.

I completely disagree that God ordained sin. In our modern day usage of ordain, it means to establish. Using it in that sense, you are saying that God created man without sin, then created sin and established it so that Christ could come in and redeem man which God created sin so that man would fail. In other words, God creates man without sin. He tells them don’t eat of the fruit of the tree of good & evil. In the meantime, He’s establishing the necessary ingredients (sin) so that man is sure to fail. In that case, God created a situation that man could not obey — it’s like setting up a situation for a baby that they will absolutely fail at and then blaming and punishing the baby because he could not heat his own bottle. That’s setting up the baby for certain failure and then punishing the baby with death for failing to do what you commanded even if it’s beyond the baby’s ability.

If you look at the word “ordain” in the biblical sense as can be found in scripture, it is used in a positive sense. Priests in the OT were ordained. It means to institute (in its most basic form). God does not institute sin just so He can redeem man from what He created (sin). Man brought sin into the world all on their own when they disobeyed Him. What kind of a God do we follow if our Father is one who sets us up to die because He created that which will kill us.

Sin is so repulsive to God that He even said He regretted that He created man — and ended up wiping all of them out in the flood except for a select few. If God created sin, He also doomed them and man has no responsibility in what they did because God doomed them. God is not the author nor creator of sin. That is outside of His nature.

Here’s where I think is the problem. Knowing an outcome doesn’t mean you created an outcome. God created man without sin even though He knew they would sin.

God did not ordain the first humans to hate sin. They had no knowledge of sin — that is until AFTER they disobeyed God. There is no scripture that supports that Adam & Eve hated sin. They had no knowledge of it. The only knowledge that they had was they were not supposed to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good & evil.

You said that you’re not so sure sin is here because we disobeyed. Scripture supports the very teaching that sin is here because man disobeyed. That can be found in Genesis.

My uneasiness does not lie in God “giving implicit assent to sin,” as you suggested. I am very uncomfortable with a teaching that God is the creator and author of sin and setting up man so that He will fail for the sole purpose of redeeming some men while the rest are damned. This teaching puts the responsibility of sin on God and not on man. In other words, man is punished for a creation of God.

Sin is defined as a transgression — missing the mark. We did that, not God. God only creates that which is good, He does not create adultery, mass murder, and all the other things that people do.

Thanks for the discussion and your thoughts — I just re-read the first few chapters of Genesis before I answered you so that’s a good thing

Now, God is no doubt disgusted with sin and has set a redemptive plan in place to overcome it. The fulfilment of this plan is Christ, who himself has become all that we need for salvation, satisfaction, truth, life, meaning…everything!

But I find it incredibly unnerving to think that God simply ‘allowed’ sin to sneak into the world. He couldn’tve missed it by accident, since He is all-wise. So that’s that possibility gone. What if He simply permitted it, as you suggest? Once again I’m not so sure. Sin isn’t here just because we chose to disobey, or satan chose to rebel, or whatever. I believe it’s here because God ordained it. And He ordained us to be destroyed by it unless we are buried and raised again with His Son. He himself hates this sin, and ordained us (as new creations) to hate it also. God creating sin is not a matter of Him giving implicit assent to sin, if that’s where your uneasiness lies. It’s actually very much the opposite. God is in complete control — so He put sin in the world for reasons which we can speculate on but never truly understand (that is His wisdom), and He set in motion a plan for us to be redeemed from it. I’m not sure if what I’m saying comes across as completely clear here. But our God who sends disaster and condemns rebels to hell is the same God who heals nations and rescues us from the pit. Do I make sense there?

So it leads to one conclusion, really: satan didn’t create evil, man’s choice didn’t create evil — God did. And He also created the way out of it. That’s His wisdom.

Now, once again, I want to make it abundantly clear that this is my interpretation of things. Let me say it upfront: whether in a partial or total sense, I am wrong. This is God’s marvellously unsearchable work which we’ll be contemplating (and praising him!) for all eternity.

I’m very glad, however, that we can engage in discourse about it in the here-and-now .

I think I know what you are saying but this is where I am not so sure I would agree. I don’t see scripture supporting God directly causing sin to come into the world. In fact, I see Him being so disgusted with sin that He wiped out the entire world (except for Noah and family). I see Him allowing things. I’m just not comfortable with Him directly causing sin for the purpose of showing His mercy.

Blessings to you,

Even given this, I don’t claim to understand all this stuff. Was actually praying about it this morning as God put this verse in my reading: Job 11:7-8.

What I would say in my current understanding is this…I do believe God is in control of all things, whether directly or indirectly. That’s where we have some overlap I think. Like, you would say he ‘indirectly’ allowed sin to come into the world by virtue of Adam and Eve’s free choice. I might say he ‘directly’ caused sin to come into the world, not because he is some kind of evil God or because I believe in dualism (I don’t), but because it was his plan before all time (Ephesians 1) to redeem his people from sin and unite all things under Christ. He caused sin to enter the world so that we would know his mercy, his love and his utterly high regard for relationship with us. We would not know these things without sin first being existant and then being overcome. A couple of interesting verses that seem to cause problems for the opposite point of view are Isaiah 45:7 and Amos 3:6.

But hey, my understanding is growing and there are lots of questions I have yet to answer. I won’t be able to answer all of them (nor will anyone else ) and that’s quite okay. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing!! — our mandate to reach all peoples with the love of Christ and his message of salvation.

I think that we can fall out of His perfect will but He allows it and that became clear with the first two humans, Adam and Eve. Joseph’s brothers had one thing in mind but God had another. They could not accomplish what they wanted even though they acted according to their free choice. What cannot happen is that we can damage or prevent His decretive will.

Here’s what I think — I don’t believe we can fully comprehend it all. I don’t think mankind is smart enough to comprehend it. I know that I have free choice but He can prevent something that I choose to do and I don’t even know He’s doing that. The course I may have in mind may not be what He wants so circumstances will prevent me from take that course of action. He has His hand in all of His creation but we don’t necessarily see it.

You gave me food for thought. Thanks

Now, with all this talk of God being absolutely sovereign and our choices being subsumed by his and so forth, it kind of sounds like God is condescending us — and, well, he probably is in a sense . What else could he do? He is the all-wise, all-powerful God and we’re just mere mortals! The fact that he would listen to us, love us, make plans for us…it’s all condescension, but of the kind that expressly reveals his unmatchable glory. In other words, God’s complete sovereignty expresses his glory.

Thank you for your insightful piece. We overlap on lots of things here, but I particularly want to encourage you to continue writing and espectially to seek the living God. Keep going strong!