Following The Evidence #61

Why Did God Create a Devil? God didn’t create a devil, he created perfect beings who had a free will. That free will meant they could make their own choices and Lucifer did. The Bible doesn’t spell out all of God’s reasons for creating Satan, but it is important to remember that everything God created was initially “very good” (Gen. 1:31), and things only went wrong when the devil rebelled against his Creator, and then human beings followed suit. This is important since God did not create anything that was morally evil, and so He is not morally blameworthy for the evil that exists. Satan has no one to blame but himself for the choices he’s made. That, in a nutshell, is how Earth became a planet in rebellion.

Still, God knew this would happen in advance, He knows “the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done,” (Isa 46:10”), so He must have had a good reason for allowing evil into His creation. In the end, it must be worth it in God’s eyes to create a world in which He knew the devil and others would rebel against Him. I believe God is ultimately accomplishing a greater good through all the evil that the devil brings about.

We see in Scripture that God often permits evil in order to bring about a greater blessing. Consider what Joseph said in Gen. 50:20 about how God accomplished a righteous end through the wicked actions of his brothers, or how God used Satan to test Job so that he and all those who read his story could gain wisdom and be blessed. God even turned the greatest evil into the greatest good, when Jesus was crucified (Acts 2:23; Rom. 5:18–19). So even though Satan schemed to put Jesus to death and thought he was achieving a victory, it was this very act that God foreordained to defeat Satan and bring about the glorious truth of the Gospel!

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek. 33:11) and does nothing unjust (Gen. 18:25), but, unlike us, God is sovereign, and He knows all the good that will come out of permitting evil and suffering. God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11), but that will is not arbitrary—it’s based in God’s essentially good nature (Luke 18:19). So we should see the existence of Satan as completely consistent with that.
I would invite you to view the YouTube I produced with Lois, my nephew, called “Star Wars and the Biblical Narrative” Based on this passage.
Here’s the link; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp57ZdzVtCM

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