20th June 2025 Question box

OK, so the question tonight is:

Does God allowing sin to occur for His ultimate good imply there are necessary evils for his will?

I like how this question is about God’s will. Because evil is not necessary for Gods existence, or his glory. God is God whether evil exists or not. But this question is about his will. And I’m understanding “his will” to mean “the plan that he has chosen to put into place for his creation.”

And if that’s what the question is asking, then I think that answer is a cautious “yes” …because God’s particular plan to save us does not happen without human evil. For example: Matthew 16: 21 “…Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” The word must, implies that it is necessary that people in Jerusalem will do the evil thing of rejecting Jesus. But in this example, what about the evil person who will betray him?

Matthew 26:24 “The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.” So God has a certain plan, but we also have real choices.
Judas himself chose his course of action and will be held responsible for his choice.

This is not easy to understand, but it is actually a good thing that even human evil is part of God’s plan. Because it means that when you are the victim of evil, then it’s not meaningless; God has allowed it for some reason, so that in the end he works it for good.

But…. I do want to say that we have to be careful in how we talk about God and evil. There was a caution in the passage we looked at last week in the morning service in Romans: “if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) Certainly not!” (Romans 3:5-6). There is a mystery here, when it comes to how our choices and God’s choice fit together. We need to talk about it in a way where we are not suggesting that God is the author of evil.

One way that theologians have done this is to speak about first and second causes. God is the first cause, all things are a part of his plan. But humans make real choices, and humans are the second cause, the most direct cause of evil. This means that humans are guilty of sin, but not God.

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This question was originally answered in our evening service on 16 February 2025. I found this post, on desiringgod.org particularly helpful in thinking through the answer. I’ll aim to post another question and answer next week. You can read about how our question box works here.