Did God Create Evil?

Isaiah’s Hard Words About Evil

Isaiah 45:7 is one of those verses that can stop us in our tracks.

Isaiah 45:7 KJV   I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

The ESV reads, “I make well-being and create calamity.” Either way, Yahweh is declaring something about His own sovereignty. We cannot simply brush the statement aside because it creates a theological problem for us.

Isaiah gives us another difficult statement in chapter 53:

Isaiah 53:10 KJV   Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief.

The ESV says, “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him.”

Taken by themselves, those words can sound as though the Lord was pleased by evil and suffering. It was His will for Jesus to go to the cross. Isaiah says He creates evil or calamity. How do we reconcile those statements with the goodness of God?

One possibility is to assume that every evil event must therefore be a direct act of God. But that creates another problem. Scripture repeatedly shows people acting from their own corrupt will while the Lord remains sovereign over what they do.

A good friend once wrote to me, “We can’t know or understand the ways in which Yahweh is doing His sanctifying work in our lives.” That thought has stayed with me. Far from causing worry, it brings peace.

There are things our Father has revealed about Himself, and there are things He has not explained. That distinction becomes important when we start trying to map every evil event back to the hidden will of God.

Luther and the Hidden Will of God

Martin Luther wrestled directly with these questions in The Bondage of the Will. His argument against free will forced him to deal with a difficult question: if God is sovereign, why does He not simply change every human will and save everyone?

Luther distinguished between God as He has revealed Himself to us and what he called the hidden or “inscrutable” will of God. His point was not that Scripture tells us nothing. His point was that God has told us what we need to know, while other things remain hidden in His own majesty.

Luther wrote that “what is above us does not concern us.” He also said that it is enough to know that there is in God “a certain will inscrutable,” while the full “what, why, and how far” of that will is not ours to uncover.

That does not mean we stop thinking. It means we stop pretending that God owes us an explanation for everything He has not revealed.

Luther then pushes the problem back toward the human will. If God does not desire death, the fault of rebellion belongs to the creature. But why does God not change every rebellious will when man cannot rescue himself? Luther does not invent an answer. He points to Romans 9:20: “Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?”

There is a difference between mystery and contradiction. Scripture may leave the hidden workings of the Lord unexplained without making His revealed character uncertain.

We know Him by what He has revealed. We know Him as righteous. We know Him as redeemer. We know Him through Jesus. What we do not know is every reason why His sovereign will permits one event, restrains another, changes one person, or leaves another to his own will.

If God Is Sovereign, Who Is Ultimately in Control?

When we examine free will and predestination, the question eventually becomes very practical. Is God ultimately free to act, or is the human will a boundary He cannot cross?

Some argue that God would be evil if He did not allow every person to come to salvation by an independent act of free will. But what does that actually solve?

If salvation depended only upon the will of man, no one would be saved. Scripture gives us no reason to be impressed with mankind apart from God. We see faithlessness repeatedly until God acts.

And even if man could save himself by a correct decision, the problem would remain. What about babies and young children? Scripture never gives us an “age of accountability.” What about someone with a severe mental disability who cannot make the kind of intellectual decision many salvation systems require? No passage gives us a separate salvation formula for these cases. And Scripture does not record infant baptism as an answer to the problem.

The age of accountability is a good example of how easily a familiar Christian answer can become accepted even when Scripture never states it. I have gathered a number of assumptions Christians should test the same way in Astonishing List of False Teachings in the Church.

Scripture does not answer every question we can ask. But relying on ourselves does not solve the problem.

This is why Paul’s language about what it means to be chosen by God matters. Paul speaks about calling, purpose, foreknowledge, predestination, and God’s action without becoming embarrassed by God’s sovereignty.

Luther once said, “I wouldn’t want free will even if I could have it.” I understand what he meant.

Do you want to know that God is in control, or do you want to believe you are in control? Are you comforted by your own human decisions, or by the wisdom and mercy of the Lord? Do you give thanks to God for His mercy and grace, or do you praise Him for giving you a higher intellect than those who reject the Savior?

If no one is in control, then everything is out of control. There could be no definite purpose in a world where men finally dictate the future.

If God is not sovereign, He cannot be God.

But that brings us right back to the hard question. If God is sovereign, did God create evil?

What Paul, Jesus, and Stephen Show Us

We should pay close attention to how the people who actually suffered in Scripture understood the Lord while evil was happening to them.

Paul Saw God as the Deliverer

Paul described an affliction in Asia that brought him to the point of despair:

2 Corinthians 1:8–11 ESV   For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer.

Paul acknowledges purpose in what happened. The suffering brought him to greater dependence upon God.

But notice the role he gives our Father. He is the deliverer.

Would Paul have delighted in being whipped and scourged by God for preaching the message He told him to preach? That is absurd. Paul does not present the Father that way. He says the affliction happened, and through it he learned not to rely on himself but on the God who raises the dead.

He also asks believers to help through prayer. Their prayers matter. Human actions matter. Yet Paul still says that God works all things together for good according to His purpose.

That is why the question of suffering cannot be reduced to either “God directly caused this” or “God had nothing to do with this.” Paul gives us something stronger. Evil does not place the Lord outside the situation, and suffering does not change His role as deliverer.

Jesus and Stephen Did Not Blame God for Human Evil

Jesus knew He was going to the cross. He knew Isaiah’s words that it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. Yet while men were crucifying Him, Jesus said:

Luke 23:34 ESV   Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Stephen responds in much the same way while men stone him to death:

Acts 7:59–60 ESV   And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

Both statements place responsibility upon the people committing the evil.

At the same time, Jesus had already prayed in Gethsemane:

Luke 22:42–43 ESV   Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done. And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him.

Jesus knew that the cross was within the Father’s sovereign will. Yet the ignorance and sin of the men crucifying Him belonged to them. God’s will and man’s evil will meet in the same event without becoming the same thing.

And in Jesus’ agony, the Father sent an angel to strengthen Him. Again we see our Father as the One who sustains and delivers.

We see the same larger pattern from Genesis onward. In Eden, Scripture does not blame God for bringing evil into the world. Ancient Jews seem to have viewed Satan as more responsible than Adam and Eve, while the Lord’s plan of redemption was already in place. Created beings rebel, but the rebellion never puts God outside His own creation. The Rebellion of Yahweh’s Divine Council develops that larger biblical picture. The Lord is never presented as the rebel. He remains sovereign over rebels.

The question Luther said we will never completely answer is the full “what, why, and how far” of God’s hidden will.

But we can now say something more definite about the question in front of us.

How the Lord Brings Good Out of Evil

We have no reason to make Yahweh the author of sin and evil.

Evil must be an indirect result of His creation. God is always just, and God is always the redeemer. Apart from Him, neither mankind nor the angels of heaven can do anything truly good. We were created to depend upon Him.

The cross brings the point into focus.

Why did it please the Lord to crush His Son?

It was an act of love for Jesus and for mankind. Jesus received His crown of glory and returned to His Father’s presence. He willingly handed Himself over. Men crucified Him, but Christ offered Himself for the establishment of salvation. Through that sacrifice, Christ accomplished reconciliation and redemption.

Sin was crushed.

The Lord brought good out of the most evil situation imaginable.

In this way Yahweh creates evil and calamity. He creates situations that reveal the evil in mankind and display His glory. That does not mean the evil came from His own character. It means evil has no control over God.

Isaiah 45:7 says:

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

That statement declares the sovereign grace of our Lord.

Despite the evil will of man who does not depend upon God, God remains sovereign over all creation, even over the evil that results from created wills. The Lord accomplishes His good purpose in the evil that comes from the will of man.

This is not sovereignty reduced to God merely watching evil unfold and hoping He can repair it afterward. Nor does it require us to say that God is Himself evil.

The Lord remains sovereign over evil without becoming the author of sin.

Trusting God When We Cannot See What He Is Doing

This question matters because suffering is not merely theoretical when it happens to us.

We can trust God to give us peace, comfort, wisdom, guidance, strength, and everything else we need when life hurts. Do not give up depending upon the Lord for deliverance because you cannot explain what He is doing behind the scenes.

And do not assume that suffering means God is chastising you for your sin.

You are forgiven. Your sin has been removed as far as east is from west (Psalm 103:12). Christ put sin away (Hebrews 9:26). God does not count your sins against you (Romans 4:8).

The world and the hand of man can bring terrible suffering. The Lord remains at work in all of it for those who love Him.

We may never know all the ways in which our Father is doing His sanctifying work in our lives. We may never know why He permits one thing and prevents another. Luther was right that some of the “what, why, and how far” remains hidden.

But the hidden will of God does not erase the God He has revealed.

So, did God create evil?

God is the Creator of all things. Nothing exists apart from what He brought into existence (Romans 4:17). But we have no reason to make God the author of sin and evil. He is the author of redemption and deliverance in a world that stands in opposition to Him.

We can trust Jesus with every aspect of our lives, confidently knowing that He is for us, that evil cannot overthrow Him, and that there is no evil in Him (Psalm 92:15).