Origins

Well it is now post-Hurricane Helene, with all the mess she created in Florida and to the East of me here in Tennessee, in the Carolina's and other states. We here in middle Tennessee are fine, but many others are not.

We are blessed to be delivered not only from the storm as it cartwheeled around the state of Tennessee, but our month-long summer drought was broken by the rain we have been given. I thank God for his deliverance and his provision.

I have found myself with a break in routine for winter prep, and some time to afford toward continuing a series of blog entries from conversations I have had with fellow believers, so as to share them with many others besides just those who had the conversation in private.

I have always felt and believed that Answers from the Word, Belong to Everyone.

The Origins of Evil and of Sin

So, with that, today's blog entry will, once again, be from my good friend Rohit in India.

Rohit had asked me for some assistance on a project of his, and these questions came up on these two topics that we thought should have expounded biblical answers to, from the word, and not just the opinion or stance of another person.

I will approach this as always, from the inerrant word, and rely very much on Root Word meanings, Context, Typology, and the Illustrative use of parable like language, to gain the deeper and more accurate meanings. We lose so much in English, be it the kings English or Modern.

The two questions are these, the origin of Sin, and the origin of Evil, with the desire for clarification of (who?) and (how?) for details.

They are presented as such:

1.) There is only ONE Creator.

    • Why did God create sin?

    • If God didn’t create sin, then we did?

    • Or Satan did?

2.) Why does the church say God did not create evil, when he himself claims that he did in:

              • (Isaiah 45:7)

              I form the light and create the darkness;
              I bring prosperity and create calamity [H7451 - ra - Bad, evil].

              I, the LORD, do all these things.

              • (Lamentations 3:38)

              Do not both adversity [H7451 - ra - Bad, evil] and good
              come from the mouth of the Most High?

              • (Amos 3:6)

              If a ram’s horn sounds in a city,
              do the people not tremble?

              If calamity [H7451 - ra - Bad, evil] comes to a city,
              has not the LORD caused it?

- - -

Now, before we answer these we need a correct and unilaterally accepted definition of each.

First, Sin, is defined as both a noun or a verb with:

1.) State of Being

   • A condition in which the heart is corrupted and inclined toward evil.

   • Disobedience or rebellion against God.

   • Independence from God.

   • Missing the mark of God's holy standard of righteousness.

2.) Descriptive of a Bad Act or Rebellious Choice or Thought

    • An immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law:

   • A failure to do what is right.

   • Offense against people, violence, and lovelessness.

   • Rebellion against God.

   • Transgression of God's law.

- - -

Next, Evil is defined in two ways both as an adjective and a verb:

1.) State of Being 

   • Deliberate choice to go against God’s will and indulge in sinful behaviors

   • Opposition to God and God’s goodness

   • Profoundly immoral and wicked

   • Lawlessness

   • Describing an immoral or wicked act

2.) Descriptive of a Bad or Desperate Crisis situation

   • Calamity or Adversity [in Hebrew H7451 - ra - Bad, evil]

   • Interpretation of bad situations of adversity or natural calamities as “evil”

     (IE: "In that evil day", "for the days are evil", "the lesser of two evils")

- - -

Now that we have all that standardized between us, I want to expand on "Sin" for a minute in the biblical perspective taking from the viewpoint of "missing the mark", which is an archery concept in the original languages, IE: missing the target.

God is absolute, and all righteous, and anything not reaching the standards He meets at all times is "Short of the Mark" and therefor sinful. Sin can be used as a term to describe an action or inaction against that standard. And we see from the word that any sin, however small, is missing the Mark (or the 100% standard). Scripture echoes this with "even one law broken means all law is broken" and "all have fallen short of the Glory".

No wonder then, that we can never be justified in our own strength and acts to what it takes to be 100%. And why God had to do it for us, and then apply it to us in the only way He could.

It is here that the realization of the tremendous gift we have been given by His Grace and Mercy shouts the loudest!

Allow me, for a moment, to rant a bit on this topic at hand. In my earlier years, I was always vexed heavily by the tyrannical preacher flinging out guilt bombs with the word "Sin or Sinner" with a dictatorial judgement of another in comparison. The often heard "scare them out of hell" with fear speech always made me cringe and stoked my ire.

If they are professing Christ out of fear of communal reproach, then they are not receiving the Christ of the true Gospel and are still going to hell with all their social approval deceiving them all along the way, while they work "works" to seemingly gain justification. Those who do this, will pay a special price in hell along side these lost souls because they had a higher standard they were held to as teacher or preacher.

God is Longsuffering, Forgiving, Gentle, desiring all to come to Him willingly. What an absolute atrocity it is to misrepresent God in such a way and be the cause of the Lost Soul.

Getting back to "sin" as a state of being, we now know the "how" of it coming into being, since sin is in opposition to God's Law and His Will.

Sin then, can be described as a lack of purity, a corruption of the full potential, and a diseased progress of deterioration. Science would call this "entropy", and indeed this "entropy" of the world is the result of this "sin" entering the world. The "corruption" of the perfect.

So then we must ask "How in the world can the perfect, be corrupted"?

The answer lies not in the "creation of sin" but in the allowance of its possibility.

You see, God did not create robots to do His will when He created man. He desires followers who CHOOSE to follow Him on their own. This includes the angels, or you would not have fallen angels, satan the devil, chiefly among them.

He created ALL things to be dependent on Him to remain pure, but also with freewill choice, otherwise, any failure could be attributed to Him as the creator of such. And Freewill choice requires the possibility of the WRONG choice, which also allows for the incursion of "sin" (or corruption).

This completely forces ALL who make choices, to be responsible for those choices, as well as the consequences of those choices. God sends no one to Hell. We send ourselves there in rejection of Him.

So, you see, that sin (or corruption of the pure) in not just a willful act, but is also a condition, that enters into the world given that free choice.

This is the "How" of sin's entrance into a being, and into the world. So, the answer to the first question about Sin, concerning who created it is:

God created the conditions for sin's possible existence, though He did not create it outright.

• Sin entered satan through pride and freewill choice to rebel against God. How that occurred will be the question of the ages answered when we are fully redeemed.

• Sin entered Eve through the disobeying of God's command and therefor rebellion via the deception of satan.

• Sin entered Adam when he chose Eve (because he loved her) over God and disobeyed and therefor rebelled via his choice.

• Sin entered into the world because of all 3 of them.

Sin was not created, but rather a possible condition that was allowed by freewill choice, and so here we are 6000 years later, waiting for God to complete the repair and the reinstatement of the pure.

As for the Second question about God not creating Evil.

He has not, nor does He create Evil in the state of being of an entity such as a man or angel, or he would be a partaker of that Evil and by nature made out to be a false and impure god. The condition of any given entity has directly resulted from that individual's choices.

In the three referenced scriptures (Isaiah 45:7, Lamentations 3:38, Amos 3:6), the word used in the original language for the Old English "Evil" is the Hebrew word [H7451 - ra - Bad, evil] meaning bad or evil in terms of Adversity or Calamity.

Indeed, Adversity is used in modern English for (Lamentations 3:38), and Calamity is used in both (Isaiah 45:7) and (Amos 3:6).

Additionally, both in the Old English and Modern English, in (Amos 5:13) we see the word "evil" [H7451 - ra - Bad, evil] used in a common idiom about days of calamity and adversity

     Amos 5:13

     Therefore, the prudent keep silent in such times,

     for the days are evil [H7451 - ra - Bad, evil].

In the Greek New Testament for example Paul and other Apostles reference the same idiom of "In that evil day", or "the days are evil" as a term for days of crisis and deception and adversity and calamity.

This then settles why the Church and the WORD state that God did not, nor does He create "evil" in the sense of a state of being in rebellion. He may create calamity or adversity, but they are not sin, they are not rebellion, and He has every right to do as He wills.

- - -

I pray this brings clarity and a source for further study for all who may view it.

Grace and Peace to all of you in Christ Jesus our Lord, God in the Flesh!

In His love!

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Don't be a grape. 🚫 🍇

🦊 Jack [ The Foxman on the Wall ]