Pressing Forward

I’ll say it plainly- no.  We read nothing in Scripture of God creating
sin or creating evil.  But wait, what about Satan?  God created him,
didn’t he?  Yes.  As the youth looked at, Satan was originally created
as an angel, but chose to rebel against God, therefore causing God to
rid heaven of Satan and putting him in his current form, which in the
end of time will be permanently defeated by Christ.  That is not the
reason I write though today.

This is why I write- There has been some thought that God promotes
sin in order to accomplish his purpose; that He would make someone sin
so that He could eventually work out of that.  I want to let Scripture
speak for itself on this one:

“If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that
we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin?
Absolutely not!” -Galatians 2:17

This
one passage speaks to many things, the first being justification. 
Justification is the one-time act of God declaring the believing sinner
righteous in Jesus Christ.  Justification comes only through faith, not
by works.  It is not a process, but a single action.

“It becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners”- If you look at the
context of this passage, it is Paul’s discourse on justification by
faith versus the incorrect thinking of justification by works.  This
scripture is saying that if we are trying to be justified by our works
(the “righteous” things we try to do), that is sinful, because that is
not what Christ taught.  In fact, in the context of this Scripture,
Paul is writing about how he rebuked Peter for falling back into this
way of thinking that justification was by works. 

“Does that mean that Christ promotes sin?”  Here’s a simple answer
that, in retrospect of what I just wrote, Paul is saying that if we try
to be justified sinfully by relying on works to accomplish
justification in our lives, does Christ promote sin?  Absolutely not! 
He does not use sin to accomplish his purposes.

I think that God can bring good out of situations caused by sin, but it
was not his original intent to use sin for his purposes.  God is holy
and righteous.  It would be against his very nature to use sin to
accomplish his sovereign will.  He can however, in his sovereignty,
bring good out of sinful situations.  And I’m thankful for that!

So what’s the conclusion here?

God loves us and created us to be righteous as he showed us to be
through His Son, Jesus.  Let us be cognizant of sin around us, not to
blame God for it, but to rely on Him to help us to live righteously as
Jesus did.