It’s not an uncommon question to ask, Why Sin?

So I want to point out that we have some resources available to you at www.crosshopechapel.org if this question arises in your conversations or within your own heart.

It’s a good question, and I personally think it shows that some one is thinking on spiritual things so if you hear it, please don’t assume some one is doubting God or being in open rebellion of Him.

It’s easy to assume God dictates evil when one doesn’t understand the God-to-man relationship. Many assume that God is a micro-manager and man is merely a subject without free will. The God and man relationship is not like a master and dog relationship.

The master may dictate the dog’s behavior but that is only because a dog is not created in the image of God. Dogs behave according to instinct, not free will. However, we were created in the image of God and that means we have the free will to choose, the conscience to discern right from wrong, and the ability to recognize and respond to love.

It’s also easy to assume God dictates evil when we don’t have a grasp of the biblical worldview that understands the totality of Scripture as revealing the long-term plan of redemption in order that sin will be no more.

That is…

• God creates man, but man is not a clone of God but made in image of God,
• there is the risk of sin just as there was in Heaven with the angels,
• but God has a plan if that happens, and it’s not to immediately destroy Satan because that would give the unfallen angels reason to take up Satan’s doubts,
• man was created holy and would not have fallen into sin on their own,
• Satan uses temptation to lure man into disobeying God’s word and that is sin,
• sin happens and Jesus becomes the sacrifice for that sin,
• now Satan and sin must be proven to all creation as unacceptable and unable to exist in harmony with God and goodness,
• God has a church to proclaim this message to a fallen world that they may choose wisely and with all knowledge of why,
• now all mankind must choose between Christ or Satan so at no point in eternity can anyone even suggest doubt in God’s holiness (as did Lucifer),
• all must go on record as to their choice and rejection,
• sin and wicked must be forever eliminated, and finally a new earth and a new heaven must be recreated to get back to where the Creator and creation can coexist in harmony through all eternity.

It is also hard for our human minds to adapt to God’s perspective of human events, because we think in shorter pieces of time. God sees the end from the beginning and that doesn’t mean He controls us in a robotic way, but that he sees present circumstances as only temporary and in light of the eternity to follow.

Job had a perspective that saw the temporal circumstances as being unconsequential to eternity and we read that in Job 19:26 when he said, “destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”

Jesus’ words about Lazarus sum this up in John 11:25 when He said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

Paul spoke of a similar attitude in 2 Corinthians 5:8 when he said “to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.”