Lesson 4: God’s Sovereignty Regarding Choice

Ezekiel 28:12-17 - “…You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared. You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you.”

The second objection the critic raises to the problem of evil and suffering is usually something like this: "Well, okay, but God still created evil because He created the devil."

In our verses above we see that satan was originally created as a beautiful, blameless angel of light before he turned into the devil of darkness we have to deal with today. Until, the Bible says, one day wickedness or evil was found in him. Here we see who in the world is really responsible for evil and suffering. The phrase "unrighteousness was found in you" means satan is the one responsible for it, not God. Evil is not a "created" thing like dirt or water that you can "blame" on God. Rather, it is the absence of good. Let me give you an analogy. I make a blanket and after a while I find a hole in my blanket. Can you really say that the hole in the blanket is something created there, or is it merely the absence of blanket material?


Therefore, it is not really the "creation" of something as it is the "absence" of something. It is just like with darkness, which satan is also compared to! Darkness is not something created but it is the absence of something - light. That is all it is! Again, the answer to the critic's objection, "God created evil because He created the devil" is, “No!”

Some people would say, “God is still responsible for it because He KNEW this would happen and therefore since God allowed it, He is responsible for it." No. Not at all! That is the importance of realizing that this is the best possible world God could ever have created. His motive was a beautiful loving intimate relationship with His creation. God could have created a bunch of robots that would never sin and never say no! But that could never really be a loving relationship. For example, my two children came from me. I am responsible for their creation. They should love me as their father, but it only becomes that when they choose of their own volition to love me in return.

So it is with God. In order to have the beautiful loving intimate relationship with God, it meant mankind had to have the ability to truly not just say “yes” and be a bunch of robots, but to have the ability to truly say “no”. As we all know, Adam and Eve did choose to say “no” to God and “yes” to satan; therefore, we have evil and suffering in the world. Such is the price if you want the "best of all possible worlds," a true and loving reciprocated relationship with God. We had to have the ability to say “yes” or “no”.

* When did you choose of your own will to love God?