The Goodness and Wisdom of God

Scripture citations are to the NIV-UK

Where texts are not quoted, hyperlinks are supplied.

EVIL AND GOOD have existed throughout human history, and intelligent creatures made in God’s likeness are more or less free to choose either. In His love and wisdom, the Heavenly Father has set aside a fixed period during which the dominance of Evil and its corollary, suffering will be allowed. When this period has run long enough to accomplish His purposes it will come to a dramatic end. In the final analysis any who continue to choose evil over goodness shall forever cease to live (1 Corinthians 15: 25, 26):

For he [Christ] must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Right-doing and right-doers, only, shall be allowed to exist forever.

Alternatives Considered

Exactly what is the point of this permission of evil? Put another way, Could mankind have become acquainted with evil in some other way than by experience?

Generally, there are four ways by which humans learn.

1. Intuition

2. Observation

3. Information

4. Experience

Each method plays a part in one’s cumulative understanding, but experience is the most thorough teacher. Adam already had a knowledge of evil by information, but that was insufficient to restrain him from trying the experiment. Adam and Eve knew God as their Creator, and hence as the one who had the right to direct them.

God had said of the forbidden tree, ‘[Y]ou must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die’ (Genesis 2: 17). They had, therefore, a theoretical awareness of evil, though they had never observed nor experienced its effects. So they did not appreciate their Creator’s loving authority and His beneficent law, nor the dangers from which He wished to protect them. They yielded to the temptation which God permitted, the ultimate value of which His wisdom had anticipated.

Allowing versus Causing Evil

We ought to make a wide distinction between God’s permitting evil, and the assertion by agnostics and atheists that God is the author and instigator of it. Such a view is blasphemous and contradicts the Scriptures. True, God has the power to force humanity into either sin or righteousness, but His Word declares that He has no such intention. He seeks the worship and love of only such as approach Him in spirit and in truth. To this end He has given man liberty of will and desires him to choose righteousness.

Allowing man to choose for himself led to Adam’s fall from Divine fellowship and favour into death. To the end that humanity might have a free will and yet be enabled to profit by his first failure in its misuse, God provided Jesus Christ, the Ransom from the sentence of death. This means of reconciliation is open to all and will be understood by everyone at the appropriate time (1 Timothy 2: 3-6):

This is good, and pleases God our Saviour, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men the testimony given in its proper time.

No injustice has been done to Adam’s posterity in not affording them each an individual trial. Jehovah was in no sense bound to bring man into existence. Having done so, no external law of equity or justice binds Him to perpetuate that life everlastingly. The present existence, which from the cradle to the tomb is but a process of dying, is still a favour, even if there were no hereafter.

Some think that God’s punishment for Adam’s sin is eternal torture. But the text says nothing like this. Adam was told ‘you will surely die’ (Genesis 2: 17). The ultimate blessing of God to His obedient children, in Christ’s Kingdom on earth, will be eternal life, free from pain, sickness and every other element of decay and death.

Everlasting life is not promised to any but the obedient. Life is God’s gift, and death, its opposite, is the penalty He prescribes for the disobedient. Eternal torment is nowhere suggested in the Old Testament Scriptures, and only a few statements in the New Testament can be so misconstrued as to appear to teach it. ‘The soul who sins is the one who will die’ (Ezekiel 18: 4); ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 6: 23).

Many suppose God was unjust in allowing Adam’s condemnation to affect his posterity, instead of granting each one a trial and chance for everlasting life similar to that which Adam had. But what would they say were it demonstrated that the world’s opportunity and trial for life will be far more generous than was Adam’s?

One for One

God assures us that as condemnation passed upon all in Adam, so He has arranged for a new head, father or life-giver for the race, into whom all may be transferred by faith and obedience. As all in Adam shared the curse of death, so all in Christ will share the blessing of a restoration (Romans 5: 12, 18-19). The death of Jesus, the undefiled, sinless one, was a complete settlement toward God of the sin of Adam. As one man had sinned and all in him had shared his curse, his penalty so Jesus, having paid the penalty of that one sinner, bought not only Adam, but all his posterity with him. Our Lord, ‘the man Christ Jesus’, with a perfect unborn race in Him, gave Himself as the ransom – corresponding price for Adam and his race yet to be born (1 Timothy 2: 5-6).

In effect, Christ offers to adopt as His children all of Adam’s offspring who will accept the terms of the New Covenant in His Kingdom to come, and so through faith and obedience to join the family of God and receive everlasting life. ‘For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive’ that is, perfect and free from sin (1 Corinthians 15: 22).

The injury we received through Adam’s fall is, by God’s grace, to be more than offset with favour through Christ. All people will sooner or later have a full opportunity to be restored to the same standing that Adam enjoyed before he sinned. All who do not receive a full knowledge and, by faith, an enjoyment of this favour of God in this life (the majority) will receive these privileges during their resurrection in the Millennial kingdom to come (John 5: 28-29).

Only One Trial for Life

As each person becomes fully aware of the redemption price paid by our Lord Jesus, and of the resulting privileges, each one will be viewed as on trial, as Adam was. But perfect obedience without perfect ability to render it, God does not require of any. Under the Covenant of Grace, members of the Church during the Gospel age had the righteousness of Christ imputed to them by faith to make up their unavoidable deficiencies. Likewise, Divine Grace will operate toward the willingly obedient during the Millennial age.

Not until physical perfection is reached (which will be the privilege of all before the close of the Millennial age) will absolute moral perfection be expected. That new trial, the result of the Ransom and the New Covenant, will differ from the trial in Eden in that the conduct of each one will affect only his or her own future.

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The Divine Plan of the Ages, C.T. Russell

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