Commentary on the Book of Job part forty two

                             Job 21:1-34

Evil caused sin. Evil in man resulted from his obedience of Satan, and his willful disobedience of God which caused a spiritual death and darkness in his being which is allied with Satan. God created man in His image, and every gift that God gave to man was good. Genesis 1:27; Genesis 1:31. Free will was one of the good gifts that God gave to man, but Satan exploited that gift to cause man to choose to disobey God. Sin results from the influence of the evil nature of man on his good image given by God. Evil has besmirched and soiled the good image of God, but it cannot overpower it. God understands that this weakness in free will causes this influence of evil on man's good image which constitutes the nature of sin in man.

God is wholly innocent and good. God created man to be innocent and good. God did not know about this weakness in free will when He gave it as a good gift to Lucifer. God meant for this good gift to be used by Lucifer to create any good system he desired. Lucifer misused God's good gift of free will to choose to rebel against God. God cannot make mistakes, but the Devil believes that He did when He gave Lucifer free will. The Devil's goal is to use evil to overpower and annihilate a part of God's goodness and thereby prove that God's Love cannot be Almighty. Satan believes that if God is not Almighty, then eventually he will find a way to murder God and assume control of His universe. Isaiah 14:12-17.

The fact that God did not know about this weakness in free will does not mean that God is not omniscient. God possesses infinite knowledge of all that is good and creative. God knew nothing about evil until it suddenly emerged in Lucifer. Evil is wholly negative and destructive. God could not know about it because, in a sense, it is the opposite of knowledge. Evil somehow emerged from a place of total emptiness and darkness, that the Bible calls the bottomless pit, to take control of Lucifer and cause him to misuse his free will to rebel against God. Ezekiel 28:14-15; II Thessalonians 2:7.

God could see that Lucifer's excessive pride would never allow him to repent and seek God's forgiveness. Therefore, God had to dissolve Lucifer's system, recover all of His goodness that He had put into him, and cast him to earth as a totally evil and demonic being called Satan. But God had a good reason to cast him to earth because God had a plan to use him in the future to test His Love to prove that evil can never annihilate any of his creations. God had to test His Love because its almighty power had been brought into question by Lucifer's rebellion. God also meant to devise a plan whereby He could forever purge all forms of evil from His creations and forever block its entrance into His creations by casting it all into the lake of fire where torment would preoccupy its negative being forever. Ezekiel 28:16-19; Revelation 20:11-15.