The World and the Word

            The Difference between Sin and Evil

Some of the fallen angels followed Lucifer because they began to doubt the Almighty Power of God's Love. They reasoned that if God's gift of free will to Lucifer could cause evil to enter into one of God's creations, then there must be some weakness in God's Love that can be exploited to eventually cause God's downfall. They came to believe that Lucifer could win. They never loved Lucifer. They were simply afraid of him. They came to believe that Lucifer would find God's weakness. Even the angels who remained loyal to God began to have some doubts about God's Love. After God defeated Lucifer and his fallen angels, God chained these fallen angels in the bottomless pit except for four of them whom He chained in the river Euphrates. Jude 6; Revelation 9:14.

But God still had a problem. Unspoken doubt about the power of God's Love still persisted within His creations. John 20:24-29, Matthew 28:17, and Matthew 11:2-6 provide examples of this kind of doubt. God had to prove to His creations that His Love is Almighty and can never fail. I Corinthians 13:8. Christ's proof of His Love to John the Baptist and the Apostle Thomas provide prophetic examples of how He will provide proof of His Love to all of His creations. Revelation 21:5.

God has been and will always be wholly innocent. Christ was completely sinless and innocent when He walked on earth. Innocence has to be a part of God's Holiness. For this reason, God cannot be held responsible in the least for His gift of free will to Lucifer which caused evil to enter into His creations. Lucifer alone must be held responsible for his downfall and the entrance of evil into God's creations because he misused God's gift of free will. God gave this gift in innocence and love, but Lucifer misused it. Lucifer took God's eternal basic elements and ideas which He uses to form good systems and misused them to form false systems of rebellion. Evil has no original ideas. False systems are always invented by misusing true ideas. They are never created. Psalm 99:8. False systems are, or can become, evil and destructive. For example, 2+3=6 although formed of true ideas and signs, may not be destructive in itself, but it forms an example of how a mistake in mathematics can cause an engineer to build a bridge that can collapse. All false systems of sin and evil stems from a lack of faith in God's Love and His Word which comprises an Infinite Set of basic Ideas within His Infinite Mind, and His Good Systems formed from those basic Ideas which He can extend into His creations. Psalm 147:5.

Nevertheless, God, being Good and Holy, feels guilty about having allowed evil to enter into His creations although He remains completely innocent. In Isaiah 45:7, God took responsibility for the creation of evil and the darkness that hides it. Feeling guilt is a good system, never a false one. Only the good feel guilt. Total evil never does.