Commentary on Selected Proverbs

                  Proverbs 16:4 (KJB) to be continued

God had a persistent problem with evil. Some of His angels began to doubt that God had Almighty Power since God had given free will to Lucifer that had caused him to choose to become evil. Perhaps God had created a weakness. Some of God's angels followed Lucifer because of this doubt. Satan aims to exploit that which he considers a weakness in God's Creative powers so that he can invent a way to annul a part of God's creation and cause future rebellions against God which would eventually give him a chance to murder God and take His place. Ezekiel 28:13-19; John 8:44 (KJB). As long as Satan and doubt remained in God's creation, that would last forever, just as does God's creation. God had to devise a plan to eradicate all evil from His creation. God could not just summarily annul Satan and all evil because that would mean He would have to deny that free will had a weakness in it. God cannot lie.

God decided to create good humans on His earth and give them free will. God knew that Satan was there to tempt them. God gave them a choice that they could disobey Him and eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or they could choose to eat of the tree of life and live forever free of all sin and evil. God knew that Satan would tempt them, put doubt into their minds about the Almighty Power of God's Love and His Word, and they would choose to disobey God by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and thus fall into sin and evil. Genesis 3:1-7 (KJB). God had warned Adam that if he ate of the forbidden fruit, he would die that same day. Genesis 2:17 (KJB). Adam and Eve did not physically die that day, but Satan became able to inject spiritual death into their inner beings. Genesis 3:15 (KJB). The planted "seed" of the Devil is spiritual death.

Adam and Eve had free will, but they were innocent. They did not know that God had created them to be good. They also had fellowship with God every evening which meant they had faith in Him. But God had aptly named the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because after they ate of the forbidden fruit, they became fully aware that they had a good nature within them created by God, and they also became aware that they had an evil, spiritual nature injected into them by the Devil. Genesis 3:7 (KJB). This knowledge made them intelligent because they became aware that they could use their minds to create good and useful systems or evil and destructive systems.

All humans inherited Adam's weakness in his free will that would cause them all to sin and some to commit acts of evil except for innocent babies who would die before they could sin. Romans 5:12 (KJB). Sin causes spiritual death in all humans who sin, even in those humans whom God would not hold accountable for their sins because they had never heard of God's Law that informed them that they had sinned against God. Romans 5:12-14 (KJB).

Satan thought that God had made a huge mistake in giving free will to humans. Satan believed that he could cause at least one human to become so evil that his spiritual death would annul all the goodness that God had put into him, and God would have to reject that human who would be lost from God's Love forever. Psalm 5:4-5 (KJB). Satan believed he could cause God's Love to fail which would expose a weakness in God's power which would give him a chance to find a way to murder God. Job 1:1-22; Job 2:1-10 (KJB. God gave the Devil his chance when God allowed all of the sins and evil of all mankind to nail His Son to a cross. Luke 22:53 (KJB).