If God knew that we would sin, why did he create the world?Our tendency in answering this question is to look at it from a man-centred perspective: what’s in it for us? Wouldn’t it have been better for us never to have sinned?
But the answer that the bible gives challenges us by taking a God-centred perspective. And it makes us step back and ask an even bigger question:
Why did God create the world at all?
God didn’t create the world primarily for our benefit, he did it for his glory. He created a world that would display his glory most fully and most perfectly. That is to say, every aspect of God’s character could be shown in its most extreme form.
If God had created a world in which no one sinned, what aspects of his character could he have shown? His creative power, his loving-kindness, his provision for his people.
But what about his mercy? Or his justice? Or his wrath?
And would we have seen even his creative power to its fullest extent if there had been no death and therefore no resurrection?
Could we have known the greatness of his loving-kindness if he had not shown it to faithless Israel?
Paul explains something of this in Romans 9:22-23
‘What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory…’
God’s wrath expended against unrepentant sinners demonstrates the riches of his glory, just as his mercy shown to the elect demonstrates his glory.
Stumble It!
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Dear Ros,
Not having the benefit of seminary, this causes me to now publicly ask the question I’ve mulled in my mind for years but believed asking it would bring down His wrath and judgment upon me. Here is my question…and I hope it is God-centered:
Why did God feel the need to prove anything about His character to Himself or to anyone, particularly the likes of His created sub-beings like angels and us? Why could He not have been satisfied to know this about Himself and leave at that? Why the big need to create a world and beings to whom you can show your glory? Was He not satisfied to just know it about Himself? Is He not all-sufficient? If there’s a true answer to this question, then the follow up question is Why, then, does He feel the need to create these very real people to show His glory to and expose these very real people, who He loves (?), to sin and evil and then send these very real people to hell to a very real suffering without hope for all eternity just to prove and display His glory to those who, by His won choosing, will not meet the same fate? Who is He doing this for and why? Isn’t He really just doing all of this for Himself and real, not imaginary, created beings burn in hell and suffer unending misery for all eternity because of it? We’re told that nothing in Him is lacking, but apparently, He was not just pleased just to know this about Himself and be satisfied with that.
I kind of go with the potter and clay bit and leave it at that. If I take it any further, I become extremely angry.
I ask this question and then ask myself whether I am a true believer in Jesus Christ or am I fooling myself?
I am sincerely looking for an answer here.
Bill
Perhaps we place too much emphasis on this word “Glory”. In human terms it very much is intertwined with our egos. Does God have an ego? Or did he merely create us because he loves to create and loves those things that he creates?
Great questions, Bill. I’m not sure I have an answer, or at least not a full and satisfactory one. Here are some general reflections around the subject that maybe clarify how we should think about these kinds of things.
First: why was God not satisfied merely to know things about himself?
(i) There are things that are appropriate for God that are not appropriate for us who are not God. If the very essence of sin is the attempt to become ‘like God’ it follows that we cannot judge God by human standards. God can do those things that for us would be evidence of pride or self-righteousness etc. by virtue of the fact that he is God. So we need to be careful not to think about this issue from too much of a human perspective.
(ii) There’s something about the very nature of ‘glory’ that requires public display, I think. This isn’t ’showing off’ or ‘boasting’ but simply a necessary outworking of God’s character. I don’t think it’s a question of ‘proving himself’ to us or to the angels so much as a question of being who he is.
(iii) There are aspects of God’s character that are eternally seen in the intra-trinitarian relationships - his love and holiness, for example. But there are other aspects that aren’t. How would God be creator and redeemer had he not created/redeemed? How could he show his mercy or wrath?
(iv) How does this relate to God’s all-sufficiency? Tricky. God doesn’t change by virtue of his relationship to changing things. And yet his character is demonstrated differently as things change (see creation/redemption above). I think the technical answer to this has to do with mind-hurting issues of God’s eternal timelessness and immutability and I’m not sure I remember enough to explain that properly.
Second, who is he doing this for?
(i) Yes, quite right. Ultimately God is acting for his own benefit and his own glory. He’s God and that’s an appropriate thing for him to do.
(ii) And yes, potter and clay is an important biblical model to hold onto.
(iii) But with that we need to also assert as strongly as the bible does the reality of human responsibility. No one suffers in hell who does not deserve to on the basis of their own actions.
I don’t think that asking these kind of questions is an indication of ungenuine faith at all. But I do think that when we can’t find satisfactory answers we need to make sure that we can say something like, ‘I don’t know how all this fits together, Lord, but I know you and I know that you are good and just and loving and I trust this to you.’ That doesn’t mean stopping thinking and reading and asking, it just means doing those things in an attitude of faith. And if in doubt, going back to the bible and knowing that we can hold on to the truth there and leave the speculation for a while.
Hope that helps a bit.
Hey, I am also a Christian, however I struggle with questions like the example above. So, if God loves everyone of us and does not want any of us to go to hell, but live with him eternally, then why did God create the people who condemn themselves to hell? As God is all knowing, and thus, he knows whether you are going to hell or heaven before he creates you (even though you make the desicion your self), so why does he allow his children to live in the eternal flames of hell? As it seems he is the one condemning his own children, because he allows the people who he knows are going to choose to go to hell to make that desicion?
Willy, I think your answer exactly illustrates the problem of trying to answer this question from a human-centred perspective. He does know all those things and he does allow all of those things. My answer above tries to show what the bible says about this from a God-centred perspective and is the best that I can do by way of explaining why. Try reading Romans 9 slowly and carefully - I think it’s the clearest answer to this question in the bible. And make sure you’re asking the question with the right attitude - remembering that God is God and we are not.
Why is God such a mystery…like he is hidden? I have 3 children and I don’t hide from them. They don’t know me just by seeing my belongings, like my car for example…. hey, we must have a dad because there’s a car in the driveway!! Why can’t God make himself seen and walk and talk with us?…..we would still have free will to choose him or not and we wouldn’t have to go through life wondering if all this is in vain. Every human from the begining of time has been searching for God and we all have one little place in our minds with doubt because he has never been proven other than with faith. I’m a physical being and so are my kids and they can see and touch me and know that I am real. Why couldn’t God make us like the angels, in spirit? They had free wiil and could rebel……yet, they where with God in heaven. Also, when we go to heaven and all pain and crying will stop, aren’t we losing our free will? I sin on earth….I try not to but I do…so anyway, in heaven is God going to take away the temptation to sin? If he does why can’t he do it now, here on earth? I’m a christian but lately I’ve had all these questions popping into my head, I don’t like it…..I get the feelings in me that man made God up and what we can’t answere or understand about God we just say “it’s a mystery or it takes faith. How can we ever understand God when the bible says we cannot know the ways of God or understand them? I talk to God every day all day long and I have so many questions but I feel like I get few answeres. …Well, thanks for your time and God bless………………..matt
A couple of things;
How do you think God should reveal himself to us? We have no way of knowing how comprehensible he is but it safe to assume that being infinite we can never fully see him. One school of thought is that he has and continues to do so (partly) through the beauty of nature as well as the beauty of the human mind.
Another is his revelation of love, as supremely portrayed through the life and death of Christ.
And finally, we know absolutely nothing of ‘heaven’, if there is such a ‘place’ or what awaits us after these mortal bodies are dead. Everything we have conjured up is limited as well as prejudiced by personal view points. This is true in how we have come to se ‘angels’. Clouds and harps, any one?
Faith - it’s like any relationship. It ebbs and flows - it’s part of being ‘human’.
Wow, lots of questions. I have only just picked up this thread Ros - must have missed it so far.
Bill, to add one little picture to Ros’s: Jonathan Edwards comments that it is in the nature of a fountain to overflow, and the overflow doesn’t mean it is lacking or faulty. So it is in the nature of God’s glory to overflow without being lacking or faulty.
Matt,
God has made himself seen and walked and talked with us. If we’d lived in Palestine 2000 years ago, we would have seen him. And yet, amazingly, many of those people who heard Jesus’ teaching, who saw the impeccable character of his life, who experienced his amazing miracles, and who saw his death, still refused to acknowledge his authority over them.
Also, we don’t lose our free will in heaven. Free will is the ability to act according to my desires, NOT the ability to do absolutely anything at all (even God doesn’t have the sort of freedom to act against his own character and nature). Simply that, in the new heavens and the new earth, all my sinful desires will be removed. Why not here and now? It teaches us, trains us, and inspires us to praise God
How can you follow a God who murdered so many people and allowed the death of his own son? I used to be a Christian but now am not since I read the Bible completely. If for example, a presidental candidate came along who had done horrible, vile things in the past but promised that as long as you believed in and voted for him you would have peace and freedom years from now, but wouldn’t help prevent death, evil, disease right now would you vote for him? I wouldn’t.
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