When you’re in the middle of suffering, it’s easy to lose ourbearings. It is easy to question “is God really in control, or ask how much how can a good God allow so much pain.”
The pain that we feel can make hard to think straight. We need anchors that keeps us tethered to the truth so we do not drift when we encounter suffering.
When we experienced pain, we might be tempted to let God off the hook by saying “He is not in control.“ the problem is God does not need or want to be let off that hook. Scripture is clear that God sovereignty is over all things.
Isaiah 46:9-10 tells us, “remember the former things of old, for. I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times not yet done, saying, my council stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.”
All scripture is clear about God‘s sovereignty over evil. Amos 3:6 tells us, “ is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?”
And Isaiah 47:7 says, “I form and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things.”
This is not a dualistic yin and yang in which God and Satan are fighting it out evenly matched, uncertain who will win. Satan is a creature, he does not have power in and of himself, and he and all his works exist under God‘s power and purposes. Even though evil may seem random and it’s irrationality , and God does not let us take him “off the hook.” Over who is ultimately in control. God‘s sovereignty extends over all things, including evil.
God’s sovereignty over evil does not destroy our moral responsibility for the evil we commit. We are responsible for our own actions, and God is sovereign over them. Joe Rigney, wrote in his book, “God is the author, the world is His story, and we are His characters.”
So if God is sovereign over evil, does this mean that He is not good? This is a question given the fact that immense human suffering is happening around the world. As we all know, this is not a hypothetical question for most of us, but deeply personal.
Scripture clearly tells us that God is perfect and all he does. God is known as the Rock, His work is perfect, His ways are justice. A God of faithfulness, and without iniquity. Deuteronomy 32:4 says, “ The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are just. A God of faithfulness who does no wrong, just as right is He.”
In Matthew 5:48 Jesus says, “You therefore, must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”
Scripture affirms God’s goodness and the mist of a broken world. And at the same time, it doesn’t turn a blind eye to the evilness of evil. It also affirms God’s sovereignty over all things, including evil, and God’s goodness in all that He does.
It’s no wonder that the problem of evil is a mystery, there is so much we do not and cannot know. Paul writes in Romans 11:33, “ all the depth of riches and wisdom, and knowledge of God! How unreachable are His judgments and how inscrutable are His ways.”
Evil does not have the final word, in fact, God has made evil dig its own grave. In the book “Evil and the Cross,” Henri Blocher explains it this way.
“ evil is conquered as evil because God turns evil back upon itself. He makes the supreme crime, the murder of the only righteous person, the very operation that abolishes sin. God entraps the deceiver in his own wiles. Evil, takes advantage of the power of good, which it perfects. The Lord, like a supreme champion, replies by using the very grip of the opponent.
One reason evil exists is so that God could redeem a people for His glory who love Him. The most evil act in history, paradoxically was the event of redemption that purchased, hope.
At the Cross, God turned evil against evil, and brought about the practical solution to the problem of evil. He made an atonement of sins, He conquered death, He triumphed over Satan and laid thr foundation for hope.
The cross perfectly shows God‘s goodness and sovereignty over evil. And only in the cross has evil been conquered.
If we doubt, goodness, all we have to do is look at the cross. At the cross evil was conquered through Him who loved us.
From Pity to Praise 