God Loves All People and Never Wills Evil Even Though He Allows It

God loves everyone, even those who reject him.  He allows evil things to happen, but he does not desire that evil things happen and he does not cause evil.  The Bible is very clear about this:

God loves all people

• No one stands outside of the love of God.  John uses the biggest word he can – “world” – when he says that God loves the whole “world” (John 3:16) and that Jesus came to deal with the sins of the whole “world” (1 John 2:2).

• John captures the extreme nature of God’s love in the simple statement that “God is love” (1 John 4:8-10).

• Paul tells us that God’s love is so great that absolutely nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:37-39).

• Love is not love if it is willing to do evil to the other.  God love all people.

God loves even those who do evil

• Jesus tells us that God provides his sun and rain to the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:44-45), and that God is kind and merciful even to those who are ungrateful and those who are evil (Luke 6:35-36).

• Jesus, who was and is God, taught us to love our enemies (Luke 6:28-28) and to love others as he loved us.

• Jesus forgave those who crucified him, as he hung on the cross (Luke 23:34).  So we can be sure that God loves even his enemies.

• The Old Testament affirms that God is good to all and compassionate toward all in Psalm 145:9.

• Peter tells us that, far from seeking to hastily punish those who oppose him, God waits patiently, not wishing that anyone would perish (2 Pet. 3:9).

In these passages, we can see that God does not desire or cause evil towards others.  Sometimes, from our limited perspective, it may feel like there are situations where God is causing evil, but the evil is the product of our free will and natural forces, not God’s desire.

Similarly, God does not tempt or entice people to do evil, and he does not override free will or force people to do evil when they might otherwise do good:

God does not tempt anyone to sin

• James is very clear that God does not tempt anyone.  Instead, it is our own desires that entice us and lead us to do sinful and evil things (James 1:13-14).

• Paul similarly tells us that God is always offering us a way to overcome temptation (1 Cor. 10:13).  God never has as his goal that a human being do evil or sin in any way.

God gives humans free will, with which we can choose to do evil or good, to follow God or to reject him

• Although there are a few places in the Bible where the language seems to say that God is forcing or directing that evil be done, we need to interpret those passages in the light of the other half of the story – that God gives all people the freedom to choose to do good or to do evil.  The Jews in the Old Testament believed that everything that happened was of God and, at the same time, everything that humans did was by their own free choice.  We must not leave out the element of free will.

• In the Old Testament, God tells the Israelites through Moses,  “I have set before you life and death....  Choose life” (Deut. 30:19-20).  The choice is in their hands, not dictated by God.

• When they enter the promise land, God tells them again through Joshua, “If it is displeasing to you to serve the Lord, choose today whom you will serve” (Josh. 24:15).  They are given free will, to choose whom they will follow.

• Exodus describes how the people can make voluntary offerings to God (Ex. 35:29), underscoring the reality of free will.

• The books of Kings describe how each king chose to do good or evil (for example, 2 Kings 13:1-7; 2 Kings 22-23).

• The prophets constantly exhort the leaders, the priests, and the people to respond to the words of the Lord and change their ways.  These words from God would be meaningless if the people did not actually have the free will to choose to obey God or reject him.

• The deuterocanonical book of Sirach, written roughly 200 years before Jesus was born, includes a whole section that talks explicitly about free will (Sir. 15:11-20), showing how important that concept was for the Jews in the final centuries before Jesus walked the earth.

• Jesus constantly affirms the reality of free will in the way he invites people to follow him (John 1:39) and allows them to reject him (Matt. 19:22; 23:37; John 7:17).

• See John 12:36-50 for an analysis of the Gospel passage most commonly misinterpreted to claim that God prevented some people from believing in Jesus hardening their heart.  God did not will that anyone’s heart be hardened against Jesus, but he allowed people to make the choice to reject him, which hardened their hearts against him.

Our world is filled with free but imperfect people living in a universe that follow the morally indifferent laws of nature.  Because of free will and the laws of nature, evil and painful things happen.  God allows it to happen by sustaining the universe, but he lets people choose how they will respond to him, each other, and the circumstances they encounter in their lives.

God does this for a reason.  If he dictated everything so that only good things happen, there would be no freedom to choose good, no freedom to choose God, no freedom to truly love others, no freedom to sacrifice ourselves for the good of others, no freedom to give people a glimpse of God by the way we treat them, no freedom to embrace with their whole heart a personal encounter with God, no freedom to choose to become like Jesus.

When we freely choose to follow God in the midst of suffering, God brings good out of evil (Romans 8:28; Gen. 50:19-21).

The question isn’t whether God loves us and gives us free will; the question is what we will do with it.  Will we embrace God’s love and work with him to bring good out of evil?  Or will we go our own way and blame him for the evil that happens?