RESOURCES — SHORT ARTICLES

 

SHORT ARTICLES BY TOM ELSEROAD
	2020-10-16	Where Did Satan's First Desire For Evil Come From?
		How did the first sin come about? When we speak of the first sin we do not mean Adam's sin, but Satan's sin. This likely is one of the most challenging questions one may ask. Best we understand it, Satan's sin is the first in the universe. The Bible does not open with the beginning of evil, but with the presence of unexplained evil. Gen 1:1  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Gen 1:2  The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Something apparently happened between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Man is created innocent, and the serpent is already there. And he is deceitful, and seemingly opposed to the God of creation. That is where the Bible begins. It appears there is no explanation in the Bible for how Satan became evil. There are hints that he was a perfect angel (Is.14:10-14). Jude refers to angels that did not stay in their own domain (Jd.1:6). God is keeping them in “everlasting chains”. There is every reason to believe Satan was created good. Then he fell from his proper place. The Bible does not teach that evil and God are both eternal. Only God is eternal! Thus evil is somehow a derivative and secondary without God being a sinner. Christians do not attribute any evil to God. But how did Satan become evil? The most honest answer is, “I do not know”. It is not clearly taught in Scripture. To say that Satan had free will (ultimate self-determination) is not an explanation for why he committed the first sin. This is a label, but not an explanation. It is a label of a mystery. How could a perfectly good being, with a good will ever experience any imperfect impulse that would cause the will to move to sin? The answer is not given in Scripture. Free will does not explain how it happened. Again free will is simply a label or name for a mystery. So we just do not know how sin started. The Bible does not teach us how it started. I suspect God in His wisdom did not want to tell us how it started. Otherwise He would have.   We just do not know how Satan came to feel his first inclination to rebel against God. What we do know is that God is sovereign. Nothing comes to pass apart from His plan. His plan includes things He more or less causes directly and more or less permits indirectly. Satan's fall and all the redemptive plan of God for the glory of His grace afterwards was according to God's eternal plan. God can see to it that something comes to pass which He hates. This is what God did when He planned the crucifixion of Jesus (Ac.4:27-28). Act 4:27  "For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together Act 4:28  to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done. The murder of Jesus was sinful and yet planned down to the detail by God. How God does that, maintaining His sinlessness, and the sins of the things that come about, with the moral accountability of those that do those sins, is just not known. The Bible leads us to believe that He is sovereign over all sin, and yet He never sinned. How God does it may have some hints in Scripture (Is.63:17). Isa 63:17  O LORD, why have You made us stray from Your ways, And hardened our heart from Your fear? Return for Your servants' sake, The tribes of Your inheritance. Isaiah ascribes to God the ultimate causality of Israel's wandering into sin. Isaiah then says, “return” which suggests that God's absence caused them to wander. Isa 64:7  And there is no one who calls on Your name, Who stirs himself up to take hold of You; For You have hidden Your face from us, And have consumed us because of our iniquities. Here it is the hiding of His face that causes them to wander (sin). These do not provide a full explanation for original sin, but it helps us to see that God is not sinful, and He is sovereign at the same time. So did God somehow cloak His glory from Satan, and in Satan arose an impulse for himself over God? God may be able to govern the presence and absence of sin, not as a direct agent, but by concealing Himself. Pastor Tom Elseroad

 

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