Questions or comments

A question I heard recently was, “If God is not the author of sin and evil. Why did he make Satan?”

In eternity past, God created all the angels without sin. They were given certain characteristics. Among those were the ability to respond to His love. This means they were also given the ability to choose not to return God’s love. In the course of time, one of the most anointed angels, Lucifer, chose to misuse his capacity of responding to God’s love. He chose to elevate his standing in the eyes of other angels by positionally proclaiming that he will be like the Most High. He coveted the praise and adoration given to God. In other words, as a created being, he chose to assume the ultimate authority over things in which he had not been given authority.

In this challenge to God’s sovereignty, one third of the angels chose to follow Lucifer’s lead. They looked to Lucifer as the ultimate authority instead of God. In proclaiming himself as “most high”, Lucifer turned his focus to himself as the sovereign authority. God, in His wisdom, chose not to provide a method of restoration to fellowship to the rebelling angels. Instead, He chose to create mankind. Through man, God chose to show the angels the result of giving a finite number of souls a limited time in eternity apart from the presence of His glory. They too also possess attributes capable of returning His love. Through the council of His sovereign will, and only His, He chose to create “one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use”. He knew the outcome of the creation of such a creature apart from a redemptive plan. With the attributes they were all given, they too would soon elevate themselves, as did Lucifer, to proclaim themselves sovereign over that which they had not been given authority.

In this act of creation, He chose to “…make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory…” * provide a method of restoration to fellowship. That method was for Him, in the form of man, to enter His created world in order to pay the price for the rebellion He knew would be the result of the attributes given to mankind. Apart from God’s sovereign plan of redemption, that which we call grace, all of man would be doomed to the same end as is God’s plan for Satan and his followers.

*Romans 9