John Macarthur - Why Does God Allow So Much Suffering and Evil?

God wills evil to exist.

Evil is everywhere yet God is absolutely sovereign. He  is in charge of everything, He created everything out of nothing and He will consummate everything. He governs history in every minut detail. In Genesis God drowned millions of people and took responsibility for it. God is content to make it clear that he is sovereign over everything. 

We cannot conclude that God exists as sovereign and yet not allow evil to exist.

Deuteronomy 32:29

See now that I myself am he!

There is no god besides me.

I put to death and I bring to life,

I have wounded and I will heal,

and no one can deliver out of my hand.

Exodus 4:11, “The Lord said to him” – that was to Moses – “Who made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” 

Psalm 105:16, “God called for a famine on the land.” 

Second Kings 17:25, “They didn't fear the Lord. Therefore, the Lord sent lions which killed some of them.” 

Lamentations 3:37-38, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and ill come forth?

How anybody could miss the fact that God exists as sovereign and allows evil, especially if you read the book of Genesis and read about the Flood. God allows evil and personally takes responsibility for its existence. God is Holy, He can't do evil, He can't look upon evil positively. He's incapable of doing anything evil. He is Holy Holy Holy, but He's content to leave the responsibility for evils existence and its consequences with Himself. 

Isaiah 45:5. “I am the Lord, there is no other; beside Me there is no God. I will gird you though you have not known Me, that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun, there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, there is no other; the one forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity. I am the Lord who does all these.”

Evil is a deprivation. It is not something God created. It is something that reflects rebellion against who God is and what He's created. So how do we get to the issue of how evil can exist and God maintain His goodness? God is all-knowing. God is all-powerful. Evil exists. God willed evil to exist but He didn't create it. That would be impossible for Him, as it is impossible for Him to do any evil because He cannot contradict His nature. But God wills that it exists.

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Romans 3:5 Our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God.

Our unrighteousness – our sin, our falleness, our inequity, our corruption, our wretchedness puts the righteousness of God on display. That reality is shown on the cross where the full manifestation of the righteousness of God displayed, as He punishes the Holy, harmless, undefiled Son, for our sins, to satisfy His righteousness. Romans 10, Paul says the Jews have a problem. They do not understand the righteousness of God. What does Paul mean by that? The Jews don't know how righteous God is. How is that reflected? They attempt to establish their own righteousness. They think the righteousness of God is attainable to them. In other words they think God is less righteous than He is and they are more righteous than they are, and so they can earn acceptance from God and meet His standard. They don't understand that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness.

You never will understand how righteous God is until you go to the cross. And you will see there that as loving and gracious and merciful as God is, as eager and willing as He is to forgive the sinner, He still has to carry out infinite punishment on a substitute to deal with His righteousness.

But what was on display at the cross was the righteousness of God in the necessity of pouring out an infinite punishment on an infinite person (Christ) who therefore had an infinite capacity to absorb it all in three hours, which all the unsaved who end in hell will never be able to absorb in eternity. This puts the righteousness of God on display. We would never see the seriousness of sin and the majesty of Gods righteousness if we didn't see the cross. We’d never see the cross if there were no sin. So to demonstrate His righteousness, He would allow sin to exist. But look at Romans 9. Just a couple of comments. Verse 22, “What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory.” God puts His righteousness on display by the way He confronts and deals with sin. 

So, in Romans 3:5, Paul says that God demonstrates His righteousness in response to our unrighteousness. In Romans 5:8, he says that “God demonstrates His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God demonstrates two things. He demonstrates His wrath and His mercy. God gets glory from His wrath. God gets glory from His judgment. We wouldn't know what wrath was, and we wouldn't know what mercy was if there were no sin.

SO WHY DOES GOD ALLOW SUFFERING AND EVIL?

Luckily for us, the answer is not newly discovered. It has been revealed in scripture as well been taught all throughout Church history. The Westminster Confession says it best.

Westminster Confession, 1646

“God, from all eternity, did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass” – yet, so - “as thereby, neither is God the author of sin nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures. Nor is the liberty or contingency of second-hand causes taken away. Sinfulness proceeds only from the creature and not from God who, being most holy and righteous, neither can be the author and approver of sin.”

“All that God decrees and providentially brings to pass, is all to the praise of his glory. Therefore, the existence of evil is, in the end, to the praise of his glory.”

THE ANSWER

The reason God ordained evil is for His own glory. Simple question. Is God made more glorious because evil exists, or is He made less glorious because evil exists? The answer: God is made infinitely more glorious because evil exists. We would not know the good news without the bad news. We would not know the goodness of God without knowing the evilness of Sin. God has absolute integrity. He is glorious because evil exists and we praise God because of what He has done to overcome evil.