Hi Mike,

I hope all is well. It was nice getting an encouraging e- mail from your wife recently. Well, I come bearing a question again; maybe the answer is too simple, I don’t know:
Scripture is clear on the meaning of life – that we are to be intentionally marred in an effort to be crushed and remade, etc. And I see, too that God creates and works out evil for good and that light comes out of darkness. My confusion is knowing what God is. If God created good and evil, does that mean that He is both since He contains all things? I don’t mean that He IS evil, just that He contains it. This is hard for me to understand because I guess I assume that “good” and “evil” are realities that can only be known in this flesh; that God is, Himself, above these constructs and more than good or evil. That He is operating on a higher level and that these are realities to His creation in the progress of His plan, but are no longer applicable in the Fullness. Sorry, I don’t exactly know how to plainly state my question – but I hope you gather it.

Your brother in Christ,
N____

Hi N____,
Thank you for your very insightful question.
You ask:

If God created good and evil, does that mean that He is both since He contains all things? I don’t mean that He IS evil, just that He contains it. This is hard for me to understand because I guess I assume that “good” and “evil” are realities that can only be known in this flesh; that God is, Himself, above these constructs and more than good or evil. That He is operating on a higher level and that these are realities to His creation in the progress of His plan, but are no longer applicable in the Fullness.

This question goes to the very heart of who God is and what He is doing. The answer is, no God is not evil. Yes, He does “create evil”, but that does not make Him evil if by creating evil He makes good come from it. You and I certainly are not God and are in no position to be attempting to make good come from evil, but God is God and that is exactly what He is in the position to do, and that is exactly what He is doing. When I frame a house, that does not make me a house, and when God creates evil for the purpose of making good come from it, that does not make Him evil. We are plainly told what God really is:

1Jn 4:8  He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
1Jn 4:16  And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

You are right when you conclude:

I assume that “good” and “evil” are realities that can only be known in this flesh… that God is, Himself, above these constructs and more than good or evil. That He is operating on a higher level and that these are realities to His creation in the progress of His plan… but are no longer applicable in the Fullness.

That is all very well put. God has a symbolic book with the minutest details of our every day written in that symbolic book. He has given us all an evil experience for the purpose of humbling our very vain flesh. Our flesh is vain by His design, because He created each of us as wicked men for that day of evil in each of us. This is an event that is common to every man who ever has or who ever will sin in these marred vessels of clay which were shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, while in our mothers’ wombs have done neither good no evil. We are not Jacob as opposed to Esau. Esau was born first because we are all children of disobedience and children of wrath before we become the children of His delight. We will all live by every word of God, and we will all keep the things which are written therein because, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ will all be made alive.”

Psa 139:16  Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance; And in thy book they were all written, Even the days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was none of them.
Ecc 1:13 I applied my heart to inquiring and exploring by wisdom concerning all that is done under the heavens: it is an experience of evil Elohim has given to the sons of humanity to humble them by it.
Ecc 9:2  All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath.
Psa 51:5  Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Jer 18:4  And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.

We cannot of ourselves appreciate God’s sovereignty, and it appears completely capricious to the natural man for the last to be paid first and for the first to be brought in at the last. But mankind is God’s creation, and He has written the script, He is supplying the actors and He is bringing His entire play to its predestined conclusion after the counsel of His own will.

Rom 9:13  As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
Rom 9:14  What shall we say then? [ Is there] unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
Rom 9:15  For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
Rom 9:16  So then [ it is] not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.
Rom 9:17  For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.
Rom 9:18  Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will [ have mercy], and whom he will he hardeneth.
Rom 9:19  Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?
Rom 9:20  Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed [ it], Why hast thou made me thus?

Every move is made at its predestined and appointed time, “after the counsel of His own will,” and not after our lack of understanding or lack of appreciation for His sovereign power and purpose. But it is all for good, and we can rest assured in these words of Truth.

Eph 1:11  In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

The sins which so dominate our lives for so many years, eventually, at their appointed time, are made to stink in the nostrils of Christ in us. The things that once excited the man of sin sitting on the throne of our hearts and minds are now a nauseous thought to the ever increasing Christ within us. But this is a lifelong process which will, in the end, produce the good that God is calling out of the darkness that is our sinful flesh and blood:

Rom 7:5  For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.
Rom 7:6  But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

Until that time comes that we are delivered from the law that is in our flesh, we are “in the flesh.” Knowing about and understanding the things of the spirit, “in the letter”, is not the same as “knowing Christ after the spirit.” We all know Him after the flesh before we know Him after the spirit.
That is right, we all know what the spirit is and produces, long before we are capable of living in the spirit. None of us are capable of destroying the giants in the land until “the sins of the Ammorites is filled up.”

Gen 15:16  But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

We cannot conquer the land of promise until the appointed time. So Paul laments:

Rom 7:17  Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
Rom 7:18  For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
Rom 7:19  For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
Rom 7:20  Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

Sin in us all will be judged and it will be purged by fire. That is what is meant by “Christ in you.” Christ “died daily”, and we, too, must live that same life. So Paul concludes this scenario:

Rom 7:24  O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
Rom 7:25  I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

This is not a reference to the false doctrine of a substitutionary death. It is an affirmation that Christ in us will die to the sins that are in us just as He did to the sin that was His own flesh and blood.

Rom 8:1  [ There is] therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Rom 8:2  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
Rom 8:3  For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

God did not send Christ to live a sinless life in His flesh, so we could continue in sin in our flesh. God sent Christ to die to His flesh and to give His life so He could be raised up to live His life in the likeness of [ our] “sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in [ our] flesh.”

That is what Paul meant when he said:

Rom 5:10  For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

That life of Christ, dying daily to the pulls of the flesh, is to be lived in us now “in this present evil world:”

Tit 2:11  For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,
Tit 2:12  Teaching [ Greek, paideuo, chastening] us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;

It is all accomplished through the chastening that is “the grace of God.” But its outcome is a sure as the rising of the Sun, and that outcome is a good one, and it is all the product of the love that is God:

1Jn 2:2  And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours onl y, but also for the sins of the whole world.

But it is all done in order in our own lives, and it will all be done in proper order externally. We all come to know Christ as “carnal babes in Christ” before we know Him as mature sons of God.

1Co 3:1  And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
1Co 3:2  I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able [ to bear it], neither yet now are ye able.
1Co 3:3  For ye are yet carnal: for whereas [ there is] among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?
1Co 3:4  For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I [ am] of Apollos; are ye not carnal?

So too, will the external be done “every man in his own order.”

1Co 15:22  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
1Co 15:23  But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.
1Co 15:24  Then [ cometh] the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
1Co 15:25  For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.
1Co 15:26  The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

The firstfruits come first, and the last fruits come at “the end.” But “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ they will all be made alive” at the appointed time. So we can truly conclude with the apostle Paul:

Rom 8:28  And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to [ his] purpose.
Rom 8:29  For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

I hope this all helps you to see that though God does “create evil” yet He Himself is Love, and is simply using evil as a tool with which to produce good, that good being His few firstfruit harvest, to be used as the channel for the salvation of all the rest of all of humanity who have ever drawn the breath of life.

Rom 11:30  For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief:
Rom 11:31  Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.
Rom 11:32  For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.
Rom 11:33  O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable [ are] his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

Your brother in Christ,
Mike >