If We're All Less Than God, Are We All Evil?

Tom: You are listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to him.

If you’re a first-time listener to our program, we address spiritual issues, trends, practices, and beliefs going on in the church and in the world, and we hold them up to the scrutiny of the Bible to see whether or not they are true to God’s Word. In the process, we try to encourage our listeners to do likewise—that is, to search the Scriptures for yourselves rather than depend on others to be your theological gurus, and we include ourselves in that.

Dave: We include ourselves as theological gurus, or the ones that have to be checked out?

Tom: Both. [Laughs]

Dave: We are not theological gurus, so check us out!

Tom: Well, we don’t want them to think of us as that. We’re just Bereans. We just want to understand what God’s Word says and then apply it to our lives, and that’s our encouragement.

Last week we began the topic of evil, and we are using Dave’s book In Defense of the Faith as a source of questions on this subject. And as we’ve said many times, these are questions that Dave has been asked and has addressed throughout his ministry—many, many years of ministry.

Dave, you got a haircut. You’re looking younger, but it doesn’t take away from how many years you’ve been putting in ministering in the Lord.

Dave: Well, they wondered why I was so bald, and I told them, I blamed it on a barber. He cut my hair too short up on top once and it never grew back.

Tom: Yeah, you’ve got to watch those guys.

Dave: But they should give me a discount now, there’s not that much hair. But anyway, now they say they need a finder’s fee trying to find the hairs they have to cut.

But anyway, Tom, that’s not on our topic, is it?

Tom: No. Last week, as I said, we began looking at evil, what it is according to God’s Word. And we don’t want to be preoccupied with evil or with evil entities, spirits, demons, and so on, but I think we have to know what God’s Word says about it. Because some people walk in fear of that, and some people go the other route and think they can duke it out with the devil on any occasion and whatever.

Dave: Well, many don’t believe in Satan.

Tom: Well, that’s the other side, yeah.

Dave: Well, and of course there are those that think they can, well, set their own standard. If there is such a thing as good and evil, then who sets the standard? Some people say there are no absolutes. Absolutely no absolutes. And everybody can make up their own mind. And then if they happen to be politicians, listen to them—they’ll tell you how they have the solution to what’s wrong with society. There is no getting away from the fact that some things are wrong and some things are right, even if it is only according to someone’s opinion.

But is there really a standard right and wrong? Is there such a thing as good and evil? The Bible begins, Genesis 1, “…and God saw that it was good. God saw that it was good, it was very good.” He sets the standard. If He doesn’t, then whose opinion will we follow?

Tom: Yeah, and what exactly is evil? We have different ideas. The Bible…well, I have before me a definition of evil from Webster’s Dictionary. First thing it says: “Morally wrong or bad, immoral, wicked, evil deeds, an evil life.” Another definition is, “Harmful, injurious, or evil laws characterized or accompanied by misfortune or suffering. Unfortunate, disastrous,” and so on. The last one here is, “The evil one, the devil, Satan.”

So there are lots of ideas about—lots of definitions of evil. But one that I don’t find, and maybe this is a little aside, one that I don’t find, Dave, is one that relates to a scripture. For example, Matthew:7:17Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
See All... in the KJV, it says, “Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.” But obviously there must be a definition of evil that doesn’t include morality according to this verse.

Dave: I don’t think so, because God uses the Bible—uses physical things to illustrate spiritual truth. So I think, rather, it would be going back to when man was created, he was good, and God expected good fruit from him.

We get the same thought about Israel, about the vineyard. In the Old Testament, God goes into His vineyard, which is a picture of Israel, and He gets sour grapes. He gets bad fruit. “Well, then let’s uproot the vineyard and plant another one.”

And I think man is bringing forth evil fruit. He was created in the image of God, but God also gave him the power of choice (I’m sure you want to get into that later), so man fell from what he was.

The Bible defines sin as “coming short of the glory of God.” Man was made in the image of God, the moral, spiritual image. God is not a physical being, God is a spirit, Jesus says in John 4. So, now man is producing the “works of the flesh,” it’s called, and “the works of the flesh are manifest, which are…” and it goes on; it give you a list of crimes.

So I think that’s what its talking about, Tom, but maybe you had something else in mind.

Tom: No, I was just trying to make the point that the use of the term “evil” can refer to something that doesn’t necessarily have to do with morality. For example, “calamitous situations” and so on. So, I think it’s important for anyone who reads the Bible to understand that, because we can’t charge God with, for example, creating evil in the sense that evil comes from Him, and that can be confused in some verses.

Dave: Well, we talked about that last time, last week, but I think that is a particular use of the word evil that everyone recognizes. You talk about an evil wind, or a disaster of some kind, a calamity—we all know that has nothing to do with morality, and the Bible does use the word “evil” in that sense sometimes. But I think there, the corrupt tree that brings forth corrupt fruit, bad fruit, I think that’s an illustration of an evil person.

Jesus says, “Out of the heart proceeds evil thoughts, wickedness,” and so forth, and that was in contrast to the rabbis who were so meticulous about what they ate and what they drank, and cleaning the platter, and so forth. Not sanitarily, but ceremoniously cleaning things. And Jesus, you remember, said, “It’s not what goes into a man that corrupts him, but it’s what comes out of him. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, fornications, adulteries, murders,” and so forth. And I think that’s probably what He’s referring to there.

Tom: Dave, in your book on this subject, for those who are interested in maybe following along or getting ahead of us even, as I said, many of our questions come from Dave’s book In Defense of the Faith. And Gary can tell you later in the program how you can get a copy of the book. We are in chapter eight, and that begins a whole series of questions on this subject.

Now, in the book you said, “God’s perfection exposes all else as evil, and that sin is falling short of the glory of God.” Well, how then can anything that is less than God not be considered evil?

Dave: Well, anyone less than God, any creation of God, is going to make less than godly choices. That doesn’t mean that everything they do is going to be evil, but in coming short of God’s glory, yes, man is—the Bible says he’s “born in sin, shaped in iniquity.” In fact, the Bible goes so far as to say—well, Paul said, “In me, in my flesh, dwells no good thing.”

 Already in Genesis:6:5And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
See All... it says, “The imagination of man’s heart is only evil continually.” We don’t recognize it. We’re not breaking any laws in the land. But at the same time, the heart of man is evil. I mean, there is—pride is one of the worst things, Tom. And we don’t even recognize the pride, the self-centeredness, the selfishness, the desire of our hearts towards ourselves. And amazingly, the Christian psychologists today, and others who have accepted their lies, they’ve tried to tell us that what we need to do it to try and learn to love ourselves. We’ve got to have a good self-image and build up our self-esteem and so forth. That’s the opposite of what the Bible says.

Tom: But, Dave, even more than that, our hearts, we can’t really…although our hearts are, according to the scripture, according to truth, according to reality, they are desperately wicked. However, our hearts want to say, “No, that can’t be. You know, we must be good. There must be other problems out there. The problem can’t be me.”

Dave: Well, that’s a natural reaction, of course, and that comes from pride. Tom, what you have launched us into now is one of the most difficult topics there is. It’s very difficult for me as a human being to come before the Lord and confess. My heart, my heart, is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” I don’t like to think that. I don’t like to believe it. Now, that doesn’t mean that everything that I will ever do will be desperately wicked, because God commands men to do good.

Tom: Dave, before you do that, let’s throw in one more scripture.

Dave: Okay.

Tom: The scripture you quoted is from Jeremiah, an Old Testament prophet, but let me give you the words of Jesus. This is Matthew:7:11If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?
See All...: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” So there we have evil, but doing good. So pick up on that.

Dave: Yeah, there’s a mixture. Even some of the Nazis who spent all day torturing people and burning the Jews in the ovens, killing them and gassing them and so forth, when they came home, they could be quite good to their children. They seemed to have love and have tenderness toward them.

Tom: Affection.

Dave: Yeah, so man is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He’s a mixture. On the one hand, he recognizes what should be good, and many moral people aspire to this, probably most people. On the other hand, man is always susceptible to temptation, and that temptation, the Scripture tells us, doesn’t come from outside, although we could blame it on that. But James says, “Every man when he is tempted is led astray of his own lust and enticed.” So yes, something comes along that tempts me to do something, but I wouldn’t do it if it were not for the evil in my own heart.

So on the one hand, the mother says to her little boy, “Be a good boy.” And he knows what that means and he wants to be a good boy, but there’s something inside of him that won’t let him be a good boy all the time. And the fact that something is there always ready to come out and reveal itself tells us that our hearts are evil.

Now, human beings don’t want to believe that. And, Tom, we are like, “What’s going on in the world today?” We have a world of politicians. We have a world of would-be peacemakers, the United Nations, the peace envoys we send to the Middle East or around the world. We have so many problems happening in Africa and other parts of the world. How are we going to bring peace? Well, we keep thinking, It’s just a matter of reasoning with people, if everyone had enough to eat, and if we could just be fair with everyone and so forth…

You know some of my old illustrations. I liken it to this: It’s like a man that goes to the race track, and day after day, week after week, year after year he bets on the same old nag that can hardly stagger out of the starting gate and it never wins a race. You would have to conclude that his loyalty to the horse far outweighed his common sense.

Well, we’re betting on ourselves to bring peace, to solve the problems in the world. Wait a minute—we made the world what it is! It’s man that has messed this place up. Don’t we get that message after thousands of years of human history? And we think that, somehow, we will finally solve the problem?

Now, we’re going to have elections in the Palestinian territories—Arafat, the worst murderer and terrorist this world has seen in centuries. “Oh, but he promised he wouldn’t kill anybody anymore, so, oh well! Give him the Nobel Prize!” And we’ve talked about that before.

But, Tom, it becomes ludicrous! We are still thinking we are going to solve our problems and create a paradise in this world. No! We have become little gods, that’s the problem. Satan promised Eve—well, Satan rebelled against God. He said, “I’ll be like the Most High,” so he initiated polytheism. There’s not just one true God, but many gods. And then he tells Eve, “You can be one of them.”

So we’ve got a bunch of little gods running around this world in a contest, a clash of wills with one another, selfishness—brothers against brothers and sisters, and children against parents, and governments against governments. That’s the situation, Tom. Only Christ can solve this problem.

Tom: Yeah. But that brings us to how the problem came about. You know, why evil? How did this problem enter in? And it has to do with just what you’ve alluded to, Dave: choice.

Dave: Of course, this is a basic problem that the philosophers have philosophized over for thousands of years. It causes some very serious differences within the evangelicals, for example, between those who say God is the cause of everything. We’ve talked about that in the past, so I won’t go into that again.

I don’t think you can understand the situation in this world without recognizing that man has the power of choice. And this is something that man is not really suited to function with, because he’s self-centered.

Tom: But he wasn’t always self-centered.

Dave: Well, Tom, was Eve always self-centered? Well, it was there. It was in her heart. She just needed a guru who told her that she didn’t have to listen to God, that she could be her own god. So somehow it was in her heart. We’ve talked about that. It must have been in the heart of Lucifer.

Tom: Yeah, but, Dave, what I’m getting at here is we know when sin entered in, self, there was the natural bent.

Dave: Right, the birth of self.

Tom: So what I’m getting at is self has always been there. But its inclination—its proclivity, as it were—it wouldn’t seem when God said, “It is good, it is good, it is very good,” that there would be a penchant, a proclivity toward self at that point.

Dave: Well, Tom, that tells us something really important. You’ve made jokes about it, I’ve made jokes about it. Satan’s problem, Lucifer’s problem, wasn’t that he was born to a dysfunctional family. Eve’s problem wasn’t that she had been abused as a child. We blame sin on that today. No, the very fact that man could make a choice and, as you began this program, that he is less than God, would mean that he could make less than godly choices. In fact, that he wants to be God makes it even worse.

So now God has a problem and, Tom, we’re getting pretty deep here, but He’s created beings that have the power of choice. Why? Because He doesn’t want robots. He doesn’t want puppets that He’s pulling the string. He must give man the power of choice in order for man to love him.

Now, the Calvinist says, “Well, but God made man willing to do His will, so that man willingly wants to do God’s will.” But wait a minute; you can’t change a person’s will against his will. “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”

So something has to happen. From the very beginning God knew this. He knew man would sin. He had the solution to this, and ultimately that solution involved God becoming a man through the virgin birth. The unique Son of God. He is the eternal Son of God.

We have God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There are many reasons why that must be. You can’t have a singular being for God, and we’ve gone into that in the past. But ultimately, God was going to have to become a man. He was going to have to pay the penalty for our sins, and something that the Bible describes as the new birth, a new creation, Jesus is called not only the “second man,” because there never was anyone from Adam to Jesus that deserved to be called a man. The image of God had been defiled. I don’t know how, but you could even say destroyed—I don’t know to what extent, but man was no longer a man as God intended him to be. And now the second man comes, but He’s also called the “last Adam” in 1 Corinthians 15. He’s the progenitor of a new race. God has planned—He had it planned all along that there would be a new race of human beings.

Paul says of Christ, “He will bring man sons into glory in his image.” John tells us in 1 John 3, “When we see him, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

There’s going to be a new universe. The inhabitants will be new creatures in Christ Jesus, “created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.”

Tom: Dave, let me just interject this—you’re really answering the question that maybe some out here have: “Well, why doesn’t God just do something about it, you know, all of this evil? If He isn’t the author of it, or originator of it, why doesn’t He do something about it?” And you’ve just described what He has done and what He continues to do and what He will do.

Dave: It’s the only thing that can be done. Tom, we’ve gone over it before. The atheist says, “If your God is so weak that He can’t stop all the evil in the world, then He couldn’t be God. He’s too weak. If He could stop all the evil and doesn’t, He’s a monster.” Well, no, stopping evil is not a matter of power. Some people say, “Well, God could cause everybody to believe in Jesus. He’s powerful; you can’t resist the power of God!” But wait a minute—power has nothing to do with love! It has nothing to do with choice! It has nothing to do with receiving a gift! You can’t make someone receive a gift. You can’t make them do what they don’t want to do. Somehow God has to solve that problem. He solved it in Jesus Christ.

Tom: Right.

Dave: Jesus Christ is the perfect man, and He paid the penalty for our sins so that God can forgive us, but that’s not all there is to it. Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” A new person has been created in Christ Jesus. Tom, we’ve run out of time. But we’ve sort of maybe laid a foundation for some further thought out there, I hope, and some searching the Scriptures.