If God does indeed cause, through his providential activity, everything that comes about in the world, then the question arises, "What is the relationship between God and evil in the world?" Does God actually cause the evil actions that people do? If he does, then is God not responsible for sin?
In approaching this question, it is best first to read the passages of Scripture that most directly address it. We can begin by looking at several passages that affirm that God did, indeed, cause evil events to come about and evil deeds to be done. But we must remember that in all these passages it is very clear that Scripture nowhere shows God as directly doing anything evil, but rather as bringing about evil deeds through the willing actions of moral creatures. Moreover, Scripture never blames God for evil or shows God as taking pleasure in evil, and Scripture never excuses human beings for the wrong they do. However we understand God's relationship to evil, we must never come to the point where we think that we are not responsible for the evil that we do, or that God takes pleasure in evil or is to be blamed for it. Such a conclusion is clearly contrary to Scripture.
There are literally dozens of Scripture passages that say that God (indirectly) brought about some kind of evil. I have quoted such an extensive list (in the next few paragraphs) because Christians often are unaware of the extent of this forthright teaching in Scripture. Yet it must be remembered that in all of these examples, the evil is actually done not by God but by people or demons who choose to do it.
A very clear example is found in the story of Joseph. Scripture clearly says that Joseph's brothers were wrongly jealous of him (Ge 37:11), hated him (Ge 37:4, 5, 8), wanted to kill him (Gen 37:20), and did wrong when they cast him into a pit (Ge 37:24) and then sold him into slavery in Egypt (Ge 37:28). Yet later Joseph could say to his brothers, "God sent me before you to preserve life" (Ge 45:5), and "You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today" (Ge 50:20). Here we have a combination of evil deeds brought about by sinful men who are rightly held accountable for their sin and the overriding providential control of God whereby God's own purposes were accomplished. Both are clearly affirmed.
The story of the exodus from Egypt repeatedly affirms that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh: God says, "I will harden his heart" (Ex 4:21), "I will harden Pharaoh's heart" (Ex 7:3), "the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh" (Ex 4:21). "I will harden Pharaoh's heart" (Ex 7:3), "the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh" (Ex 9:12), "the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart" (Ex 10:20, repeated in 10:27 and again in 11:10), "I will harden Pharaoh's heart" (Ex 14:4), and "the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt" (Ex 14:8). It is sometimes objected that Scripture also says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Ex 8:15, 32; 9:34), and that God's act of hardening Pharaoh's heart was only in response to the initial rebellion and hardness of heart that Pharaoh himself exhibited of his own free will. But it should be noted that God's promises that he would harden Pharaoh's heart (Ex 4:21; 7:3) are made long before Scripture tells us that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (we read of this for the first time in Ex 8:15). Moreover, our analysis of concurrence given above, in which both divine and human agents can cause the same event, should show us that both factors can be true at the same time: even when Pharaoh hardens his own heart, that is not inconsistent with saying that God is causing Pharaoh to do this and thereby God is hardening the heart of Pharaoh. Finally, if someone would object that God is just intensifying the evil desires and choices that were already in Pharaoh's heart, then this kind of action could still in theory at least cover all the evil in the world today, since all people have evil desires in their hearts and all people do in fact made evil choices.
What was God's purpose in this? Paul reflects on Exodus 9:16 and says, "For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, 'I have raised you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth'" (Ro 9:17). Then Paul infers a general truth from this specific example: "So then he has mercy upon whomever he wills, and he hardens the heart of whomever he wills" (Ro 9:18). In fact, God also hardened the hearts of the Egyptians people so that they pursued Israel into the Red Sea: "I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen" (Ex 14:17). This theme is repeated in Psalm 105:25: "He turned their hearts to hate his people."
Later in the Old Testament narrative similar examples are found of the Canaanites who were destroyed in the conquest of Palestine under Joshua. We read, "For it was the Lord's doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be utterly destroyed" (Jos 11:20; see also Jdg 3:12; 9:23). And Samson's demand to marry an unbelieving Philistine woman "was from the Lord; for he was seeking an occasion against the Philistines. At that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel" (Jdg 14:4). We also read that the sons of Eli, when rebuked for their evil deeds, "would not listen to the voice of their father; for it was the will of the Lord to slay them" (1 Sa 2:25). Later, "an evil spirit from the Lord" tormented King Saul (1 Sa 16:14).
When David sinned, the Lord said to him through Nathan the prophet, "I will raise up evil against you out of your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun" (2 Sa 12:11-12; fulfilled in 16:22). In further punishment for David's sin, "the Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife bore to David, and it became sick" and eventually died (2 Sa 12:15-18). David remained mindful of the fact that God could bring evil against him, because at a later time, when Shimei cursed David and threw stones at him and his servants (2 Sa 16:5-8). David refused to take vengeance on Shimei but said to his soldiers, "Let him alone, and let him curse; for the Lord has bidden him" (2 Sa 16:11).
Still later in David's life, the Lord "incited" David to take a census of the people (2 Sa 24:1), but afterward David recognized this as sin, saying, "I have sinned greatly in what I have done" (2 Sa 24:10), and God sent punishment on the land because of this sin (2 Sa 24:12-17). However, it is also clear that "the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel" (2 Sa 24:1), so God's inciting of David to sin was a means by which he brought about punishment on the people of Israel. Moreover, the means by which God incited David is made clear in 1 Chronicles 21:1: "Satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to number Israel." In this one incident the Bible gives us a remarkable insight into the three influences that contributed in different ways to one action: God, in order to bring about his purposes, worked through Satan to incite David to sin, but Scripture regards David as being responsible for that sin. Again, after Solomon turned away from the Lord because of his foreign wives, "the Lord raised up an adversary against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite" (1 Kings 11:14), and "God also raised up as an adversary to him, Rezon the son of Eliada" (1 Kings 11:23). These were evil kings raised up by God.
In the story of Job, though the Lord gave Satan permission to bring harm to Job's possessions and children, and though this harm came through the evil actions of the Sabeans and the Chaldeans, as well as a windstorm (Job 1:12, 15, 17, 19), yet Job looks beyond those secondary causes and, with the eyes of faith, sees it all as from the hand of the Lord: "the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21). The Old Testament author follows Job's statement immediately with the sentence, "In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong" (Job 1:22). Job has just been told that evil marauding bands had destroyed his flocks and herds, yet with great faith and patience in adversity, he says, "The Lord has taken away." Though he says that the Lord had done this, yet he does not blame God for the evil or say that God had done wrong: he says, "Blessed by the name of the Lord." To blame God for evil that he had brought about through secondary agents would have been to sin. Job does not do this. Scripture never does this, and neither should we.
Elsewhere in the Old Testament we read that the Lord "put a lying spirit in the mouth" of Ahab's prophets (1 Kings 22:23) and sent the wicked Assyrians as "the rod of my anger" to punish Israel (Isa 10:5). He also sent the evil Babylonians, including Nebuchadnezzar, against Israel, saying, "I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants" (Jer 25:9). Then God promised that later he would punish the Babylonians also: "I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, says the Lord, making the land an everlasting waste" (Jer 25:12). If there is a deceiving prophet who gives a false message, then the Lord says, "if the prophet be deceived and speak a word, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel" (Eze 14:9, in the context of bringing judgment on Israel for their idolatry). As the culmination of a series of rhetorical questions to which the implied answer is always "no," Amos asks, "Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does evil befall a city, unless the Lord has done it?" (Amos 3:6). There follows a series of natural disasters in Amos 4:6-12, where the Lord reminds the people that he gave them hunger, drought, blight and mildew, locusts, pestilence, and death of men and horses, "yet you did not return to me" (Amos 4:6, 8, 9, 10, 11).
In many of the passages mentioned above, God brings evil and destruction on people in judgment upon their sins: They have been disobedient or have strayed into idolatry, and then the Lord uses evil human beings or demonic forces or "natural" disasters to bring judgment on them. (This is not always said to be the case - Joseph and Job come to mine - but it is often so.) Perhaps this idea of judgment on sin can help us to understand, at least in part, how God can righteously bring about evil events. All human beings are sinful, for Scripture tells us that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Ro 3:23). None of us deserves God's favor or his mercy, but only eternal condemnation. Therefore, when God brings evil on human beings, whether to discipline his children, or to lead unbelievers to repentance, or to bring a judgment of condemnation and destruction upon hardened sinners, none of us can charge God with doing wrong. Ultimately all will work in God's good purposes to bring glory to him and good to his people. Yet we must realize that in punishing evil in those who are not redeemed (such as Pharaoh, the Canaanites, and the Babylonians), God is also glorified through the demonstration of his justice, holiness, and power (see Ex 9:16; Ro 9:14-24).
Through the prophet Isaiah God says, "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things" (Isa 45:7) KJV; the Hebrew word for "create" here is bara', the same word used in Ge 1:1). In Lamentations 3:38 we read, "Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and evil come?" The people of Israel , in a time of heartfelt repentance, cry out to God and say, "O Lord, why do you make us err from your ways and harden our heart, so that we fear you not?" (Isa 63:17).
The life of Jonah is a remarkable illustration of God's concurrence in human activity. The men on board the ship sailing to Tarshish threw Jonah overboard, for Scripture says, "So they took up Jonah and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging" (Jonah 1:15). Yet only five verses later Jonah acknowledges God's providential direction in their act, for he says to God. "You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas" (Jonah 2:3). Scripture simultaneously affirms that the men threw Jonah into the sea and that God threw him into the sea. The providential direction of God did not force the sailors to do something against their will, nor were they conscious of any divine influence on them - indeed, they cried to the Lord for forgiveness as they threw Jonah overboard (Jonah 1:14). What Scripture reveals to us, and what Jonah himself realized, was that God was bringing about his plan through the willing choices of real human beings who were morally accountable for their actions. In a way not understood by us and not revealed to us, God caused them to make a willing choice to do what they did.
The most evil deed of all history, the crucifixion of Christ, was ordained by God - not just the fact that it would occur, but also all the individual actions connected with it. The church at Jerusalem recognized this, for they prayed:
"For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. " (Acts 4:27)
All the actions of all the participants in the crucifixion of Jesus had been "predestined" by God. Yet the apostles clearly attach no moral blame to God, for the actions resulted from the willing choices of sinful men. Peter makes this clear in his sermon at Pentecost: "this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men" (Acts 2:23). In one sentence he links God's plan and foreknowledge with the moral blame that attaches to the actions of "lawless men." They were not forced by God to act against their wills; rather, God brought about his plan through their willing choices, for which they were nevertheless responsible.
