When Victor Hugo was at what seemed to be the height of his fame
he came into disfavor with Napoleon III and was exiled for 19 years.
It was only natural that Hugo would consider this as pure tragedy, but
his immediate judgment was wrong. During those years he wrote far
superior books, and he became twice the man he had been before.
The day actually came when Hugo looked at that seemingly unhappy
event and exclaimed, "Why was I not exiled before?" The evil that
befell him actually resulted in a greater good.
It may seem ridiculous to suggest that man's fall and exile has also
resulted in a greater good, but let me suggest it anyway. Biblical
theology would seem to demand this conclusion, for we know that God
is sovereign, and that in spite of his giving to man a free will, He will
not end up when history is over with less than what He began with.
God could allow the possibility of evil just because He is able to bring
good out of it. Let us not get the impression that the fall was good. It
was not, but it was a very definite and tragic evil. The point is, God is
in control and permits only that evil to be possible out of which He can
bring good.
It is often of small comfort in a tragic situation to say it could be
worse, but it is of great comfort at the point of the fall of man. In one
of Shakespeare's plays a character is made to say, "And when he falls,
he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again." This is exactly what did not
happen in the fall of Adam and Eve. They did not fall as Satan did.
He fell by his own choice to defy God, but they were tempted by
external persuasion. Therefore, their fall was not final, but rather was
one where God has plans to restore them to a state of perfection.
Without the fall we would not have a Savior, and however pleasant
our life would be, it would be less than what we have ahead in eternity
because of what Jesus accomplished for us.
All this amounts to is the logical conclusion we must come to as
Christians because of our rejection of Dualism. We believe that God
alone is sovereign, and He is the creator of all. We do not believe that
there are two ultimate beings as the ancient Persians and Gnostics
believed, with one being good and the other evil. We believe in a
limited dualism in which light and darkness battle one another with
Christ leading the forces of light and Satan the forces of darkness. We
believe the evil forces had a beginning, and that they will have an end
in defeat.
Evil we say is dependent upon the good for its very existence.
Good can exist alone, but evil must have the presence of good to exist,
for evil can have no meaning except by contrast to a standard of good.
It would be impossible to ever do a thing in the wrong way if there was
no right way to do it. But one could do it the right way even if it were
impossible to do it wrong. Let me illustrate. Suppose you have a
puzzle all together except for one piece of a very odd shape. There is
only one right way for that piece to go in. It is just because there is a
right way for it to fit that it is possible to try many wrong ways. You
can hold it several different ways and turn it over before you finally
hit the right way. All the wrong ways can only exist because of there
being a right way. If there was no right way for it to fit, there would
be no wrong ways, for anyway would do. Wrongness is dependent
upon rightness for its very existence.
God and good are supreme and ultimate, but Satan and evil are
temporary intruders. This is confirmed by the record we have here of
the entrance of evil into the world. It got in by the misuse of that
which was good, and thereby established the basic nature of evil as
being the striving for a good by the wrong means. In other words, just
as God can bring good out of evil, so Satan can bring evil out of good.
C. S. Lewis said, "Badness is only spoiled goodness." If you examine
any sin you will discover that some good is always the foundation of it.
This is why sin if often so appealing. It appears to offer so much good.
The greater the good involved, however, the greater the sin. If sex
perversions are high on the list of sins, it is only because normal sex
experience is so high on the list of God's blessings.
If bigotry is such a despised attitude, it is because conviction is
such an honorable attitude. In other words, evil is basically a
perverted good. Take orthodoxy for example, which means being
sound and right in your beliefs. None can doubt that this is a good,
and yet it has been the cause of so much evil because of its being
converted and made an end in itself. Mark Guy Pearce writes, "Look
back over the ages so far as we have any record of the world's
religious history. We shall find that the cruelest thing that ever came
into God's world is religion without love. It has kindled more fires for
the burning of martyrs, it has invented more diabolical torches, it has
wrought more dire and dreadful suffering, then wars and strong drink
put together.
Jesus as the risen and reigning king said to the church of Ephesus
that it was good that they tested men and found them to be false
apostles. It was good that they were orthodox, but they had left their
first love. He warned them that if they did not return to that love all
their orthodoxy would be for naught, and he would remove their
candlestick from its place. Christ stands squarely behind Paul's
statement that though one has no knowledge and faith enough to
remove mountains, but has not love, he is nothing. Jesus says by His
rebuke to this church, and it is backed up by all of Scripture, and the
pages of history reecho it that the end does not justify the means. No
end however good, even that of being orthodox, can be attained or
maintained by means inconsistent with love. If it is, the good is
perverted and becomes an evil. The point that we need to grasp is that
any good is the source of potential evil, for evil can only exist by
perverting a good. This calls for constant examination and renewed
commitment lest we be subtly led into sin in our very pursuit of the
good.
This is what happened to Eve. God had made everything good,
and there was nothing that was bad or evil on earth. The only possible
way Satan could introduce evil into the world would be by some
misuse of what was good. The paradox of the fall is that good
surrounds it completely. C. Vaughn said, "The fall is a greater
mystery than the redemption." We have been studying the cleverness
of Satan in getting Eve to fall, and we have seen that Satan has used
truth as one of his instruments of deception. Satan could not succeed
without using good for his evil goal. We see Satan using wisdom and
truth to deceive Eve into disobedience. Now as we look at the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, which has by Satan's subtlety became the
object of Eve's attention, we discover again that good is the only thing
we can see, and that is all that Eve saw as well.
1. First she saw-The tree was good for food. God had made all
things good, and this included the fruit of the forbidden tree. It did
not just look good, it really was good for food. The only possible way
evil could arise out of seeking this good food would be by gaining it in
a way out of harmony with God's will. That is exactly what happened.
We see, however, that the good itself was good. It was only the means
to get it that made it evil. Satan's success was in getting her to gain a
good by an evil means.
God was the author of taste, beauty, and desire for wisdom, and
all of these are good. It is not an evil to desire good food, but it is
natural and good. All of these good factors combined to produce an
evil simply because they were directed toward a good but forbidden
goal. Any good that has to be gained by disobeying God is a good out
of which evil will come. To desire such a good when you know it
cannot be gained in God's will is an evil lust. Desire is not wrong, but
a lust for that which is forbidden is a desire that has gone out of God's
will.
It was Eve's lust for the good fruit that led to the fall. Someone
wrote, "Eve, with all the fruits of Eden blest, save only one, rather
than leave that one unknown lost all the rest." Martin Luther wrote,
"How rich a God is our God! He gives enough, but we do not heed
this. He gave Adam the whole world, and that was nothing. He was
only concerned about the one tree he had to ask why God had
forbidden him to eat of it. So it is today. In his revealed word God
has given us enough to learn. We leave that alone and search into His
secret will, and yet we fail to learn it. It serves us right if we perish
through such conduct." What greater folly can there be than to
forsake the abundance of God's blessings and go in pursuit of what He
has forbidden? The forbidden fruit was good for food, but then so was
every other piece of fruit in the garden. Beware of being duped into
pursuing anything just because it is good, for a good pursued out of
God's will is an evil.
2. It was a delight to the eyes. Certainly no one would call
aesthetics evil. That means the enjoyment of beauty. Beauty is God's
doing, and so also is the love of beauty in the heart of man. Yet this
good can also be used to draw us into the snare in gaining the good by
a wrong means. Had the tree been ugly, and the fruit unappealing,
and half rotten, the chances of the temptation succeeding would have
been slim indeed. Evil we see again can only succeed when it has a
good foundation on which to build. It cannot stand alone. It can only
enter where a good standard is established. Adam and Eve could
never have been tricked into doing an evil in itself. The only hope for
evil to succeed was by using the good. It is still Satan's most effective
means to get people to fall. If he can get us to focus our eyes on a good
goal that must be gained by disobedience to God, he has a good chance
of getting us to go ahead. We are prone to persuade ourselves that as
long as the goal is good the means do not matter.
Many have fallen where they never expected they could simply
because they continued to gaze at the forbidden. The poet has said,
The ill we deem we ne'er could do, in thought we dramatize;
What we should loathe, we learn to scan with speculative eyes.
Alas! For ignorance profound of our poor nature's bent!
The weakened sympathy with wrong becomes the will's consent.
All that glitters is not gold, and all that is beautiful is not thereby
approved of by God. Joseph Parker said, "A beautiful gate it is that
opens upon ruin! It is well-shaped, well-painted, and the word
welcome illuminates it in vivid letters." We need to be fully
conscience that evil's best tools are the good, the true and the
beautiful. Spurgeon said that the serpent probably got Eve fascinated
with it so that she liked it the most of all the creatures. To her it was
beautiful and something to be treasured. Satan often uses beauty to
lead us astray. These are three values that all men desire. People who
think sin is always ugly and awful are usually very fine respectable
people who will never be saved, for they do not believe they are
sinners. We must be ever aware that evil is basically perverted good,
for only then can we spot the sins that trap us when we think we are
being righteous.
3. To be desired to make one wise. God certainly expected man to
use the brain He gave him, and to grow wise is good. Eve desired to
be wise and her hunger for knowledge was not evil. We see that a
good was the object and goal, which was made to bring about man's
fall. She had three good reasons to justify her act of eating. If she put
all arguments for and against down in writing, there would only be one
against it and three for it. This shows us the quantity of arguments is
not a valid basis. No number of arguments weigh anything in the scale
of decision when God's command is against it.
Eve let 3 good goals tip the scale, and she chose to go against
God's command. Our interest in this message is to stress the fact that
evil could not succeeded without the help of the good. Good is the
foundation of evil, and without it evil cannot exist. This shows us that
good is the original and evil is an intruder. All evil is a perversion of
some good in God's totally good universe. One day the perverted will
be destroyed, and all his perversions, and all will be good again.
Meanwhile we need to grow in our discerning of good and evil that we
might not be led into evil by way of the good, but that we might
overcome evil with good.
