Caleb from Fremont, California writes into Ask, Pastor John, in a previous episode, you

answered the question, how do you process public tragedy, that was episode 85?

To which your response was very to the point, God ordains these things to glorify himself

through people being outraged as sin and responding to victims with compassion.

A follow-up question that I'm now wrestling with is this, how does God ordain evil acts

without himself becoming evil?

We need a category in our minds that goes something like this.

God can will that sin be without sinning.

It's not a sin for God to choose that sin should be, should exist.

And I say that because the Bible pictures God giving us grace in Christ Jesus before

the ages began, which means that he was planning for the fall, which would then need to be

redeemed by the crucified Christ through grace, and that was all being planned before

anything had happened.

So he's planning for the downfall of man.

Same thing in Revelation 13, 8, where there's this book that God's writing before the foundation

of the world.

And the name of the book is the book of the life of the Lamb who was slain.

So you have Jesus in the mind of God's slain for sinners before there is even a world,

which means that we need a category that God is planning that sin be without himself

being a sinner.

And we know from other passages that's in fact what God does, Genesis 50, verse 20.

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it, that is, he meant the evil for

...