Did God Create Sin?

Biblegems #25

Does the fact that God created everything mean that He also created sin?

While on the surface the answer seems obvious, the question does pose a legitimate problem. Isaiah 4:24 says, “This is what the LORD says—our Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself…” And the Gospel of John also testifies that through Jesus, the Word of God, “…all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (Jn. 1:3).

However, the context for both of these verses, as well as similar uses of the phrase “all things,” clearly indicates that the universe is in view, not the realm of morality. Yet that still leaves the question, where did sin come from, if not created by God? To answer that, we need to understand something about the nature of sin and the nature of God.

Fist, in relation to God, the Bible states unequivocally, Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong (Hab. 1:13). By His very nature, God exists in eternal opposition to sin. Sin, therefore, cannot have originated with God. Secondly, sin is described in the Bible as human nature (originally created in God’s image) that has been corrupted and ruined by the choice of Adam and Eve to disobey God (Gen 2:16-17), which resulted in contaminating the entire human race with a sinful nature (Rom. 5:19; Ps. 51:5). But sin is also a choice. It is a choice to ignore God (Rom. 1:21) and to surrender ourselves to desires that are in opposition to what God’s will for us (Ja. 1:14-15).

Since, therefore, sin originates in the corrupted human heart and not in God, it is no more possible for a person to shed his sinful nature than it is for a butterfly to revert back to a caterpillar! That’s both bad new and good news. The bad news is obvious: we cannot help ourselves become sin-free. The good news is that what we cannot do for ourselves, God has done for us because He loves us and created us to love Him.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10).

So, in answer to the original question, No, sin does not originate in God. The defeat of sin, however — and its power, and its consequences — this does originate in God. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16).

And that is the most beautiful of all Bible gems!