If God knew Adam and Eve would sin, why create them?

The works of the fallen do not come in here. The Worker here is God. As we have already seen, it is God, rich in mercy and great in love, who has quickened us with the Christ. It was infinite mercy, but the spring of that mercy lay in the love of His heart. It was not like the love bestowed upon His people Israel, which went not beyond His ways with regard to His government of this world. Nor was it just the same as His love manifested in His only begotten Son who died for all, for God desired the salvation of all, and therefore did He by the cross of His Son open up a way of salvation for all. This was love more in the sense of pity. No, this is a love that goes back before His works of old, before the line of time began to be traced, the line upon which all mysteries of eternal counsels are being fulfilled and perfected. He chose us in Christ before the world’s foundation. We were the objects of His love then. We cannot suppose that God did not know that Adam would fall, and that we should be fallen with him. Perhaps you say, Why, then, did He make him? That is His business, not yours. You say, I am involved in the resultant ruin. You are, but He has made a way of escape from the judgment to which you have made yourself liable on account of your sins. But why did He not make man incapable of failure? His infinite wisdom was concerned in all that He did, and He made man as He pleased, perfect and sinless. Yes, you say, but he fell, and therefore I find myself a sinner, and about to be judged for the deeds done in the body, deeds of which you affirm He disapproves. Where is the justice of that? How can you, who are not yourself just, call God to account because you think you have found injustice with Him? Do not forget that you are nothing but a poor weak creature who has no rights at all. You make whatever kind of instrument you think will serve your purpose, and if you find it useless you throw it on the scrap-heap; and if you are found fault with you say, Have I no right to do what I will with my own? Oh, you say, the question of right or wrong, justice or injustice, does not enter into my relations with that which is the work of my hands. True, but if you could make a rational being, endowed with faculties such as are common to men, and if you could place this being on the principle of responsibility, with penalties attached for disobedience, would you consider yourself unjust should you attempt to enforce those penalties, if he hearkened to your enemy, and so sought by acts of disobedience to raise himself to your level, denying your lawful authority over him; especially if at infinite cost you had showed great mercy to him, and opened a way of salvation for him, which he scorned to avail himself of, would you not consider yourself justified in leaving him to the consequences of his own wicked folly?

There is only one answer to be given. God is not the author of evil, but He has allowed sin for His own glory. He did not create creatures who were incapable of choosing between good and evil, else He would have created mere machines—infinitely more wonderful than motor cars and aeroplanes, but yet on the same level.

But again we ask, Why did God leave moral evil a possibility? Or, in other words, why permit the entrance of sin? Could He not have created a being, which could not fall? One who could only do what was good and right?

The answer is plain. Because, if He would create a glorious creature — man, after His own image, and in His likeness, free to choose either good or evil, and not a creature governed by a mere chain of instinct, as the birds and beasts around him — He must leave the entrance to him of evil, a possibility, though not a necessity.

The judgment in Genesis 3 was upon Satan, though it was there for Adam to lay hold of. There was no promise to the fallen Adam, no promise to man in sin any more than innocent. Evil came in by the devil; with man, by temptation. God was over it: this is the reason why He suffered evil and the fall - in view of a greater good to come in. My answer to him who asks it is, "why, you foolish man, if you had not been a sinner, you would not have had Christ at all." And this is a true answer too, because it was in God's counsels to introduce and reveal Christ in glory ultimately.

The fact that man is a tri-partite being with spirit, soul, and body may be one reason why he is recoverable. I am sure of this, that He who made him had in the making of him redemption before Him: for after all, the first Adam was a figure of the Last (Rom. 5:14). And in that last Adam we who are believers were chosen before the world’s foundation. Neither the fall of angels nor of men has taken the blessed God by surprise. Everything that would enter into the universe, and all that creation would come to, were well known to God before His works of old. And the evil that has come in was by Him permitted. He could have kept it out had He so pleased, but He allowed it to enter that it might serve His purpose; and He has made it, and will continue to make it, serve to the fulfilment of His counsels of love, and then He will cause it to find its eternal home with him who brought it into being, in the lake of fire. At present He makes the wrath of man to praise Him, and that which would do anything more He restrains (Ps. 76:10). Everything God has made must serve Him: its love, its hate, its lawlessness, its obedience, must serve the end He has in view. Should the creature lift itself up against Him, it will do it to its own destruction, and it will learn in its utter defeat and humiliation that all its wicked and mischievous activities have, through the infinite wisdom of God, done nothing but help to the fulfilment of His beneficent purposes. The enemy may make a pit for another, but he is certain to fall into it himself. His mischief is sure to return upon himself, and his violent dealing descend upon his own pate. The Creator cannot be defeated by the work of His own hands.

As regards indifference, i.e., absence of preference, foreknowledge does not imply the direct appointment of the fact, but it does suppose a necessary consequence, though it may be necessary if - thus, if a creature, being imperfect, be exposed to temptation, he will certainly fall; I may act on it, as a certainty, i.e., God may, who perfectly knows the bearing of all things, without the smallest compulsion on the person - He may have seen it right to leave the creature exposed to it, and have this moral trial. There was way to escape, no necessity, no predisposition to evil - it was the necessary imperfection of the creature, a question whether there should be any free creature at all, and moral condition exist in the world; if there were, it could not be otherwise, issuing in the bringing about the previous purpose of redemption, purposed before, not based upon the fall of man.

What wonderful statements these are! We are in them face to face with the deepest revelation. To deny this would stamp these words as the imaginations of a deceiver. Only revelation can make known that which happened before the foundation of the world. Whatever is in God's eternity, that unfathomable existence without beginning, is beyond man's ability to grasp and therefore unrevealed. But here the great truth is made known that God, before there was a world, planned His masterwork. With Him in His bosom was His blessed Son, the Son of His love. In Him, by Him and for Him all things were called into existence. Yet before this creation was effected, God knew the outcome. Surprise is an impossibility with God. He knows the end from the beginning. The whole story of man's fall and its results were not hidden from Him. And before it ever came to pass God made provision. And those who would accept Christ, as their Savior, He willed should be before Him holy and without blame, become partakers of His own divine nature. This God willed before the foundation of the world, and this is now, through grace, the portion of every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. And, furthermore, He predestinated all who believe in Christ to the Son-place.

An important point was reached in the activities of God at the creation of man. Great ranges of intelligences had been created long before and certainly great and important questions had been raised. This we know from the fact that the conflict between good and evil was raging at the time. But in Adam, as he came from the hand of God, we see the type of the Man destined of God to settle every question that had arisen or could arise. It is written that Adam was " the figure of Him that was to come " (Romans 5:14), and we learn that all was foreseen and that the Incarnation of the Son and His death upon the cross was before God as the settlement of the sin question long before sin began.

Therefore it was a necessity that sin should be allowed entrance into this world, for though an enemy has brought it to pass, God will make it serve to give effect to His eternal purpose. It must not for a moment be supposed that He was the author of sin, or that He brought it into the world. Had He done either His purpose never could have been effectuated. It was by one of His creatures it was brought into existence, and by another of His creatures it found entrance into the world. The devil was the first sinner. His pride made him think he was the equal of God (Ezek. 28:9); Adam by an attempt at equality with God allowed it to come into the world (Gen. 3:5). That God could have prevented the existence of sin, or having allowed it to exist, He could have prevented its entrance into the world, cannot rightly be questioned. It is obnoxious to Him, and He will eventually cleanse His universe from its presence, but in the meantime He makes it, as well as the one who is its father, to serve His purpose.

But has He whose purpose is to bring many sons to glory been defeated? It is clear that God cannot maintain the creature in active rebellion against His beneficent sway, and give him licence to corrupt for ever His fair creation. Must He then destroy the human race, and confess Himself unable to give effect to His eternal purpose of blessing? Must He confess that He has been out-manoeuvred by His implacable enemy? Far be the thought: He who makes the wrath of man to praise Him, and restrains the superabundance, can in His infinite wisdom make the puny efforts of every rebel creature serve to the fulfilment of His eternal decrees. No sane person could ever suppose the Creator overreached by the creature. All His creatures exist for His service. Elect angels have been upheld in their primal perfection, and others have been allowed to fall from their first estate, and for these we do not read of recovery. Man made in the image and likeness of God fell, and brought into existence a fallen race; but to these mercy has been manifested, and a way of salvation devised. But if preserved in their first and perfect condition, or if allowed to fall, all is for the wise purpose of God, and all are made to serve to the fulfilment of the purpose of eternal love. He does not bring about the fall of any one of His creatures, but where a creature is placed on the ground of responsibility, obliged to fulfil whatever obligations are imposed upon him, he cannot complain if by the exercise of his own will he finds himself a ruined sinner.