Why did God allow Satan to enter the Garden of Eden?

But all this is at once envied by the great enemy. And he had title to try the stability of it. The nakedness, the unshamed nakedness, of the man and the woman was innocency. Yes, but it was also exposure. The creature was to be proved. Strength of creaturehood was to be tried. And the enemy had title to enter the garden to carry on the trial. He was no trespasser there. The order and purpose of creation made room for him, as well as for Adam himself. The very instrument by which he was to conduct his designs was there already. The tree of knowledge was in the midst of the garden.

But further, choice has nothing to do with freedom. A nature in perfect accordance with the order in which I am set, is free - such is called, morally, the law of liberty, when I will in nature what God wills in authority - so Adam, setting aside the forbidden fruit, was free in the garden, but had no choice to make; God chose to put a matter of choice before him, as a probation or test, but His doing it specially, and by this ordinance, proved it was not so otherwise. Nor is there any difficulty in God's full foreknowledge, only it supposes what is - our nature - and He supplies the occasion in which man shows himself without any influencing at all, and then God shows Himself in grace.

272 Then the imperfection and fall of the creature, if tested in this state, exists - the forbidden tree is there to test it - perfectly free as far as any influence of God is concerned, but, because so, showing what it was. God knew perfectly well the result, but it was the effect of creature-nature, it is only when we really see this, we get free from it. So God knew human nature, and all its details under certain influences, and in certain positions, and presents Christ. It is free, but shows in freedom what it is. The independence of the unfallen creature, and the enmity of the creature, with a will and lusts, who had separated from God, would not have been shown without these things. But it was display of what the creature was, not choice, or, if you please, display of what choice in the creature, when tried, was, i.e., will without God, and will against God - separation from God; distrust of His goodness began it, but will and disobedience followed - I speak of man.

How great is the patience of God! He has tolerated Satan's malignity and scheming through all the sad centuries of fallen man's history — permitted him indeed to tempt our first parents in their innocence — and allows him to make his accusations and insinuations that there is no good, before His very face. But all is permitted to bring out lessons for eternity. Satan is surely heaping up added wrath for himself, and meanwhile his very malice can but serve God's righteous purposes of blessing, as we shall see in Job's case.

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.

God, in His infinite wisdom, allowed Satan to tempt man and bring sin into the world; but in the very scene into which it was brought, God has dealt with it, in view of removing it from the whole universe. Every question that man's sin has raised has been resolved for the glory of God in the cross of Christ. Not only will the evidences and effects of sin be taken away, but sin as an active principle will be banished from the universe of God.

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.

From a human standpoint the overthrow of the man made in the image of God appeared to be a triumph of the devil, but it just cleared the way for the announcement of the Man of God’s counsel who would bruise the serpent’s head. The devil was not to be crushed by an arbitrary act of divine power, but by a work that would bring to light the righteousness, power, and wisdom of the Creator.

It must be evident that those who are called according to divine purpose had nothing whatsoever to do with their call. All originated in the purpose of God. This purpose tells us what God had determined to do, and those called of God are blessed that God might carry out what was in His heart and mind. God's purpose is not an afterthought; we read elsewhere that it was eternal; but even here we read of those that God foreknew. Those who were to be called into divine blessing were foreknown of God before they had any being. The purpose of God must be sovereign. He sets Himself to do something, and He will do exactly as He wishes, blessing whom He will; and none can be allowed to frustrate His will. He may allow Satan to enter Eden, and to secure an apparent triumph there, as also in the cross, but what appears to be victory for Satan is but the means of securing the purpose of God.

The one solemn fact confronting omnipotence itself was that He had to deal with sin — with sinful men. He might, we might well conceive, have let judgment, swift and final, fall at once upon our guilty parents in the Garden of Eden. But His counsels of grace were not to be thwarted. Those counsels centered in His beloved Son, and must be fulfilled. Man is a free moral agent, and thus responsible. He is away from God, and must be brought back. He is not to be forced back against his will, nor will this wondrous work be effected without fullest opportunity to manifest the utter and hopeless alienation of man.

It would be a very grave error indeed to suppose that redemption was an after thought with God. He had not, blessed be His holy name, to sit down and plan what He would do, when sin entered. It was all settled beforehand. The enemy, no doubt, imagined that he was gaining a wonderful victory when he meddled with man in the garden of Eden. In point of fact, he was only giving occasion for the display of God's eternal counsels in connection with the work of the Son. There was no basis for those counsels, no sphere for their display in the fields of creation. It was the meddling of Satan — the entrance of sin — the ruin of man that opened a platform on which a Saviour-God might display the riches of His grace, the glories of His salvation, the attributes of His nature, to all created intelligences.