“As for you, you meant evil against me, but
God meant it for good” –Genesis 50:20a
Perhaps
the biggest issue people have with Christianity is how a good God can coexist
with the evil and suffering of this world. More ink has been spilt trying to
give a sufficient answer to the question of God’s goodness in an evil world
than I could write in ten lifetimes, but in this one verse we find perhaps the
best concise explanation. Let’s at least get one thing out of the way before we
break down what is going on in this text: the problem of evil cannot really be
a problem to God. Were God to face a real dilemma He cannot solve, such as the
presence of evil, He would cease to be the sovereign authority of all creation.
The problem of evil then is really only a problem from our human perspective.
The old saying, “If God is God, He is not good. If God is good He is not God”,
from a play by Archibald MacLeish, sums up the belief of many regarding this
issue. Yet in the life of Joseph, we encounter a God who is God and He is also
good. On the one hand, He is in total sovereign control of all things
(including evil and suffering), while on the other hand, He is altogether good
and loving. Isn’t that the kind of God we all know exists anyway? One who is truly
God and is truly good?
The
story of Joseph’s life is quite remarkable. A dearly loved and favored son,
Joseph dreams a strange dream of his family bowing before him only to be sold
into slavery by his own brothers for even mentioning it to them. He is then
falsely accused by an evil seductress and imprisoned, only to later be released
by Pharaoh for interpreting dreams, and ends up becoming second in command over
all Egypt and saving multitudes from a dreadful famine. Joseph’s story has traces
of evil and suffering all over it: favoritism, envy, hatred, slave-trading,
betrayal, lies, temptation, false accusations, prison, and famine. Yet at every
turn in Joseph’s story, the reader is reminded of God’s good purposes and
presence. In his slavery, imprisonment, and rise to power, we are told, “God was with Joseph.” Apparently a good
and sovereign God can coexist with
evil and suffering in this world. But how?
Later
in his life, Joseph’s dreams have been fulfilled. He stands as second in
command to Pharaoh and his brothers finally come bowing before him. The very plot
meant to destroy Joseph’s dreams actually was the instrument by which those
dreams were fulfilled. Had Joseph never been sold into slavery, he would have
never been falsely accused, and had he never been falsely accused, he would
have never been imprisoned, and had he never been imprisoned, he would have
never been released to become Pharaoh’s right hand man, and had he never become
Pharaoh’s right hand man, multitudes would have perished in a severe famine.
In
Genesis 45:5-8 Joseph tells his brothers, “do
not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God
sent me before you to preserve life…God sent me before you to preserve for you
a remnant on earth…so it was not you who sent me here, but God.” The
psalmist, in Psalm 105, is so bold as to add that God, “summoned a famine on the land” and “sent a man ahead of them, Joseph.” How do we reconcile these two seemingly
contradictory statements? You sold me…God
sent me. You meant evil…God meant it for good. Famines are bad…but God summoned it. First we must realize that
what often seem like contradictions in our Bibles are actually not
contradictions at all, but paradoxes. A paradox is the coming together of two
parallel truths that don’t seem to be reconcilable. When 19th
Century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon was asked to reconcile God’s
sovereignty with man’s responsibility, he said, “I wouldn’t try…I never
reconcile friends.”
The
glorious truth obvious to Joseph and to all God’s suffering saints throughout
the ages and needs to be understood by us as well is: behind every drop of
suffering and behind every dark spot of evil, God is sovereignly working out
His good and perfect plan. This truth is one some believers foolishly run from,
yet which is given by God as a support for them in the trials of life. Instead
of embracing God’s sovereignty and goodness behind our suffering and behind the
evil of our world, many believers choose to attribute all supposed “bad” events
to Satan and all supposedly “good” events to God. I was in a Bible study once
with a godly Christian woman who said her father’s death was all the work of
Satan and refused the thought that God could have been sovereign behind it.
After a time of her own prayerful reflection and study, she told the group that
she now understood that God was sovereign and did allow her father to die for
His own good purposes.
Think
of the most ungodly and heinous act in human history. Now, can you confidently
say, “The perpetrators meant it for evil, but God meant it for good”? Perhaps
you were thinking of the Holocaust or September 11th. But these
crimes pale in comparison to an even more despicable crime: the crucifixion of
God’s only Son. The early church understood the cross to be both the most
heinous crime ever committed and an offense God predestined to occur for His
own good purposes in redemption. In Acts 2:23 we read, “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and
foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”
So on the one hand, there are “lawless men” who “killed” Jesus and on the other
hand, Jesus’ death was “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of
God.” Then again in Acts 4:28 the church prays that all the evil perpetrators
(Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles, and Jews) did, “whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” If
God is sovereign over a famine in Joseph’s day and all the sin leading up to
that event in his life and the horror of Christ’s crucifixion, then He is
sovereign over every evil event and amount of suffering in this world. Yet God
always has a good purpose which He brings out of evil and suffering. The
ultimate good purpose of all evil and suffering in this world will be realized
in the new heavens and new earth when the bride of Christ will finally be
redeemed out of this sin-cursed world and all will be renewed. Until then, may
we learn to rest in God’s sovereign care over our lives even as we live in a
world full of sin and suffering. After all, what hope would there be if there
were no sovereign and good God behind the helm of this world and behind the
wheel of our own lives?
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