Question:
Where does sin come from? How did Satan know to commit sin, if it had not already existed?
Answer:
First of all, sin is not a “thing” in the sense that Satan or Man saw it one day, and chose to “commit it”.
Sin is the violation of what God says is “right”. God declares truths; God decides absolute right and wrong; God is good; anything that is not what God is (or demonstrates in His character) is bad, or evil.
Evil doesn’t exist until God’s law or goodness is violated – on purpose. “Sin” came into existence the moment a created being purposely CHOSE to do something they knew the CREATOR would not want them to do.
This poses a problem for those who declare that man has no FREE WILL because God has sovereignly declared all that is and will be. This makes God the cause of sin rather than man or Satan. If Satan cannot CHOOSE to go against God, then it is not truly sin.
If man has no free will, then man could not choose to disobey God. That means God “ordained” sin to be committed, along with all the destruction, death and eternal condemnation that followed. This is in direct contradiction to the known characteristics of God.
Satan was the first to sin because he is the one who tempted Eve to disobey God, he is the “father of lies” and “deceives the whole world” (Revelation 12:9; John 8.44). It seems fairly sure that Satan did not sin until after the earth was created because God declared ALL creation to be good:
Genesis 2:3-4 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, (NKJV)
A person cannot truly love someone if they do not have the genuine free choice to do so. Conversely, a person cannot truly sin if they do not have the free will to choose THEIR way, instead of God’s way.
It goes against all human experience, logic and understanding to believe that a person can love or sin if they cannot genuinely choose to do so.
Sin IS the choice to do something other than what God would have done. To say otherwise, is to make God the cause and author of sin which of course is impossible.
There is no way around the issue. Sin is the willful choice of the “created” to violate the will of the “Creator”. If the “created” is forced to sin, then it is unjust to hold them guilty of it. We are created in God’s image and we innately understand that it is unjust to hold someone guilty for sin unless they willfully chose to sin. If we inherently understand justice, how much more does God understand it?
Sin exists because God gave us the CHOICE to love and obey, or rebel and sin. Real choice is the only genuine way to have a REAL relationship. That is why God created man with the ability to CHOOSE to obey, to CHOOSE to love.
Now having said that, the Bible clearly teaches man is dead in their sin (Col 2.13), that salvation is a gift of God (Rom 6.23), that grace and belief and granted from God (Phil 1.29), that man can in no way earn or do anything to merit salvation, and that the entire process of salvation starts with God, and ends with God (John 6.44).
I’ll leave it to those who want to CHOOSE (pun intended!) to be a Calvinist, or choose to be an Arminian, to reconcile these IRRECONCILABE concepts… I’ll just accept the plain facts as the Bible presents them:
- Sin is anything that violates God’s wishes.
- Man can choose to obey or disobey.
- God is responsible for salvation.
To summarize, sin came into existence the moment a created being violated the will of the Creator. It was not a “thing” that was created, it was a consequence of a choice.