Samuel Rutherford: 7 Reasons Why God Permits Sin
Posted at Reformation Scotland:
This question may sound speculative. But it is not something on which Scripture is silent. It does involve deep mysteries. Yet, it is a practical question that concerns our own experience and understanding of Scripture. We live in a time when iniquity abounds. We need to know that God is not powerless and defeated by it but rather that He overrules it to a greater good and His greater glory.The Bible does not give us a proof text that summarises teaching about this in just one place. Yet through comparing different parts of Scripture with each other we can understand its teaching. The Westminster Confession (6:1; see also Larger Catechism Q19) declares that God “permits” sin, but that it is not a “bare permission” (5:4). A “bare permission” would mean it was an involuntary decision whereas it was possible for God not to permit it.
It is an active permission. He has “joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to His own holy ends; yet so, as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is, nor can be, the author or approver of sin” (5:4 see also 3:1).
The Confession offers a range of proof texts that demonstrate how God uses the sinful actions of men as actions in His purposes. Yet God is not involved in the sinfulness of those actions. A clear example is in relation to the cross of Christ. Those who crucified Him certainly acted wickedly, but it was also part of God’s purpose (Acts 2:23; Acts 4:27-28).
Samuel Rutherford was not one to run away from such perplexing questions. In his Catechism he gives some concise answers to various perplexing questions.
