John 19:13-16

So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called the Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic Gabbatha.  Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover.  It was about the sixth hour.  He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!”  They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!”  Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.”  So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.

Philosophers will often, in an attempt to deny the obvious truth of Christianity, point to the existence of evil as a proof that there isn’t an all-loving, all-powerful God of the universe.  Their charge has emotional power as well as the appearance of intellectual depth.  If God is both loving and powerful, how is it that evils exist in our universe?  If He is loving, why would he allow the torments of deaths, cancers, divorces, natural disasters, etc.?  And – watch them move in for the kill now – if he is loving and doesn’t want these things to transpire but they obviously do, then He isn’t powerful enough to stop them.  In either event, they reason, the existence of evil destroys the Christian notion of God.  

Chances are, you aren’t a professional philosopher but you have experienced your share of pain, and drunk your cup of suffering to its last bitter drop and wondered throughout it all what this says about God.  This is an easy question.  It’s a natural question to the mind of men and women, just as the words, “It’s not fair!” are nearly the first ethical reckoning uttered by children all over the world.  Yes, indeed!  With virtually no moral education whatsoever, every young person is a natural expert, a prodigy, at the moral science of having their way.  The objection is so natural to us that we would expect to see it addressed in the very pages of the Holy Scriptures and, indeed, we do.  

From the outset, Adam and Eve bicker and blame each other and then, ultimately, God, for their predicament.  Adam says, “The woman You gave me caused me to eat…”  Even still, God condescends to cover their nakedness, make provisions for them, and even correct the problem caused by their fall.  We see it again in Job – in full force.  God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind – His voice out of the winds of chaos and destruction – and he peppers the upstart with questions.  “Gird yourself up like a man.  I’m going to question you now,” He says.  And so he does.  Job cannot reply because he has no ground to stand on.  What does he know about the ultimate things, the origins and destinies and the power that holds all the systems together?  What does Job know about the intricacies of the universe’s unity and diversity?  How can he account for the uniformity of natural laws?  What does he have to say about the impossible odds  that there is even life in the first place, much less moral laws, beauty, art, logic, and love?  Job is struck by the enormity of it all in the face of God’s questions and repents and shuts his mouth.  We should too when we are tempted to mutter against the Almighty.

So it is this passage that we should consider when the “problem” of evil occurs to us or is brought up by this or that source.  Evil men have plotted to kill the Lord Jesus and He has let them.  He hasn’t called down the angel-armies to fight.  He hasn’t blinded the eyes of his assaulters and accusers and sent them stumbling home in darkness and ruin like the angels did in Sodom.  No.  And he’s barely uttered a word throughout the whole ordeal.  Now He stands on the judgment seat and they are yelling to crucify Him – yes, yelling for the crucifixion of history’s only sinless soul.  This is life’s only true evil.  Hard as it is to hear for us, especially in the wake of personal tragedy, only this is evil.  We are sinners and we never get here under the sun what we deserve because we deserve nothing but God’s wrath.  This is an unpleasant truth for the unrepentant and they shake their fist at God for its proclamation.  How dare you!  I’m not so bad.  Oh?  But what then will you do with Jesus Christ here on the judgment seat where He has allowed sinful mankind to place Him?  What will be your verdict?  Is He King?  Is He the sovereign ruler of all the world and, therefore, worthy of your submission, able to command it, and capable of demanding your worship?  Here He is.  While we still have air in our lungs to breathe the breath of life He has given us, he yet condescends to stand on the judgment seat before men.  If we don’t repent of our sin then we yell with the mob, “Crucify Him!”  

So, you see, there is no real problem of evil because we are unfit to judge what is evil.  On this day Jesus stood before the mob and relented.  What they meant for evil, He meant for good, which to say, for the salvation of the elect.  He is all-loving because in going to the cross, Jesus has solved forever the problem of our sins, which is the source of all suffering because sin is rebellion against the rational and true order of things.  Sin is the casting off of logic – of ordering things after the way of the Creator and recasting them in the sight of a multitude of greedy, tyrannical despots, all doing what’s right in their own eyes.  Sin has caused death because it must cause death since it is the abnegation of God’s rule, which is life and light.  When man commits sin he says to God, “I wish you were dead!”  When man sins, he says, “Crucify Him!”  So, yes indeed, Jesus lovingly goes to the cross to die the death sin causes and justice demands.  

And God is all-powerful too.  Jesus will rise from this on Sunday.  Death cannot hold him.  This is the repudiation of such smoke-screens as the problem of evil.  In fact, the real problem of evil is us.  But God…yes, but God has come to save sinners