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GOOD AND EVIL

CAC I was thinking what an immense thing it is to have the knowledge of good and evil. Man acquired that knowledge through the fall: it did not please God to create man holy; He might have done if it had so pleased Him. God had created angels as holy beings, and many of them He has preserved and does preserve in His sovereignty from falling into evil. It did not please God to create man as a holy being but as an innocent being; and as such he did not know good and evil, and he only obtained that knowledge by falling under the power of evil.

Ques Would you explain the difference between an innocent being and a holy being?

CAC An innocent being has no knowledge of evil, but a holy being has; he has a nature which is like the nature of God, which abhors evil. God knows good and evil, and He says, “Man is become as one of us”. God as knowing good and evil in His holy nature has an abhorrence of evil. Man by the fall has acquired the knowledge of good and evil, but he has acquired that knowledge by falling under the power of evil.

Ques Does an innocent being know good?

CAC Yes, Adam and Eve in innocence knew nothing but good; they were in a scene where every sight and sound spoke of divine beneficence, a scene of absolute good. There was no temptation to evil in that created scene, nor was there any tendency to evil in the man as created of God: it says he was “very good”. The most wonderful part of the creation was the man who was at the head of it. He was put there in responsibility to God, and there was one definite mark of that responsibility: the tree of knowledge of good and evil was there, and man was forbidden to eat of it. There was a moral reason for his being forbidden; it was not an arbitrary ^[p. 26] restriction, but because an innocent being was not equal to the question of good and evil. It was a question in the mind of God that could only be solved by Christ, a holy Being, and One equal to the tremendous issues that hung upon this question of good and evil. Evil had come into the universe the moment Satan said “I will”, and it became the great question in the universe. Now the great question in the world is this question of good and evil. Men try to shut their eyes to it, and to make one believe there are all sorts of other questions, but this is the great question. It is being worked out in the world and in the individual souls of men, and in the souls of the saints: it is being worked out in every one of us. This question of good and evil is the most practical question that can possibly be raised. It is what makes man to differ from the animal; he has direct responsibility Godward, and he has the knowledge of good and evil. The conscience is that faculty which applies the knowledge of good and evil to man’s responsible course: every man has to face this question, and we have to. We are being faced every day and every hour by this question, and there is no getting away from it. It all comes back to this, How far do we know God, and how far are we brought into harmony with God in order to approve the good and to refuse the evil, and to get the two things disentangled?

When God brought in the law, it was in a certain sense a disentanglement of things. To some extent it defined good and evil; and the knowledge of good and evil which man has acquired through the fall is in harmony with that discrimination of good and evil which the law makes. We find in heathen moralists and philosophers a great many things like the law: Scripture says, they “Practise by nature the things of the law ... who show the work of the law written in their hearts” (Romans 2: 14, 15). That is part of the condition that man came into as having the knowledge of good and evil. Everybody has to battle with this question; even the heathen, since they have “the work of the law written in their hearts”, must battle with this question. If a man has not fallen below ^[p. 27] the level proper to man he shows the working of the law written in his heart. Some people have fallen below what is proper to man altogether; they have no laws or literature, and by a remarkable action of God’s judgment, they have come to a state below the level of man altogether. It is a very solemn condition of things for man, as created, to get into a savage state, and among such people you will find that the knowledge of good and evil is very feeble. Dr. Glenny said of the Kaffirs that you can get them converted, baptised and into fellowship, but you cannot stop them stealing and telling lies. There is a very feeble sense with them of good and evil; they have fallen below the level proper to man even as a fallen being. Conscience applies the knowledge of good and evil to responsibility: it is that faculty by which a man is able to take account of things, and to approve or disapprove of things morally, either in one’s own conduct or in the conduct of others. Conscience is not the same thing as the knowledge of good and evil because you could not speak of God having a conscience, but, of course, God has the knowledge of good and evil. Man has come into a condition and sphere where he has to take account of this question of good and evil; the question was existent before man came into it, but now he has come into it he cannot get out of it. There is no relief and no solution to the question till we come to Christ: all God’s ways with men are to bring them to the recognition of that.

God’s early ways with men are set forth in the book of Job, where there is an elaborate discussion of the question of good and evil; it serves to show how much in the dark even pious men were. These men in Job all feared God; there was not an infidel among them; they recognised God’s ways with all men through observing their own exercises and those of other people. They have an elaborate discussion on this question of good and evil, and the whole point they have to come to is that God only can deal with it. When we are brought to that, we are brought to the true acknowledgement that we ought never to have touched it; we are brought back to judge the first principle of the fall — that we ought never to ^[p. 28] have touched this question. It is a fine moment in the history of the soul when we get right back to judge this first act of disobedience, and see that no one can handle this question but God: we are cast on God now. Job was brought to that in the end. What was dwelt on by Elihu was the greatness of God, His competence to do anything in every part of creation. Elihu talks about the things of the earth, the animals, the trees and everything. What is he driving at? To show you that God is equal to everything. As to all those things which man cannot do at all, God says, ‘I will manage it without you!’ This leads to a moral issue; it brings Job to the point that this question of good and evil is so tremendous that only God can take it up and settle it, and then Job says, “I abhor myself”. He says, ‘I am hopelessly involved and cannot get out’, but he says to God, ‘Thou canst get me out’. When a man comes to that he has got somewhere. The Creator must be the Redeemer and the Justifier, and that means the solving of the whole problem of good and evil.

When the Lord Jesus appeared on earth this question began to assume a tangible form; that is, there was for the first time in this world a perfect presentation of good. A new and divine expression of good had come in, such as was never known before. This was something quite different from the law, which was more abstract. When you see the Person of Christ here — the Son of God in manhood — you have good in a Person in tangible form. In Him you have the setting forth of all that God was in His infinite goodness in the face of every kind of disorder and distraction which had come into the world through sin. It is very beautiful to sit down and contemplate the perfection of good embodied in a lonely Man moving through this world. When we come to the consideration of Christ we are not troubled with the question of good and evil; the heart has reached the solution of it, because in considering Christ we have not to disentangle the good from the evil. If we look at any other man, the best saint that ever lived, Abraham, David, or anybody else, we find we have to disentangle good from evil, and we are not ^[p. 29] always sure we have done it properly. When we come to Christ it is blessed, divine purity, unmixed good, untainted by any evil. The way we learn evil is by seeing how it stands in contrast to that. That is the great education God is giving us: he is educating us in the presence of infinite good in Christ, so that we should become like God in the knowledge of good and evil and be able to estimate it as God does, and not as a fallen sinner who struggles with it as a hopeless problem. The one who knows God is brought to look at it with the same kind of vision that God does. One is thankful that it is so.

Christ always links Himself directly with God. He would not allow Himself to be acknowledged as good except in relation to God, saying, “There is none good but one, God” (Luke 18: 19). He insists upon it that God is good and the source of good, so that there would not be good even in Him if He were not the expression of God in this world. He was “God manifest in flesh” and “over all, God blessed for ever”, yet He says, “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, God”. He was seeking to lead the young man to the recognition that all that is good is in God; the evil all comes from Satan. It is very simple to say but an immense thing to learn in our souls that all that is good is of God. There is nothing but good in Him, and all that is evil is of Satan. We have got the question disentangled then. The young man was building on a lot of good in himself, and putting himself alongside of Christ, as much as to say, ‘Tell me what to do and I will do it, I am as good as Thou art’. He was assuming to be on a level with Christ. If he had come as a poor sinner it would have been quite different, but he comes on a level with Christ. He had not begun to disentangle things.

The cross comes in, and you get what you could not get before — the word of righteousness. You could not get the testimony of righteousness before the cross. We see in the cross and the death of Christ how the sinful man has been completely condemned and removed, the man who had ^[p. 30] become the embodiment of evil. Evil had never been embodied before because Satan is a spirit. Evil became embodied in man and that man in whom it became embodied has come under judgment in the death of Christ. Christ was made sin, made sacrificially evil in that sense, so that evil might be judged according to the holiness of God in the death of Christ. We ought all of us to be “skilled in the word of righteousness”. Many are not, and they are not because they have not got their senses exercised to distinguish between good and evil. Things are in hopeless confusion with them and they do not know how to distinguish between the first man and the second.

Ques How do we become skilled?

CAC It is the result of moral formation, and by being brought to appreciate what is involved in the word of righteousness. The word of righteousness makes known to me that all that I am as a man in the flesh has been judged in the death of Christ; all has been righteously judged there and removed so that I might be with God on another footing altogether, on the footing of Christ and His death. It has all become a testimony now; God is testifying it by the word of righteousness. It is a great thing to be skilled in it. Many of the Jewish believers were not skilled in the word of righteousness so they were only babes, requiring to be fed with milk; they were not marked by spiritual manhood; they had not learned to distinguish good and evil. A great many professing Christians, and even true believers, are in that condition. They have not grown up and are not spiritually formed so as to be habituated to distinguish good and evil. Our spiritual prosperity very largely depends on our ability to distinguish good and evil.

Ques What does “the word of righteousness” convey to us?

CAC I think it is the testimony of the way in which righteousness has been established by the complete setting aside of man in the flesh and the establishing of all that is of God in Christ. I take it that is the word of righteousness, and ^[p. 31] we are to be skilled in it. “Being complete as regards the fruit of righteousness, which is by Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1: 11), is connected with this subject, because Paul says that he is looking for them to be judges of and approving things that are more excellent. The Christian learns to judge of and approve the things that are excellent, and in result he becomes pure and without offence for Christ’s day: he becomes purified from evil and approves what is good; he identifies himself with the good. The question is settled as far as he is concerned; it is disentangled. In Christ’s day it will all be straightened out; God will have put down all rule and authority and power, every influence of Satan, demons or evil men, all will be put down and there will be the supremacy of good. That kind of thing is anticipated beforehand in the life of the believer; his senses are exercised — habituated — to the distinguishing of good and evil: that is what makes grown-up believers; they are being morally formed in the appreciation of what is good and in the divine nature. They appreciate what God appreciates, and repudiate what God repudiates. The believer is brought to know good and evil in a holy nature just as God does: this comes into the smallest details of life. Things are either good or evil; it touches every detail. As we grow up nourished by the sincere milk of the word, we are able to take “meat” and appreciate the new order of man come in Christ. It is not simply God’s grace and mercy to sinful man — that is like milk; but the meat is that God has brought in in Christ a new order of man altogether for His pleasure. As we begin to feed on that we get wonderful ability for distinguishing good and evil. Things may be very nice in the eyes of men and yet very evil: what is not of Christ is evil. All that is of God has come into manhood in Christ and become to us excellent. As we judge and approve of it and follow that kind of life, we become sincere and without offence for Christ’s day: the question of good and evil is worked out. By and by we shall be removed from the presence of evil; when we go to heaven we shall leave the place where evil is present. We shall still know evil throughout ^[p. 32] eternity, and know it in a holy nature as God knows it. We shall know evil as having been judged in the sin-offering death of the righteous One and having been absolutely removed from God’s reconciled universe: we shall be brought into perfect accord with God as to it all. This question of good and evil is the great question of Scripture. There are two great subjects in the Scripture. That which is most dwelt on and which Scripture is greatly occupied with is the question of good and evil; but there is another question which lies behind it, and that is the eternal purpose of God for the satisfaction of His love. Before ever evil came in, God’s purpose was to have sons before Him for the pleasure of His own love, formed for that purpose in Christ. There is no question of good and evil there, nothing to consider but the thoughts of His own love. The secret of eternal purpose only came to light after Christ died and had gone to the right hand of God: there was nothing remaining then to interfere with God having His own pleasure in the blessing of many sons set before Him in the acceptance of the Beloved. It is wonderful the way God takes to bring man into correspondence with Himself. “That we should be holy and blameless before him in love” — that has to do with the question of good and evil; our being holy and without blame stands in that connection. But when it says, “Having marked us out beforehand for adoption through Jesus Christ to himself”, that is purpose. It goes back to before ever the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was planted in Eden.

All our moral exercises run on the line of distinguishing good and evil, whether individually or in the assembly; all our exercises run on that line. The exercises of affection go on the other line, on the line of the place God has given us before Him according to His eternal purpose.

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