Mike Novotny - A True Love
We have a tough question to try to answer today. The question is this, "If God knows everything, why did he create the world and let us sin"? If you make it to the third chapter of the Bible, you will be confronted with some very reasonable, logical questions that are pretty tough to answer. Why did God let that happen? If he knew that Satan would fall as an angel from heaven, why did he create him? Why was there a tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve could sin? Why didn't God start over?
We think of all the pain that sin has caused in this world, and it seems only logical to ask God, "Why didn't you do it differently"? And to be honest, the Bible doesn't give an answer to that question. We might be really curious, but part of Christianity is being humble enough to realize that God is God and he doesn't have to give me every answer, even though I'm curious. God gives me what I need to know, not everything that I want to know. Some Christians, over the centuries, though, have posed this as a possible solution. The fact that love isn't true unless it's freely given. It's what some people call "the problem of free will".
For example, if you have a phone that you can talk to and I say, "Siri, find me the nearest pizza place". I don't think that she loves me when she responds. She has to. She's programmed to. She's a robot. But if I asked my wife to give me a hug and she does, well, she had free will to give it or not give it. And so I feel the love from her. In the same way, God could have made us robots who would never disobey him, but that wouldn't be true love. Instead, he gave us this incredible free will that can be abused, but that can show him that we love him with our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind, and whole strength.
Maybe that's why God let things happen as he did. In the end, though, we trust his grace, his mercy and the love that he showed us at the cross of Jesus Christ, which one day will undo all the things that make us ask tough questions like this. Have you heard of "Set Free by Grace"? It's a brand-new book that we're releasing of 365 devotions about the one thing that all of our hearts need, God's undeserved love.