Why Did God Allow Sin? Could He Not Have Prevented It? He could have, but chose not to. Why? Several suggestions have been offered along this line.
A. Free Will and Moral Choice
God created both angels and men as intelligent creatures possessing moral natures that could determine and choose between right and wrong. Had God stopped Lucifer and Adam one second before their sin, He would, in effect, have violated their moral natures and reduced them to mere walking robots.
B. Displaying God’s Grace
God allowed man to sin so that He might display His grace. Prior to Adam, God was already exhibiting His omnipresence (in being everywhere at once), His omnipotence (in setting the galaxies into motion), and His omniscience (in creating angels). But there was one attribute, one characteristic perhaps closer to His heart than any other, and that was His grace. Where there is no sin, there is no need of grace. As Paul would later write:
Romans 5:20 (KJV):
“Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”
Why then did God allow Adam to sin? No one knows. But it does not seem unreasonable to believe that part of the answer lies in the above suggestion: that is, for God to display His marvelous grace:
Ephesians 2:5, 7 (KJV):
“Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)”
“That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”
C. God’s Sovereign Plan
Consider a young married couple planning to build their first home. Do they simply pick up the first available set of blueprints, hand them to the builder, and say, “Make it happen”? Of course not. What they should and probably would do is carefully examine any number of plans before deciding upon a particular one that would give them the most house for their money!
Keeping this in mind, in eternity past, God determined to “build” Himself a vast and glorious universe. Of course, being who and what He is, God would possess immediate knowledge regarding the untold trillions of possibilities. But here is a plan that, if implemented, would assure Him the most amount of glory and His elect the most amount of good! And that plan? It is the one that we see, experience, and live in today:
Romans 8:28 (KJV):
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
Romans 11:33-36 (KJV):
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”
“For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?”
“Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?”
“For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”
