In what sense do we understand "evil" in Isaiah 45.7, for surely God cannot be charged with being the author of evil?
The verse says, "I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things". At first sight it may seem a strange thing for the prophet to say that God creates evil, and so it would be without a simple explanation of what the Word of God means here. In the Old Testament Scriptures the word "evil" does not always mean moral badness, the idea of which is seen in Genesis 2.17 and Judges 2.11.
There are still some today who would use such a verse as Isaiah 45.7 to charge God with responsibility for evil in the world. Nowhere in Scripture do we find support for such a horrible and blasphemous thought. Often the Hebrew word for evil is to be understood in the moral sense, but occasionally in the context it has another use and means trouble, judgment and especially calamity. This we believe is the sense of the word in Isaiah 45.7.
Notice the words "peace "and then "evil". Both are very different. What is the antithesis of peace? It is not moral badness, but rather trouble, disturbance and calamity, as for example in 2 Kings 22.16: "I will bring evil on this place". We can compare this with Amos 3.6: "shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it". Amos is speaking of troubles and judgments. He looks beyond the secondary causes to see the permitting and overruling hand of God in government. God is often the source and cause of judgments in this earth. He is ever behind the scenes and working even in judgments to teach man and to remind him there is a Supreme Being.
We may summarise our thoughts here by stating that moral evil comes from man who acts freely in opposition to the will of God and that physical evil comes from God who sends it as a punishment for sin.
John J Stubbs
How does a Christian know that his old man has been "crucified with him"? What is "the body of sin" (Rom 6.6)?
Romans 6.6 begins with the words, "Knowing this…", i.e. as those who know this; Paul is reminding believers of what they should know. This knowledge is imparted by the revelation in the Word of God; this is what we have come to know. Paul is stating a fact. He continues "that our old man is (or was) crucified with him"; the term "old man" is found only in Paul's writings: in Ephesians 4.22, Colossians 3.9, and here. The expression "our old man" is used "in a corporate sense and refers to the whole human race in its Adam standing" (Albert Leckie). This was co-crucified with Christ at Calvary. It should be noted that "our old man", "which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts" (Eph 4.22), did not die; I, as a believer, died with Christ; however, crucifixion is judicial and is a sentence of judgment. "God passed sentence on the whole of Adam's race and that sentence was executed on our Saviour at Calvary" (Albert Leckie).
"The body of sin" is this mortal body. Paul uses the word "body" seven times in Romans chapters 6-8 and on each occasion the reference is to the physical body. Sin is a terrible taskmaster and it finds a willing servant in the human body of an unbeliever; the members of the body are spoken of as "instruments of unrighteousness" (Rom 6.13). This mortal body provides the monarch, sin, with the realm in which to reign and to exercise its mastery. "The body of sin" is called "the body of this death" (Rom 7.24); the body is clearly the means through which sin expresses itself and the result of sin working in the individual is death.
Through the work of Christ at Calvary "the body of sin", as far as the believer is concerned, is "destroyed" - the word does not mean "annihilated", it conveys the idea of annulled, cancelled, made of no effect, done away with, rendered powerless to sin. The purpose in view is "that henceforth we should not serve sin", that is to say that we should no longer be slaves of sin; the tyranny of sin has been broken.
David E West
