Why create people knowing we would fail?

Watch the complete sermon here: https://www.bridges.church/messages/the-only-not-good-in-creation-genesis-2-18-25/

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. We’re coming near the end of our series on creation, how God made everything, and he made everything good. The question this week is one that people have debated, been argued ever since. People have debated and argued, which is if God knew, which of course he did, because he knows everything. If God knew that people would fall, why did he create people?

And so we’ll say several different things about this. I’ll give you an observation. Some things we know and then a guess. So first, the observation is that if you look around, every human that has kids probably knows before they have kids that that kid is not going to be perfect. And in the case of the parents, the parents know the parents are not going to be perfect.

They know I am going to do something to upset and hurt this kid sometime in the kid’s life, and the kid is going to do things that upset and hurt me, right? We know, even though we don’t have complete knowledge like God does, even we know that there’s going to be relational pain as a result of having a kid. But we still choose to have the kid, don’t we? We know the push and the pull and the relationship struggle and the relationship closeness and all the ups and downs and all of it all put together is somehow part of the beauty of it.

So even if we make that decision, we could see God might have similar reasons, right?

That’s just an observation from us. Now, what we know from scripture is that everything God does, he ultimately does for his glory. And Romans nine talks about whether people end up being with God or people end up not being with God. Both of those sets of people are made for his glory. They both glorify God in different ways.

They show his righteousness. They show his mercy, they show his love, they show his judgment, they show his holiness. One way or another, all people, regardless of if they repent and receive Christ, all people will, one way or another, bring glory to God. We also know that God loves us. From other parts of the series we talked about, God didn’t create us in order to get love.

He created us in order to share the love that he already had. I mean, John 316 for God so loved the world, right? Or Christ. John 17 as the fathers loved me, so I have loved you. Part of the love that is within God has overflowed to create the world.

And so he created us to share the love that he already has within himself. And so we know that we are created for those reasons, for his glory, to share in his love. And so whether we fall or not, those are reasons for why we are created. And that’s what we know for sure. Now, the guess is that God, knowing that we would fall, creates us anyway.

And so the guess is, because God has a purpose for everything he does, he doesn’t do anything on accident, that he must somehow believe that redemption is better than perfection. He has, of course, the ability. He could have made us all robots. We could have all been exactly perfect without ever falling. And he didn’t create us that way.

He created us knowing that we would fall and we’d go down this path. So I would say this is a guess, that redemption is better than perfection. Further, not just if we were robots, he didn’t create us to be robots. Further, when we get to heaven, we will still have a will. We believe we will be freely following God.

We won’t mess up heaven like we messed up the garden of Eden right in eternity with him. That’s going to be a stable state with no sin, and yet we will still have a will. And God didn’t start with that, right? He started with this place. And so he could have started, we could have gone direct to the end of the story, skipped all of this, because God could do anything.

But he didn’t start there. He started where we would fall. And so, even if we weren’t robots, God could have made a world without sin, could have made us as we will be with him forever, in eternity. But he didn’t do it. That’s not what he did.

And so just conclusion, if that’s not what he did, he had a reason for this. And my only guess is he must believe that redemption is better than perfection. Putting something back together that’s broken is better than it never being broken. And there’s ways, we’ve probably experienced that in our relationships, right? If we have tension with somebody and we work through it, there’s a way that the relationship deepens in a way that wouldn’t be there if we just had smooth sailing the whole way.

That’s a guess. So it’s an observation, what we know, and a guess, we hope that’s helpful. And we, like everyone before us, will continue debating that question. All we can say is we are sure glad he did and we are sure glad he saved us. We’ll see you next time.

Bye.