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Maybe God Didn’t Want This
Everything happens for a reason. God has a purpose for this. Is that true?
Genesis 6:6, Romans 8:28, Genesis 50:20
Everything happens for a reason. God has a purpose for this. Is that true? Well, it kind of depends on what you mean when you say that. The sense I get from people sometimes when they say that is that. Well, God wanted this to happen. Like God has this plan that he’s carrying on, so therefore he wanted this specific thing to happen. But that’s not necessarily true.
People do things all the time that God doesn’t want. When someone commits a sin, God doesn’t want them to sin. God doesn’t want people to hurt each other. God’s original design for this world was not that we would experience pain and suffering. And so when you are experiencing something and you’re like, God, how could you want this? Well, the reality is, maybe God didn’t want this.
Think about the account of actually with the flood, with the account of Noah and the flood. One of the things we’re told there is that God, he actually regretted that he made mankind at that point, because it says he was so grieved at all the violence in the world, it broke God’s heart. (Genesis 6:6) God did not want the pain and the suffering. But then here’s what God does. And this is where his purpose does come in. Romans 8:28, that famous verse says,
God works in all things for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)
It actually, the original language, the wording describes God coming alongside all things and then using it for good. God may not have wanted that bad thing to happen, but God can use that bad thing to achieve a purpose. Something can be both bad and used for a good purpose at the same time. They’re not mutually exclusive.
A great example of this is in Genesis, where you have the account of Joseph and his brothers who sold him off into slavery. Joseph says to his brothers, you intended to harm me, so this was a bad thing. This is not good at all.
You intended to harm me, but God intended it. God used it for good, for the saving of many lives. (Genesis 50:20)
And the greatest way we see this, of course, is in Jesus himself. It was not good that people betrayed him. It was not good that he went to a cross. People were doing bad things. That is not a good thing. But then God used that bad thing, that betrayal of Jesus, that turning away from Jesus, that rejection of him. God use that to accomplish the ultimate good, because there on the cross Jesus could take your sin and mine, pay for it, and then rise again and give us new life where we are forgiven and free from that. And we can know that we have life that goes on into eternity with our God.
Did God want that to happen? Maybe not. That may be something that is genuinely a bad thing, but just because God didn’t like that or want that doesn’t mean that God’s not working it for your good and his glory. It can be both bad and use for good at the same time.
