What Is Evil?

1 Peter 3:11 Let him eschew [ to shun; to avoid] evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it.

What is seen in the temptation account is how the anointed cherub (Ezek 28:14-15) drew a third of the angels into lawlessness, and how he did it without being immediately detected. He begins by making possessing the knowledge of good and evil a desirable thing. In essence, he appeals to vanity, telling the entity that the entity has a good mind and can determine for the entity's self how to determine good and evil, or better what is right. Evil becomes the choice of determining what is right. Hence, evil is nothing more than choosing what the entity considers is right. So as long as the rebelling angels agreed with God's decisions, believing that God was making the correct decisions, then no rebellion was detectable, even though rebellion had occurred, thereby, allowing this anointed cherub to seduce many into determining for themselves what is right. Literally, evil is nothing more than choosing to keep the law of God. This is where faith enters into the equation: we obey because we believe every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We don't choose to keep the law of God, we do so because of faith. The person who determines for him or herself that keeping the law of God is a good thing, commits evil, and is an evil doer in the same way that rebellious angels were evil doers prior to when iniquity was discovered in the anointed cherub.

The idea that choosing to keep the law of God makes a person an evil doer is probably too complex for most disciples to grasp. But it's as simple as a parent telling a child to do a thing and not explaining to the child why, but demanding that the child do the thing because the parent said so. When the child reasons about whether he or she will obey, the child commits evil. It is this reasoning or deciding for one's self process that lies at the heart of the concept of evil--it isn't the action--the actions are only the effect of the reasoning process. Thus, the person who reasons and determines for him or herself that he or she will keep the law of God, makes him or herself equal to God, and actually a judge of God. So the faith that God looks for is the obedient child who obeys because the parent said to do the thing. This is why Christ sculpts disciples into vessels of honor or vessels of wrath: the vessel of honor, by faith, chose one time to live. This is the only choice disciples get, this choosing of life. After that decision has been made, free will ends. We only have the illusion of possessing free will; for the disciple who chose life will receive life because Christ is in charge of shaping the disciple into a vessel of honor. And the disciple who chose death chose to keep his or her options open. This disciple will be sculpted into a vessel of wrath to be endured for a season before being broken in his or her judgment.

The many people who have made a decision for Christ, or who have made the decision to keep the Sabbath because of a logical argument rather than by faith, will have problems when their judgments is revealed. Fortunately the day of salvation [the "this day" from Deut 30:15] is not a 24-hour period, but the time between when a disciple is born of spirit and when the disciple cleanses his or her heart with a journey of faith. If no journey is undertaken, this day of salvation reverts to the default position of death, because the disciple did not choose life. So for some the journey of faith is still available to be made; for others death has been chosen. And for the few (Matt 22:14) life has been chosen. Again, many are called--many are born of spirit--but few are chosen, and the few are those who on their day of salvation chose life. So it is a rare thing to be a vessel of honor; it is a rare thing and a great privilege to keep the law of God by faith, to be like that child who obeys because the parent said to do a thing, needing no more reason to do the thing than because the parent said so.