Why Does God Allow Evil? The Bible's Answer to the Problem of Evil

(Editorial note: This post was adapted from the sermon manuscript and transcript written and preached by Pastor Chris on Sunday, June 14, 2026 with the assistance of AI.)

Everyone has asked the question at some point. Maybe it came during a personal crisis. Maybe it surfaced while watching the news. Maybe it's the quiet, persistent doubt that never fully goes away: if God is good and all-powerful, why does God allow evil, and why does it feel like nothing is being done about it?

Philosophers call this the problem of evil, and it's one of the oldest and most serious challenges to Christian faith. People have written entire books about it. Some have walked away from faith over it. It deserves more than a quick answer, and the Bible actually has one worth hearing.

Why does God allow Evil? Let's See Genesis 3

Before the problem of evil can be answered, it has to be understood. And the biblical explanation begins in the third chapter of Genesis, where everything changes.

The world God made was good. That's not wishful thinking — it's the repeated declaration of Genesis 1. God created humanity in his image, gave them meaningful work, and placed them in a world designed for flourishing. The problem wasn't in what God made. The problem came from a choice.

In Genesis 3, a serpent approaches the woman with a subtle question: did God really say you couldn't eat from any tree? It's a small nudge toward doubt. Maybe God's generosity has limits. Maybe his rules are about control rather than care. Maybe he's holding something back.

The woman and her husband eat the fruit. And when they do, everything shifts.

What happened in that moment isn't just the story of two people making a bad decision in a garden. It's the core biblical explanation for why the world is the way it is. The desire to define good and evil on our own terms, to call our own shots, to trust ourselves over the God who made us — that impulse is at the heart of every form of human brokenness. The chaos in the world isn't something God built in. It's something humanity chose.

God's Response

After the fall, it would have been reasonable for God to walk away. The world he made had been broken by the very people he entrusted it to. But that's not what happens.

Even in the middle of explaining the consequences of what Adam and Eve did, God makes a promise to the serpent: a human will come who will crush your head. It's the first hint of a plan. A promise that the brokenness won't have the last word.

From there, God stays with the story even as things continue to spiral. Humanity fills the earth with violence. God works through Noah's family to preserve what's left. Humans scatter and forget him. He finds one family, Abram and his wife Sarai, and makes a staggering promise: through your family, every family on earth will be blessed.

It's a long play. Longer than most people expect from an all-powerful God. But the pattern is consistent: God doesn't abandon the broken world. He works through it.

A Promise That Keeps Getting Made

Abraham's family, later known as Israel, was given a fresh opportunity to be the people God called them to be. They were given land, direction, and a relationship with God that no other nation had. And yet they struggled. Their kings failed. The nation divided. Eventually, both halves were conquered and carried into exile.

It would have been easy to conclude that the plan had failed. But the prophets kept making promises that refused to die.

To David, the greatest of Israel's kings, God promised an eternal dynasty — a king from his line whose throne would last forever. When the nation was cut to the ground, Isaiah said a shoot would come up from the stump. When the people were already in exile, Jeremiah declared that God would raise up a righteous branch from David's line, a king who would reign wisely and do what is just.

And then there's Daniel, writing from inside the empire that had conquered Israel, describing a vision of one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, being led into the presence of God and given authority over every nation. A human being who reigns alongside God forever.

Three promises, building on each other. A king from David's line. A suffering servant who bears the weight of human sin. A divine human who reigns with God forever.

The Answer Is Taking Shape

These Old Testament threads weren't disconnected. They were converging. God the Father had been working, through centuries of human failure and divine faithfulness, toward a singular solution to the problem of evil.

The answer wasn't a philosophical argument or a theological formula. It was a person. The Son, the second person of the Trinity, who would become human, enter fully into the brokenness of the world, and deal with the problem at its root.

That's the story Salem Magley Church has been tracing this summer in our series "Knowing God: Life with a Triune God." Last week, we looked at God the Father as the generous giver of life. This week, we explored his role as the persistent fixer — the one who has never abandoned the world he made, even when humanity gave him every reason to.

The problem of evil is real. The suffering is real. But the biblical answer is that God saw what we did and chose to fix it rather than walk away. That plan has been unfolding since Genesis 3, and it leads directly to Jesus. Watch the full sermon here.