403. Remove Judgment and Evil
Zephaniah 3:15 The Lord hath taken away thy judgments, he hath cast out thine enemy: the king of Israel, even the Lord, is in the midst of thee: thou shalt not see evil any more.
The Lord took upon Himself the judgments against us for our sin, thereby taking our judgments away. And at the cross He cast out our enemies. The Lord Jesus Christ, the king of Israel, is present among us in our midst. He is in the midst of our life, in the midst of our Christian groupings, and in the midst of our hearts. All this Jesus did for us at the Cross and the Tomb: He took away judgments, cast out our enemies, and is with us always.
Because of this work of Christ, God can promise us that we shall not see evil any more. This is quite a remarkable promise: I will not see evil. Evil does not mean “bad things.” It does not mean God removes from our experience all temporal death, sickness, injury, disaster, pain and suffering. These, and much more, are bad things, but they are not necessarily evil. He does not promise to deliver us from bad things, but He does deliver us from the evil of the bad things. Sin, Death, and the Devil are evil. We will not see the evil punishments of sin (unless we look at the sufferings and death of Jesus). We will not see the evil of eternal death, the Second Death, never-ending suffering and punishments in hell. We will not see the evil of the Devil and the eternal loss he can cause if he were allowed to. In other words, we will not experience the eternal and absolute separation from God with no hope of returning to God or to life. This is evil; we will not see it. That’s the promise.
We must be clear about what evil really is. It is simply anything that is not of God, from God, about God, with God or for God. God is life; God is good; God is love. All that is from God is eternal and very good. All that is not from God is eternally very evil. During this life we will suffer all kinds of “evil” things, but they are all temporary and will soon pass. If it should last forever and never pass, that would be evil. This we will not see. We are saved for an eternal life that we will see. And while we wait we will not see the evil of the self, the world, sin, death and Satan. We can see God and good in everything.