Sin
There is only ONE great cause, ONE great power, which originates in the will of our ONE Sovereign Lord. God does not ever come in second to the devil, ever. God is the first cause of everything, all the time, forever and forever; however, HE DOES NOT SIN.
"For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever" (Romans 11:36).
"For it is fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings" (Hebrews 2:10).
The truth of the matter regarding Satan's vicious work in our lives is that he delivers the trials, but in the big picture of things, God sends them. Satan can do nothing without God's permission. Satan is not all knowing, all powerful, or everywhere at the same time. He has no strength other than what God gives him.
Someone has said that Satan is nothing more than God's watch dog to keep the sheep in line. We know this from Scripture. Look at the life of Job. Satan had to get permission from God to afflict Job. Because of the finished work of Christ on the cross, Satan has lost his power. His head is bashed in. He roams the earth on his way to Hell. Satan does not have free reign in the world and when we think he does, we are dishonoring God and glorifying Satan.
Now your question may be, "Why does God give permission to Satan to do his evil work in our lives?" And the answer is, I don't know. However, I trustwhat God says in Deuteronomy 29:29 for the answer to everything I do not understand. "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."
All photos on this site were taken in Virginia City,Nevada, May 2011. The 4th Ward School house in Virginia City, Nevada, was one of the grand schoolhouses in the 1870's. It is also where Hoss and Little Joe, from the TV series, Bonanza, went to town! [What do these pictures have to do with sin? Nothing! Or maybe they do!]
I was recently talking to a woman who blames Satan for her sins, which is what Eve did in the Garden of Eden. Also, remember when,"The devil made me do it," was a steady joke on TV's "Laugh In"? The woman I was talking to said just what the guys on "Laugh In" always said.
Virginia City is an experience going back 150 or more years. The 19th century mining boom turned Virginia City into the most important settlements between Denver and San Francisco, and the grubby prospectors into millionaires. They built mansions, brought furniture and fashion from Europe and the Orient. Shakespeare plays were performed there. The town had five police precincts. The International Hotel was six stories high and had the first elevator, called "a rising room." It was a boisterous town with something going on 24 hours a day.
We sin against God by disobeying His law-word. Sin is two-fold. (1) Sin is doing what God tells us not to do, and (2) not doing what God tells us to do. God says we are not to kill. He also says we are to be kind to one another.
Tourists line the streets of Virginia City, one of America's largest Historic landmarks, near Lake Tahoe, Reno and Carson City, Nevada. Notice the authentic board sidewalks.
God created man in the estate of innocence. He was God's true image, in knowledge, righteousness and holiness. But he was not yet confirmed in that blessed condition. God set before Adam and Eve, our first parents, two choices. They could continue in the path of perfect obedience and live forever or they could choose the path of disobedience that led only to death.
As you know they chose to disobey and immediately they began to die a gradual death. They became guilty, and their whole nature became corrupted by their sin.They lost communion with God. They came under God's wrath and curse, and were liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself and to the pains of hell forever.
Both Adam and Eve had liberty to choose either path, meaning they were NOT forced in any way to do either. Satan tempted them, but he did not have the power to force them to disobey. Satan did not make them sin.They disobeyed because they wanted to disobey. They chose disobedience freely and without being made to so so.
How did sin get from Adam and Eve to us? Romans 5:12 tells us: "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned" (NAS). In other words, because Adam was our representative in the Garden, his sin passed on to us. Everyone that is born, is born in sin. Romans 5: 19 tells us that "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners." Also, Romans 3:10 says, "There is none righteous, no, not one." This means little babies are not born righteous, not even one of them.
All of us, because of Adam's first sin, have lost communion with God. We are under God's wrath and curse. Because of that we also experience all the miseries of this life, including death and are liable to spend an eternity in Hell paying for our sins. That's the bad news!
The good news is that the Lord Jesus Christ suffered in our place. He paid the sin-debt that belonged to us. Jesus, being the Son of God, became man. He took upon Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary and was born of her, yet without sin. Because of what Jesus did for us, we are redeemed out of sin and hell forever because He didn't just make our salvation possible, He actually purchased our salvation.
Did Jesus do that for everyone? No. God, having out of His mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life. He entered into a Covenant of Grace with those whom He chose, in order to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us that in the end of time God will divide the Sheep from the Goats. There will always be Goats. Not everyone will become a Sheep.
And yes, the Scripture is true that God does not will that any should perish. Whosoever wills to come to Him, may come.
This is the good news of the Gospel. How do you know if you are one of the Sheep, one of the elect of God? The answer is, if you believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and trust Him for your very life and soul, you are one of His Sheep and will live with Him eternally. See John 3:16; Acts 16:31.
So to sum it all up, we sin because we are sinners to begin with. We are not born good. We are born loving sin. Look at a baby. An infant does not have to be taught to kick and scream and be selfish. No, that little one came out of the womb that way and it takes a lot of training just to correct a small measure of his or her sin.
The devil does afflict us, but we are always responsible to resist his evil. When we keep our eyes on the Lord Jesus and His word in our hearts, God enabled us to resist the devil and live for God.
The devil doesn't make us commit sin. We do that quite well on our own.