Could you please answer this question for me?
Joh 19:11 Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore HE THAT DELIVERED ME UNTO THEE HATH THE GREATER SIN.
We know that there is no power but Of God (ROM 13:1), So it was God that delivered Jesus over to pilot in the above verse
Is it God that has the ‘greater sin’?
Thanks, K____
Dear K____,
I thought about this very question a few years ago, and because everything that God creates is good, and God Himself cannot sin, Jesus is speaking to our old man, who is responsible by the determinate hand of God to use us to crucify Christ.
Act 2:23 Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:
We are the ones with the greater sin. Our religious self-righteous man of sin is the one with the greater sin. God used the evil that is within our vessels of dishonor to crucify our LORD so that in His death we would be recreated into vessels of Honor.
The religious man in us, our second beast with two horns, brings Christ before our first beast’s image, the law of the flesh, and it is our religious beast which has the greater sin, because Christ in us does not submit to the worship of flesh and blood, and therefore must be put to death so that we can justify ourselves as righteous by the law, Pilate, the image of the first beast. James explains it this way;
Jas 1:13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:
Jas 1:14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
Jas 1:15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
I am not tempted by God to crucify The LORD, I am drawn away of my second beast to kill him so that I can justify myself, by the first beast. My second beast has the GREATER sin because he dresses himself up as religious and then uses the law to kill Christ.
Dennis Crabtree
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Hi K____,
No, God Himself tempts no man.
Jas 1:13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.
He is working all things after the counsel of His own will, and to accomplish His plan of salvation, He sent Satan to have Judas betray his Master to the Jews:
Joh 13:27 And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.
Sin is scripturally defined as missing the mark, and all the Father does is right on the mark, including everything He sends Satan to do for Him.
He does not deny that He creates evil, but He, and He alone as God, is capable of calling light out of darkness and of making good come of evil, as he did with Joseph’s brothers whom God, through an evil spirit, had to sell him into Egypt so Joseph could come out of Egyptian slavery to being the ruler of Egypt and to bring salvation to his own sinful brothers.
Gen 45:4 And Joseph said to his brothers, “Please come near to me.” So they came near. Then he said: “I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.
Gen 45:5 But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.
Gen 45:6 For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.
Gen 45:7 And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
Gen 45:8 So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.
Joseph is not accusing God of sinning. He is simply acknowledging that God is sovereign over both good and evil, and is doing exactly what He has planned from the beginning. And part of that plan was for Joseph’s brothers to sell him into Egyptian slavery, as a type of our own slavery to sin.
Then, out of that slavery Joseph was delivered to rule over those who had been his masters, and it is all a type of God working Christ’s death just as the Father had planned before He ever created Christ:
Act 4:26 The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ.
Act 4:27 For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together,
Act 4:28 For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.
Paul deals with this matter of God’s sovereignty over evil with these facts:
Rom 9:18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
Rom 9:19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?
Rom 9:20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
Rom 9:21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
Rom 9:22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
So number one: God is in the process of showing His mercy to the new man of every man, and in order to do that, He has determined to “endure with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction”, meaning our sinful flesh. Secondly: as the Creator He has the right to do with His creatures as He desires, and is not capable of sinning inasmuch as all He does is exactly “what His hand and His counsel determined before to be done”. He never misses the mark, so He never sins, even when those who betray Him do so “after the counsel of His own will”:
Eph 1:11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.
I think you already know all this, but there are the scriptures which demonstrate that God does not sin.
Mike Vinson
