I found something kind of neat on "The Path of Grace" site today. It looks like they are now putting written transcripts of James Flanders teachings online to go along with the audio.
I listened to a thought provoker entitled "Has God Ever Sinned?" while reading along. I suppose that it is true you can absorb more when you engage multiple senses. Reading along while listening worked great. I was really able to focus on on what was a topic I had never really thought about?
I copied the transcript and am going to post it below. Since it is a transcript of a person talking, it's not like reading a book. There are some fragmented sentences and major run on sentences as well, but I think you might enjoy reading it.
Here it is:
===============
Today I want to begin
to deal with a topic we touched on a while back. It’s somewhat startling
to some people. It’s very challenging. It’s difficult to try and
comprehend. However when you begin to grasp what we’re going to begin to
look at today, let me tell you, it will take you to a place of greater
faith, greater trust, and greater rest, as you begin to see God as truly
being God.
Let me share with you a verse that freaked out several of my friends a few weeks ago.
It’s Isaiah chapter 45 verse 7.
In this verse God is talking about GOD and God says:
I form the light and create darkness,
I make peace and create calamity;
I, the Lord, do all these things.’ (NKJV)
That’s the way it’s worded in the New King James version.
Here is God taking credit for light and darkness… peace and calamity. Saying “I the LORD do all these things.
Now the word calamity is not a great translation. In fact, the word translated as calamity is worded very differently in other verses.
Let me read another English translation to see if it clarifies it at all. The Holman Christian Standard Bible words it this way.
God says:
I form light and create darkness,
I make success and create disaster;
I, Yahweh, do all these things. (Holman Christian Standard Bible)
What? God credits himself with creating disaster?!
Yep. That’s what it says.
However for consistency sake, this work probably shouldn’t have been translated as disaster, because it’s translated as something else in other places in Scripture.
Let me read that same verse from Young’s Literal Translation.
It says this:
“Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I [am] Jehovah, doing all these things.” (YLT)
What? God says “I form light, I prepare darkness, I am making peace, and preparing…”
What was that word? Evil.
I am Jehovah doing all these things. That is a literal translation. The word translated as evil is translated as evil pretty consistently throughout Scripture.
Here’s the Concordant Literal New Testament:
“Former of light and Creator of darkness Maker of good and Creator
of evil, I, Yahweh, make all these things.”
The literal translation use the word EVIL.
Oh my goodness! God calling himself the former of light. We get that. We can comprehend that. But God also takes credit for the darkness. God says “I am the creator of darkness.”
I am the maker of good… and God says “I am also the creator or evil.”
Oh man!
Does that just tend to rub you the wrong way? Maybe you’re wondering how can that be?
It just doesn’t sound right.
Well, here’s the reason it doesn’t sound right and the reason these words can seem so abrasive… and why some translators tried to avoid the word evil altogether.
It’s because we tend to think that the word evil means the same thing as the word sin.
But the truth is that evil and sin and not synonyms. They aren’t the same thing They don’t mean the same thing.
Let me say right here and right now, I believe what this verse says. God does create evil, but, let me say this… keep listening… GOD does NOT sin!!!!
He cannot sin or else He would not be God.
“But James, how can He create evil? That’s gotta be sin!”
No, no, no. The word evil is not sin.
Let me talk about the word sin.
word sin means “to miss.”
That’s it in it’s simplest sense. A one word definition would be “miss.”
Sin equals miss.
To miss the mark… to miss the target… to not hit what you are aiming for… to fail to meet your goal.
In Judges chapter 20 verse 16… we find a Hebrew word that is frequently translated as the word SIN… but in this particular verse… in the English translations I looked at… it’s translated very differently… and believe it or not the different translation will actually help you understand what the word sin means… as we look at how this word is used and how it’s worded in Judges chapter 20 verse 16.
In Judges chapter 20, it’s talking about a war going on between the tribes of Benjamin and Israel and in verse 16 it talks about 700 men going into battle who were so good with their sling shots they could sling a stone at a hairs breadth and NOT miss. The word translated as miss is the same word translated as sin.
It’s saying these guys could sling a stone with a sling shot at a hair and not sin. They would not miss. They would hit the target.
Again, the word translated as MISS is also in other places translated as SIN. So this helps us to understand what sin means.
It means to miss. This verse paints a perfect picture of the meaning of the word!
It’s missing the target. You take aim but you fail to hit the target. You fail to hit the goal. That’s the meaning of the word SIN… to miss… to fail.
Does God fail? Can God sin?
Scripture tells us that GOD is love and it also tells us that LOVE never fails. Therefore if sin is failing then GOD can never sin. What’s that mean? He always hits the desired target. He accomplishes exactly what He sets out to accomplish. He never makes a mistake.
Even in the creation of evil? Yes.
You’ll understand that more as we continue through these studies.
Now, let me talk a bit more about sin.
Some sin that you commit and that I commit… that all of humanity commits… could fall into the category of a mistake. Like a person at an archery range… Let’s say we’re out at the archery range. We’ve got our targets down range from us… and you get confused about which target is yours and you start shooting at my target. You sin. You miss the target. Because you made the mistake of shooting at the wrong target. Does that happen in life? Yes. At some point it happens to everyone. Like a little kid getting confused on a soccer field and kicking the ball toward the wrong goal. They’re intentions are good. The attitude is right. They’re wanting to do what’s best, but they make a mistake. They’re going the complete wrong direction. They fail. They miss. They sin.
Let me ask you again… Does God make mistakes?
If God has ever made a mistake we could say God has sinned. God may have had great intentions but, oh man… He shot at the wrong Goal. God went the wrong way.
No, no, no. That could never happen.
You can’t say that about God or else GOD wouldn’t be much of a God at all.
Now there is other sin that people commit. It’s called a transgression. It’s when you know where the goal is but you say “Forget it, I’m not even going to aim at that goal.”
Has God ever done that? No!
God knows what His goal is. God always aims at His goal. And God always hits His goal.
Other sin… is more of what would be called a transgression… it’s intentionally aiming at the wrong target… knowing what target to aim for… and saying… “ah… forget that… I’m aiming over here…”
Let me read that passage again that I read a few minutes ago.
“Former| of light and Creator of darkness Maker of good and Creator of evil, I, Yahweh, make all these things.” (Concordant Literal New Testament)
If it was God’s intent to make something that we would call evil then God did not sin because He created exactly what He set out to create. He didn’t miss His mark. It came out exactly the way He wanted.
Now I’m intentionally being redundant here. The reason this verse is so disturbing is that we equate the word evil with sin… but the word doesn’t mean sin… It can’t in this case… Because if GOD creates something… BEING GOD… he creates and prepares things exactly as He intends… He always hits the target… He never misses. Therefore He cannot sin. He’s never sinned.
If anything in creation is not as God intended then God missed His mark. He failed to hit the target and he would have sinned.
Again, I propose my friend and I believe that God cannot and does not sin. God never fails. He always hits the target and things are just as He intended them to be in order for something great.
There is a rhyme and reason… there’s a plan… there’s a purpose. He made things the way He made them, including the creation of evil… again He takes credit for creating evil… and He is going to do something, reveal something, show us something that could not have been shown or done or demonstrated… it could have never been displayed… if everything… including the creation of satan, the fall of man had not taken place, just as He planned, designed, and aimed for… Again, if anything happened that is not in His design or His aim or His plan, then He missed the target and you would then say that God has sinned.
Listen. God has not sinned. He has never been taken by surprise. God is always working all things according to the council of His will. Paul tells us that in Ephesians chapter 1.
ON the other hand, popular religious thought and teaching leads people to believe something very different from that. It paints a picture of GOD… creating things with a particular intent… God has a goal He is aiming for… God has hopes and desires for His creation, but something happened… outside of Him and it veered everything off course away from God’s intended target. Now God has… well He’s got Plan B He’s put into place and God is scrambling to somehow salvage what slipped through His fingers. But that’s not it at all.
Now you may be saying, “But James… What about sin? Where did this all come from? I just can’t believe that it could have possibly been God’s intent… the target HE had aimed for… it couldn’t have been part of His design… for sin to enter into anything… wouldn’t He have been wanting everything to be perfect all along from the very beginning?”
Well… hold on. You’re getting ahead of me here. We’ll talk more about that in our next study.
Right now let me give you some things to consider. Think about this. How could God have ever demonstrated, His true love… compassion… mercy… forgiveness… His desire to justify and reconcile… Without creating beings by design who would need that type of love… compassion… mercy…. Forgiveness… who would need justification… and reconciliation? Without creating things to go just as they have gone, there would be no way for God to reveal who He is.
So…. By God designing and creating things in such a way that sin would enter in… I propose to you that GOD did NOT sin by creating things to bring sin in. … because God hit the very target He was aiming for with even sin entering into humanity.
Let me give you another passage that might startle you in much the same way as the passage from Isaiah.
It’s Romans chapter 11…starting in verse… let’s start in verse 32… and go down to verse 36. Here’s how it’s worded in Young’s Literal Translation.
“for God did shut up together the whole to unbelief, that to the whole He might do kindness. O depth of riches, and wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable His judgments, and untraceable His ways! for who did know the mind of the Lord? or who did become His counsellor? or who did first give to Him, and it shall be given back to him again? because of Him, and through Him, and to Him [are] the all things; to Him [is] the glory -- to the ages. Amen.”
Let that last last verse sink in. All things are of God… Through God… and to God…
ALL THINGS!
I quoted Ephesians 1 a few minutes ago. “God works all things according to the council of His will.”
And here we read “All things are of God, all things are through God, and all things are to God.”
All things. God is the creator, the designer, the author of everything. In other words, in all that He has done and created, He has never missed His intended target.
Here’s the same verses from the Concordant Literal New Testament.
“For God locks up all together in stubbornness, that He should be merciful to all. O, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How inscrutable are His judgments, and untraceable His ways! For, who knew the mind of the Lord? or, who became His adviser?”
In other words who of us could have come up with a better way of doing this? God is beyond our wisdom, beyond our knowledge, we can’t understand it at this point because we’ve got these finite minds. But He’s doing it just the way He wanted to do it for a specific purpose.
The passage goes on…
“or, who gives to Him first, and it will be repaid him? seeing that out of Him and through Him and for Him is all: to Him be the glory for the eons! Amen!”
Wow… All that GOD has done… all that God will do… all that He has designed… He has perfectly hit his target. It’s gone just the way He planned it. And that would include everything God has done though every part of His creation, including the creation of satan… it was for a purpose. And it would include the things we experience in life that we would call evil.
I was just talking to my dad a few minutes ago. He has been going through a lot of physical suffering throughout the last twenty five years or so. Before the physical suffering there was all sorts of other suffering that he has experienced through life and it’s been extremely painful.
As we were talking, he said, “ya know what? I know it is by God’s design.”
Why? Paul tells us this: “The suffering we face in this life is not worth comparing to the glory that awaits us.”
This is good stuff. See, the suffering we experience… the fact that evil came into this world and into our lives… the things we experience… it is all working for us a far greater glory to help us to fully experience ultimately what God wants us to experience… which is going to be goodness and gloriousness!
Is gloriousness a word? I think it is!
Goodness and gloriousness beyond what we can imagine at this point. And all that has taken place in this universe… there’s a purpose for it.
Romans 8:28 I believe is true!
Without the suffering of this life we would not be able to appreciate what is to come.
This is a heavy thought… and worth considering… all the suffering… the hardship… the things we call evil… is actually for our good according to God’s purpose.
Wouldn’t all those things fall into Romans 8:28?
Man, there’s so many little side routes… and rabbit trails connected to the things we’ve began to touch on, but I need to wrap up because you’ve probably already gotten enough to chew on for today…
My name is James Flanders… thank you so much for spending some time with me.
I truly appreciate your, prayers, encouragement, and support.
We’re going to be looking at some great things in the future so please coming back and listening. I don’t want you missing any of it.
Be blessed my friend…be blessed!
universal reconciliation, conciliation, james flanders, salvation of all, concordant literal new testament, missing the point
Let me share with you a verse that freaked out several of my friends a few weeks ago.
It’s Isaiah chapter 45 verse 7.
In this verse God is talking about GOD and God says:
I form the light and create darkness,
I make peace and create calamity;
I, the Lord, do all these things.’ (NKJV)
That’s the way it’s worded in the New King James version.
Here is God taking credit for light and darkness… peace and calamity. Saying “I the LORD do all these things.
Now the word calamity is not a great translation. In fact, the word translated as calamity is worded very differently in other verses.
Let me read another English translation to see if it clarifies it at all. The Holman Christian Standard Bible words it this way.
God says:
I form light and create darkness,
I make success and create disaster;
I, Yahweh, do all these things. (Holman Christian Standard Bible)
What? God credits himself with creating disaster?!
Yep. That’s what it says.
However for consistency sake, this work probably shouldn’t have been translated as disaster, because it’s translated as something else in other places in Scripture.
Let me read that same verse from Young’s Literal Translation.
It says this:
“Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I [am] Jehovah, doing all these things.” (YLT)
What? God says “I form light, I prepare darkness, I am making peace, and preparing…”
What was that word? Evil.
I am Jehovah doing all these things. That is a literal translation. The word translated as evil is translated as evil pretty consistently throughout Scripture.
Here’s the Concordant Literal New Testament:
“Former of light and Creator of darkness Maker of good and Creator
of evil, I, Yahweh, make all these things.”
The literal translation use the word EVIL.
Oh my goodness! God calling himself the former of light. We get that. We can comprehend that. But God also takes credit for the darkness. God says “I am the creator of darkness.”
I am the maker of good… and God says “I am also the creator or evil.”
Oh man!
Does that just tend to rub you the wrong way? Maybe you’re wondering how can that be?
It just doesn’t sound right.
Well, here’s the reason it doesn’t sound right and the reason these words can seem so abrasive… and why some translators tried to avoid the word evil altogether.
It’s because we tend to think that the word evil means the same thing as the word sin.
But the truth is that evil and sin and not synonyms. They aren’t the same thing They don’t mean the same thing.
Let me say right here and right now, I believe what this verse says. God does create evil, but, let me say this… keep listening… GOD does NOT sin!!!!
He cannot sin or else He would not be God.
“But James, how can He create evil? That’s gotta be sin!”
No, no, no. The word evil is not sin.
Let me talk about the word sin.
word sin means “to miss.”
That’s it in it’s simplest sense. A one word definition would be “miss.”
Sin equals miss.
To miss the mark… to miss the target… to not hit what you are aiming for… to fail to meet your goal.
In Judges chapter 20 verse 16… we find a Hebrew word that is frequently translated as the word SIN… but in this particular verse… in the English translations I looked at… it’s translated very differently… and believe it or not the different translation will actually help you understand what the word sin means… as we look at how this word is used and how it’s worded in Judges chapter 20 verse 16.
In Judges chapter 20, it’s talking about a war going on between the tribes of Benjamin and Israel and in verse 16 it talks about 700 men going into battle who were so good with their sling shots they could sling a stone at a hairs breadth and NOT miss. The word translated as miss is the same word translated as sin.
It’s saying these guys could sling a stone with a sling shot at a hair and not sin. They would not miss. They would hit the target.
Again, the word translated as MISS is also in other places translated as SIN. So this helps us to understand what sin means.
It means to miss. This verse paints a perfect picture of the meaning of the word!
It’s missing the target. You take aim but you fail to hit the target. You fail to hit the goal. That’s the meaning of the word SIN… to miss… to fail.
Does God fail? Can God sin?
Scripture tells us that GOD is love and it also tells us that LOVE never fails. Therefore if sin is failing then GOD can never sin. What’s that mean? He always hits the desired target. He accomplishes exactly what He sets out to accomplish. He never makes a mistake.
Even in the creation of evil? Yes.
You’ll understand that more as we continue through these studies.
Now, let me talk a bit more about sin.
Some sin that you commit and that I commit… that all of humanity commits… could fall into the category of a mistake. Like a person at an archery range… Let’s say we’re out at the archery range. We’ve got our targets down range from us… and you get confused about which target is yours and you start shooting at my target. You sin. You miss the target. Because you made the mistake of shooting at the wrong target. Does that happen in life? Yes. At some point it happens to everyone. Like a little kid getting confused on a soccer field and kicking the ball toward the wrong goal. They’re intentions are good. The attitude is right. They’re wanting to do what’s best, but they make a mistake. They’re going the complete wrong direction. They fail. They miss. They sin.
Let me ask you again… Does God make mistakes?
If God has ever made a mistake we could say God has sinned. God may have had great intentions but, oh man… He shot at the wrong Goal. God went the wrong way.
No, no, no. That could never happen.
You can’t say that about God or else GOD wouldn’t be much of a God at all.
Now there is other sin that people commit. It’s called a transgression. It’s when you know where the goal is but you say “Forget it, I’m not even going to aim at that goal.”
Has God ever done that? No!
God knows what His goal is. God always aims at His goal. And God always hits His goal.
Other sin… is more of what would be called a transgression… it’s intentionally aiming at the wrong target… knowing what target to aim for… and saying… “ah… forget that… I’m aiming over here…”
Let me read that passage again that I read a few minutes ago.
“Former| of light and Creator of darkness Maker of good and Creator of evil, I, Yahweh, make all these things.” (Concordant Literal New Testament)
If it was God’s intent to make something that we would call evil then God did not sin because He created exactly what He set out to create. He didn’t miss His mark. It came out exactly the way He wanted.
Now I’m intentionally being redundant here. The reason this verse is so disturbing is that we equate the word evil with sin… but the word doesn’t mean sin… It can’t in this case… Because if GOD creates something… BEING GOD… he creates and prepares things exactly as He intends… He always hits the target… He never misses. Therefore He cannot sin. He’s never sinned.
If anything in creation is not as God intended then God missed His mark. He failed to hit the target and he would have sinned.
Again, I propose my friend and I believe that God cannot and does not sin. God never fails. He always hits the target and things are just as He intended them to be in order for something great.
There is a rhyme and reason… there’s a plan… there’s a purpose. He made things the way He made them, including the creation of evil… again He takes credit for creating evil… and He is going to do something, reveal something, show us something that could not have been shown or done or demonstrated… it could have never been displayed… if everything… including the creation of satan, the fall of man had not taken place, just as He planned, designed, and aimed for… Again, if anything happened that is not in His design or His aim or His plan, then He missed the target and you would then say that God has sinned.
Listen. God has not sinned. He has never been taken by surprise. God is always working all things according to the council of His will. Paul tells us that in Ephesians chapter 1.
ON the other hand, popular religious thought and teaching leads people to believe something very different from that. It paints a picture of GOD… creating things with a particular intent… God has a goal He is aiming for… God has hopes and desires for His creation, but something happened… outside of Him and it veered everything off course away from God’s intended target. Now God has… well He’s got Plan B He’s put into place and God is scrambling to somehow salvage what slipped through His fingers. But that’s not it at all.
Now you may be saying, “But James… What about sin? Where did this all come from? I just can’t believe that it could have possibly been God’s intent… the target HE had aimed for… it couldn’t have been part of His design… for sin to enter into anything… wouldn’t He have been wanting everything to be perfect all along from the very beginning?”
Well… hold on. You’re getting ahead of me here. We’ll talk more about that in our next study.
Right now let me give you some things to consider. Think about this. How could God have ever demonstrated, His true love… compassion… mercy… forgiveness… His desire to justify and reconcile… Without creating beings by design who would need that type of love… compassion… mercy…. Forgiveness… who would need justification… and reconciliation? Without creating things to go just as they have gone, there would be no way for God to reveal who He is.
So…. By God designing and creating things in such a way that sin would enter in… I propose to you that GOD did NOT sin by creating things to bring sin in. … because God hit the very target He was aiming for with even sin entering into humanity.
Let me give you another passage that might startle you in much the same way as the passage from Isaiah.
It’s Romans chapter 11…starting in verse… let’s start in verse 32… and go down to verse 36. Here’s how it’s worded in Young’s Literal Translation.
“for God did shut up together the whole to unbelief, that to the whole He might do kindness. O depth of riches, and wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable His judgments, and untraceable His ways! for who did know the mind of the Lord? or who did become His counsellor? or who did first give to Him, and it shall be given back to him again? because of Him, and through Him, and to Him [are] the all things; to Him [is] the glory -- to the ages. Amen.”
Let that last last verse sink in. All things are of God… Through God… and to God…
ALL THINGS!
I quoted Ephesians 1 a few minutes ago. “God works all things according to the council of His will.”
And here we read “All things are of God, all things are through God, and all things are to God.”
All things. God is the creator, the designer, the author of everything. In other words, in all that He has done and created, He has never missed His intended target.
Here’s the same verses from the Concordant Literal New Testament.
“For God locks up all together in stubbornness, that He should be merciful to all. O, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How inscrutable are His judgments, and untraceable His ways! For, who knew the mind of the Lord? or, who became His adviser?”
In other words who of us could have come up with a better way of doing this? God is beyond our wisdom, beyond our knowledge, we can’t understand it at this point because we’ve got these finite minds. But He’s doing it just the way He wanted to do it for a specific purpose.
The passage goes on…
“or, who gives to Him first, and it will be repaid him? seeing that out of Him and through Him and for Him is all: to Him be the glory for the eons! Amen!”
Wow… All that GOD has done… all that God will do… all that He has designed… He has perfectly hit his target. It’s gone just the way He planned it. And that would include everything God has done though every part of His creation, including the creation of satan… it was for a purpose. And it would include the things we experience in life that we would call evil.
I was just talking to my dad a few minutes ago. He has been going through a lot of physical suffering throughout the last twenty five years or so. Before the physical suffering there was all sorts of other suffering that he has experienced through life and it’s been extremely painful.
As we were talking, he said, “ya know what? I know it is by God’s design.”
Why? Paul tells us this: “The suffering we face in this life is not worth comparing to the glory that awaits us.”
This is good stuff. See, the suffering we experience… the fact that evil came into this world and into our lives… the things we experience… it is all working for us a far greater glory to help us to fully experience ultimately what God wants us to experience… which is going to be goodness and gloriousness!
Is gloriousness a word? I think it is!
Goodness and gloriousness beyond what we can imagine at this point. And all that has taken place in this universe… there’s a purpose for it.
Romans 8:28 I believe is true!
Without the suffering of this life we would not be able to appreciate what is to come.
This is a heavy thought… and worth considering… all the suffering… the hardship… the things we call evil… is actually for our good according to God’s purpose.
Wouldn’t all those things fall into Romans 8:28?
Man, there’s so many little side routes… and rabbit trails connected to the things we’ve began to touch on, but I need to wrap up because you’ve probably already gotten enough to chew on for today…
My name is James Flanders… thank you so much for spending some time with me.
I truly appreciate your, prayers, encouragement, and support.
We’re going to be looking at some great things in the future so please coming back and listening. I don’t want you missing any of it.
Be blessed my friend…be blessed!
universal reconciliation, conciliation, james flanders, salvation of all, concordant literal new testament, missing the point
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