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the Biblical mark. Others have said that God was willing to allow all the sin and misery in
the world because there was no other way that he could make men free; and he values the
freely chosen love of people so much that it was worth the sin and misery of the world to get
it. That may be part of the answer, if "freely chosen" does not mean "chosen without God's
decisive enabling grace." But it is not the whole answer.
We have seen that God created all things and does all things for his glory. Therefore somehow the
existence of sin and misery has to relate to this great overarching goal of God. Reflect for a
moment on how the existence of sin and misery might serve to glorify aspects of God's nature that
otherwise could not have been displayed. What attributes of God might shine forth with greater
glory because sin and misery exist?
It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is
proper that the shining forth of God's glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory
should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may
have a proper notion of God.
It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all; for then
the effulgence would not answer the reality. For the same reason it is not proper that one should
be manifested exceedingly, and another but very little. It is highly proper that the effulgent glory
of God should answer his real excellency; that the splendor should be answerable to the real and
essential glory, for the same reason that it is proper and excellent for God to glorify himself at all.
Thus it is necessary, that God's awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and
holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been
decreed; so that the shining forth of God's glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts
of divine glory would not shine forth as the other do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and
holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all. If it were not
right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God's
holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it.
There would be no manifestation of God's grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be
pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness
would not be so much prized and admired, and the sense of it not so great, as we have elsewhere
shown. We little consider how much the sense of good is heightened by the sense of evil, both
moral and natural.
And as it is necessary that there should be evil, because the display of the glory of God could not
but be imperfect and incomplete without it, so evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness
of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world;
because the creature's happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and sense of his love. And if
the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably
imperfect; and the happiness of the creature would be imperfect upon another account also; for, as
we have said, the sense of good is comparatively dull and flat, without the knowledge of evil.
("Concerning the Divine Decrees," Works, Vol. 2, p. 528)