God's promises for those who believe in Jesus Christ:
"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose" - Romans 8:28
"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God" - Philippians 4:6
"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us" - Romans 8:18
"For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ" - 2 Corinthians 1:5
Understanding God's will
Some have asked, "If God is the Creator of all things, as the Bible truly says He is, then is God the author of evil as well?" The short answer is no. However, this is not satisfying to many, as the immediate response to this is, why?
First, there is a big difference between commanding that sin exist and actually sinning. As the Bible teaches, God is the source of all goodness and there is no evil in Him at all (1 John 1:5). Therefore, the absence of His goodness is evil. For example, just as the absence of light is darkness, or the absence of heat is coldness, so the absence of God’s goodness is evil. Thus, the existence of sin is not the result of God’s positive agency, but the withholding of it.
Also, it is helpful to understand the way in which God commands things. This is sometimes referred to as God decreeing or willing something to come to pass. He does it in two ways.
One is known as God’s "will of decree" where He commands both good and evil to come to pass. The other is God’s "will of command," in which God commands people to do good and not to do evil.
Sound confusing? Maybe an example will help. Think of God seeing the world through two different lenses – one narrow and one wide. Through the narrow lens, God sees all the sin in the world and is greatly grieved and angered by it. Yet, through the wide lens, He sees all the evil in the world in relation to its eternal purposes. Thus, when God looks at evil, the parts are ugly but the whole is beautiful.
But what are God's eternal purposes that make the "whole" look beautiful? His glory. As God’s holy justice is displayed by permitting and punishing sin, so God’s love and grace is displayed all the more abundantly by providing salvation through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. By allowing evil to exist, God shows to a greater degree the full measure of all His attributes and character. And by doing so, we delight in God more, which is to His greater glory.
Therefore, God is more glorious for permitting evil because it displays and communicates to people a more complete knowledge of who He is. And the more we know of God and His character, the more our hearts delight in Him, namely, in His holiness, justice, love, and goodness.
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O God, Why Evil? 1.2.3
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