If He had not known with certainty that He would be Master over sin and that out of evil would evolve the noblest display of His own glory, He would not have permitted it to enter the world.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the positive aspects of overcoming sin and adversity for greater glory.
Charles Spurgeon reflects on the idea that the existence of sin and evil in the world serves a higher purpose in revealing the glory and mastery of a divine being. The notion suggests that if this outcome were not assured, evil would not have been allowed to exist, highlighting the interplay between good and evil in demonstrating ultimate truth and divinity.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the purpose of suffering and sin in life.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
We are a unique ape. We have language. Other animals have systems of communication that fall far short of that. They don't have the same ability to communicate complicated conditionals and what-ifs and talk about things that are not present.
Neither science, nor the politics in power, nor the mass media, nor business, nor the law nor even the military are in a position to define or control risks rationally.
We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms.
Some people take the view that the universe is simply there, and it runs along - it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe.
True freedom means freeing oneself from the dictates of the ego and its accompanying emotions.
Everything is both simpler than we can imagine and more entangled than we can conceive.
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