Papa, did God already know that Adam would sin?

Dear H,

You were six years old when, on October 18, 2026, at 9:45 p.m., you came out of your room with sleepy eyes. I had put you to bed about an hour earlier, and it wasn't unusual for you to come out complaining that you couldn't sleep. But that night, you asked me a rather surprising question. One that Christians have struggled with for a very long time.

"Papa, did God already know that Adam would sin?"

I'll be honest. My first reaction was shock, followed by a small smile that spread across my face. Not because I knew exactly what to say at that moment, but because I was proud of you for thinking so critically. I could only imagine a young girl lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, pondering the things of God before finally coming out to find some answers.

I was proud of you then, and I will always be proud of you.

Well, what did I say back? I tried to answer while not overloading you too much and it went something like this…

You had touched on a problem that many Christians have wrestled with when thinking deeply about God and man. We have three realities to consider:

1. God knows all things.

2. Adam sinned.

3. God is perfectly good.

Many men and women who do not share our faith have pointed to this very difficulty, sometimes calling it the Achilles' heel of Christianity. It brings us face-to-face with what philosophers and theologians call the problem of evil.

We have God's omniscience, His knowledge of all things, and yet we also have the reality that sin entered creation, along with all the evil that followed.

So, what is a father to do? How can I explain something that even greater minds than mine have struggled to understand?

Well, I want you to know something about your Papa. I don't believe in giving easy answers to difficult questions. While we should acknowledge that some things in our faith remain a mystery, that doesn't mean Scripture is silent on these matters.

As Christians, we approach difficult questions about God and the world with certain convictions that come from the Bible itself.

First, God is righteous in all that He does, and no one is wiser than He is.

Second, humanity is responsible for its sin. We cannot lay the guilt of our wrongdoing at God's feet.

But where do we go from here?

There still seems to be a problem. We are left with a God who knew all the evil that would befall His creation and chose to create anyway.

And that is exactly what He did.

Let me explain why I believe we can say this as Christians.

One answer you will often hear from well-meaning Christians is that God needed real people who could make real choices. People who could freely choose to love Him for who He is.

But I think we need to be careful here.

While it is certainly true that God is glorified through the love and praise of His children, this is not something He needs. God does not need anything from His creation.

I think we can sometimes be guilty of looking at redemptive history through a lens that places humanity at the center of everything.

What is God doing for us? What will heaven be like for us? How will heaven benefit us? How do our choices affect us?

We also think that God is reacting to all our choices and simply doing his best.

Now, these aren't necessarily bad questions but it can inevitably make man the center of everything. We are the judge of God and in the driver seat. The captain of our own ship.

I find this approach too man-centered.

Perhaps a better question is this: How is God glorifying Himself through all of this?

From my understanding of Scripture, God chose to create the world and sovereignly decreed all that would take place within it. Nothing, including Adam's fall, occurred outside His eternal purpose. Yet this does not make God the author of sin or remove humanity's responsibility for it.

And He did all of this ultimately for His own glory, including the display of His grace.

We tend to buck against that conclusion, don't we? Something within us wants to object. We wonder whether this makes God unfair, unwise, or somehow contrary to His own character.

But I want you to consider something.

Since you're grown now, I want you to go back and read the book of Job. I also want you to read Romans 9.

As you read Job, ask yourself some questions about fairness and the characters involved: God, Satan, Job, and his friends.

How does God answer Job? How does Satan regard Job? Who gives Satan permission to afflict him? And when Job finally receives an answer from God, is it the answer he was expecting?

Then turn to Romans 9.

As you read, pay particular attention to the questions Paul anticipates from those who object to what he is teaching.

Do you find yourself asking the same questions?

"If no one can resist God's will, why does He still find fault?"

That's essentially the question Paul raises in Romans 9:19.

Does it sound familiar?

Finally, I want you to read Ecclesiastes. Solomon confronts the realities of life in a fallen world, including its frustrations, injustices, and uncertainties. Yet he brings us back to some remarkably simple conclusions about how we ought to live before God.

H, I don't expect these passages to answer every question you will ever have. I still wrestle with difficult questions myself. But I believe they will give you a better foundation from which to ask them.

And I hope you never stop asking.

Love,

Papa