The world we live in is filled with evil. Satan has wasted no time, starting in the Garden of Eden, in teaching mankind the knowledge of evil and how to fill our lives with it. He started by ensuring that Adam and Eve would gain the knowledge of good and evil, then has majored in making sure that we all learn how to do what is evil. To be honest, we have been apt pupils, as our own nature tends towards that way.
But what exactly is this evil I speak of? In today’s world, where people call good evil and evil good (Isaiah 5:20), it can be hard to identify. We hear pundits and celebrities call evil good and good evil all the time, muddying the waters and making it harder to identify good and evil all the time.
But God has no problem identifying evil and He is the ultimate arbiter of what qualifies as good and what qualifies as evil. This is not only because He Himself is the embodiment of good, but also because He is our creator. As such, He has the right to define what is good and what is not. Nobody else has that right, which explains why so many people want to deny His very existence. If there’s no God, then He can’t impose His will on us, telling us what to do.
Yet God does exist and has made clear in his Word just what He considers to be acceptable and what He has decided is not. This is called the Law, which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. The crux of that Law is enshrined on tablets, containing what we know as the Ten Commandments. But, in fact, those Ten Commandments are not the totality of the Law that God gave to Moses; in whole, there are 613 commandments, all contained within the first five books of the Bible. The Jews call these books the Torah, which means the Law.
Most Christians today believe that this Old Testament Law has passed away. Yet Jesus Himself said that it had not. If we are true followers of Christ, then we have to accept what He says about the Law. Many believers take Christ redeeming us from the curse of the Law to mean that He has redeemed us from the Law itself; but that’s not what the Bible says:
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”) – Galatians 3:13
Notice that it says we are redeemed from the curse of the Law, not the Law itself. So, just what is this curse? That’s simple, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Death definitely sounds like a curse; that’s the curse that Christ redeemed us from. We don’t have to die for our sins. Jesus Himself said:
Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one title will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. – Matthew 5:17-18
Jesus came to fulfill the Law. That doesn’t mean that we can ignore the Law, just that He succeeded where nobody else did, living in such a way as to not break even one commandment of the Law. His life was perfect and sinless.
This was necessary so that He could redeem us from the curse of the Law. Had Jesus broken even the least of the commandments, then He would have had to die for His own sin. He could not have redeemed any of us from the curse of the Law… that is, the need to die for our sins.
But Jesus went beyond that, stating that the Law will not pass away until all is fulfilled. When is that? I would have to say it isn’t until everything written in the Bible, including end times prophecy has been fulfilled. With that being the case, the Law still exists, defining what is good and what is evil.
It’s a bit more complicated than that though. For one thing, there are places where the New Testament actually adds to that Law. Jesus gave several examples of this, most notably just a few short verses after the one from Matthew, quoted above.
You have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not commit adultery.” 28 But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. – Matthew 5:27-28
So, the Old Testament Law dealt with the actions of a person and the commandments given to us in the New Testament deal with the attitude of our heart. No longer can we hide lust, hatred and unforgiveness in our hearts, pretending they don’t exist and are not evil; God Himself, in the form of Jesus Christ, has told us that those thoughts and attitudes are in fact evil.
That’s not all that Jesus did in the New Testament though; He also told us that some things which the Old Testament commanded are no longer required. Most notably, the Old Testament commandments dealing with food are not longer applicable to us, according to Jesus. There are several verses we could look at for this, but we’ll just look at this one:
So He said to them, “Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, 19 because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?” 20 And He said, “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. 21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, 22 thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. 23 All these things come from within and defile a man.” – Mark 7:18-23
But the biggest thing that no longer applies from the Old Testament Law, in a literal sense, are the many commandments which deal with the sacrificial system. Those don’t apply, because Jesus became the ultimate sacrifice for all (Hebrews 10:10). We no longer need to give animal sacrifices for our sins. That’s another part of Him redeeming us from the curse of the Law.
So, What is Evil?
To understand evil, we must look at good too, as one way of defining evil is the lack of good. Just as cold is merely the lack of heat and darkness is merely the lack of light, remove all good and all that is left is evil.
So, what is good? According to the Bible, the recorded words of our creator, God is good. Therefore, anything that leaves Him out of the picture would have to be good. Unbelievers try to come up with their own concepts of morality, leaving God out of the picture, but the best they can come up with is not doing others harm. While that might sound like a good definition, on the surface, it is the very same people who define what “harm” is. Worse than that, they leave themselves to be the arbiters of who gets hurt, in situations where there is no way to avoid someone getting hurt.
In contrast to that, the Bible gives us very clear rules about what it is that we are to do and not to do. Many people focus on the “thou shalt not” commandments, thinking that they are the whole of the Law. But in fact, there are many commandments that tell us things that we are to do, not just those which tell us what we are not to do. Sin, as defined by the commandments in both the Old and New Testaments, falls into three basic categories:
- Sins of Commission – Things we do, that we shouldn’t do.
- Sins of Omission – Things that we should do, which we don’t do.
- Sins of Wrongful Attitudes – Holding wrong attitudes in our hearts, which can lead us to do sins of omission or commission.
Our tendency is to focus only on the sins of commission, ignoring the other two categories. If we’re not killing, stealing and raping, we think we’re doing pretty good. But God sees the whole picture, noting those sins of omission and our sinful attitudes just as much as our sins of commission. All are equal in His eyes, because all of them fall short of His glory.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. – Romans 3:23
While this verse is given to us in the context of explaining the redemptive grace of God; but in the process, it gives us a pretty good definition of sin. That is, that sin is anything which falls short of God’s glory. We all do that on a regular basis, in one way or another, showing that we are imperfect beings, unable to meet God’s definition of righteousness on our own.
I think we need to mention that not everything mentioned in the Law is sin. There are a number of things mentioned there, which state that those actions make one “unclean,” rather than saying that they are sin. While many people try to equate the two, they are not equal. The term “unclean” refers to being ceremonially unclean, unable to go to the Temple for worship.
Put another way, things that are “unclean” as the Bible defines it, are things that are common, rather than things that are dedicated to God. Those things which have been dedicated to God have been cleansed and sanctified (set apart), for use in serving God. That makes them uncommon, in a very good way. As long as they are only used for the service of God, they remain holy. But if one of those things were to be taken and used for a common, everyday use, it would become unclean, unfit for use in Temple worship. Even so, it would not be considered sin. That might be considered to be evil, even without it being sin.
So, what is Evil Speech?
This brings us back to our original question about evil speaking. If we go by the world’s definition of evil speech, which is commonly referred to as “hate speech,” then evil speech is anything which might hurt someone else. While I agree that we should avoid trying to hurt others with what we say, there’s a huge hole in this definition. That is, there are plenty of people out there in todays’ society who are determined to be offended and hurt by what others say, specifically what others who don’t share their socio-political output say. Based on their definition, just about anything that a conservative says is evil speech, as it is the political left who “owns” the ever-changing definition of just what qualifies as hate speech.
But is that definition true? Not by God’s standard. Calling sinners, sinners, is offensive to those committing the sin. That doesn’t mean that we should ignore their sin or try to call it good. Sinners do that and by joining them in calling sin good, we are aligning ourselves with their camp, rather than God’s. That’s obviously not something we should want to do.
We know that evil speaking is something that God is concerned about, because the Bible mentions it in two separate verses; one written by the Apostle Paul and the other written by the Apostle Peter. That is significant, proving that it was not just the theology of one apostle.
Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. – Ephesians 4:31
Therefore, laying aside all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, – 1 Peter 2:1
Looking at these two verses, we can see some things that clearly qualify as evil speech, specifically things spoken in anger, anything said in malice (interestingly enough, malice is the only thing listed in both verses), bitterness, deceit, envy, and hypocrisy. Looking elsewhere in scripture we can add lying (one of the seven deadly sins), cursing, bitterness and deceit. That’s quite a list.
If we were to try and find one thing that all of those have in common, about the only thing we could find is that it is speaking in a way that is contrary to the way that God speaks and would have us speak. There’s no faith, no love and no righteousness in that speech. It is done to lift one’s self up, not caring just how much harm it might do to others, their reputations or their lives, in the process. This is different than caring about hurting their feelings, it’s much more serious.