Ezekiel 18:23: Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?
With the death of people like Osama bin Laden, Christians are wondering how they should feel about such an event. Are we to rejoice and celebrate when evil people die or are killed? Does God relish the death of an evil person? Should we feel vindicated? Or does the everlasting life to which they have gone temper our attitude? Instead of rejoicing should the tragedy of a life lived badly and lost to eternity prove a sobering moment? Interestingly, the authors of the Bible seem to have struggled with this issue as well, with different perspectives being presented in different passages. However, upon close examination, there is no contradiction. To determine the Biblical answers, let’s examine two representative passages as we look to:
- Historical Context: Written between 593 and 565 B.C. during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, the Prophet Ezekiel is the author of the book (Ezekiel 1:3). He was a contemporary of both Jeremiah and Daniel. Ezekiel ministered to his generation who were both exceedingly sinful and thoroughly hopeless. By means of his prophetic ministry he attempted to bring them to immediate repentance and to confidence in the distant future. He taught that:
(1) God works through human messengers;
(2) Even in defeat and despair God’s people need to affirm God’s sovereignty;
(3) God’s Word never fails;
(4) God is present and can be worshiped anywhere;
(5) People must obey God if they expect to receive blessings; and
(6) God’s Kingdom will come.
How can you cope with a world gone astray? Ezekiel, destined to begin his life’s ministry as a priest at age thirty, was uprooted from his homeland and marched off to Babylon at the age of twenty-five. For five years he languished in despair. At age thirty a majestic vision of Yahweh’s glory captivated his being in Babylon. The priest/prophet discovered God was not confined to the narrow strictures of Ezekiel’s native land. Instead, He is a universal God who commands and controls persons and nations. The Book of Ezekiel calls us to join in a fresh and living encounter with the God of Abraham, Moses and the prophets. We must be over-comers or we will be overcome; the difference is in whom we place our trust. Ezekiel challenged us to experience a life changing vision of God’s power, knowledge, eternal presence and holiness; to let God direct us; to comprehend the depth of and commitment to evil that lodges in each human heart; to recognize that God holds His servants responsible for warning wicked men of their peril; to experience a living relationship with Jesus Christ, who said that the new covenant is to be found in His blood.
- Grammatical Usage: “Pleasure” in Hebrew is “Chaphets” and means, “to delight, to desire, to be pleased with”; “wicked” is “Rasha`” meaning, “sinful in the sense of wicked, hostile to God”; “die” is “Maveth” and means, “physical death…carrying a context of death by violence”; “return” or “Shuwb” means, “to return or to turn back”; “ways” is “Derek” meaning, “direction, journey or course; “live” is “Chayah” meaning, “a quickened or restored essence or life.”
- Literal Application: Have I any delight in the physical, often violent death of those hostile to Me, declares the Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn from his journey’s direction back to Me to be quickened and restored?
- Contextual Interpretation: Clearly, God does not take pleasure in the death of evil people. Recall our lesson on the subject of Hell where we made the specific point that God does not delight in dispatching souls to their everlasting destiny, but does accommodate them by “continuing” them on their journey – the course which they have chosen, the salvation they have rejected. Why is this? Why wouldn’t a holy and righteous God take pleasure in evil people receiving the punishment they deserve? Ultimately, the answer is that God knows the eternal destiny of evil people. God knows how horrible eternity in the lake of fire will be. Similar to Ezekiel 18:23, 2 Peter 3:9 states that God is “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” So, in terms of the eternal destiny of evil people, no, we should not rejoice at their eternal demise. Hell is so absolutely horrible that we should never rejoice when someone’s destiny is sealed to such a fate.
- Scriptural
Comparison: Conversely,
there is Proverbs 11:10, “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices; when
the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy.” This is speaking of the death of
evil people in an earthly/temporal sense. When there are fewer evil people in
the world, the world is a better place. We can rejoice when righteousness
prevails (Psalm 7:17: I will give to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness, and I will sing praise
to the name of the LORD, the Most High),
when
evil is defeated. A mass murderer being removed from the world is a good thing.
God has ordained governments (and the military) as instruments of judgment
against evil. When evil people are killed, whether via the judicial system or
through military means, it is God’s justice being accomplished (Romans 13:1-7).
For justice being done, and for evil people being removed from this world, yes,
we can rejoice. But these and other
verses do not contemplate the eternality of the deceased, only that – in a
temporal sense – they can do no more harm.
There are many other scriptures that could be discussed (Deuteronomy 32:43; Job 31:29; Psalm 58:10; Proverbs 17:5, 24:17-18; Jeremiah 11:20; Ezekiel 33:11), but Ezekiel 18:23 and Proverbs 11:10 are sufficient to help us achieve a biblical balance; that being a distinction between the temporal and eternal.
A third element for our consideration is a proper understanding of God in relation to evil itself. The Bible describes God as holy (Isaiah 6:3), righteous (Psalm 7:11), just (Deuteronomy 32:4), and sovereign (Daniel 4:17-25) among other attributes. These attributes tell us that:
(1) God is capable of preventing evil, and
(2) God desires to rid the universe of evil.
So, if both of these are true, why does God allow evil? If God has the power to prevent evil, and desires to prevent evil, why does He permit evil? Perhaps a good way to look at this issue would be to consider some alternative situations for how people might have God run the world:
1) God could change everyone’s personality so that they cannot sin. This would also mean that we would not have a free will. We would not be able to choose right or wrong because we would be “programmed” to only do right. Had God chosen to do this, there would be no meaningful relationships between Him and His creation.
Instead, God made Adam and Eve innocent but with the ability to choose good or evil. In doing so, they could respond to His love and trust Him or choose to do their own thing. They chose to do their own thing. Because we live in a real world where we can choose our actions but not their consequences, their sin affected those who came after them (us). Similarly, our decisions to sin have an impact on us, and those around us.
2) Another choice would have God compensating for people’s evil actions through supernatural intervention 100% of the time. For instance, if a drunk driver causes an automobile accident, God would have to keep him and the people in the other automobile from being harmed, for there would be many people who could possibly be caused to suffer from the accident or the death / injury of those involved in the accident. God would have to keep the drunk driver from crashing into power lines, buildings, etc., because these things would cause innocent people to suffer.
Another instance might involve a lazy person plumbing a house, and he doesn’t bother to check the plumbing for leaks before the house is finished. God would have to make the plumbing not leak because otherwise the home buyers would have to suffer for the lazy person’s sin.
If a father gets addicted to drugs and spends all of his money on drugs, God would somehow have to miraculously provide both the food and the social needs of the children so that they would not have to be adversely affected by the evil of the parent.
In such a world, God would be like a bad parent who enables a wayward child’s destructive behavior. There would be no consequences for one’s actions, and as a result no one would learn integrity, purity, honor, responsibility, or self-control. There would be no “good consequences” for right behavior, no “bad consequences” for wrong behavior. What would people become except more deviant and sinful?
3) Another choice would be for God to judge and remove those who choose to commit evil acts. The problem with this possibility is that there would be no one left, for God would have to remove us all. We all sin and commit evil acts (Romans 3:23; Ecclesiastes 7:20; 1 John 1:8). While some people are more evil than others, where would God draw the line? Ultimately, all evil causes harm to others.
Instead of these or other options, God has chosen to create a “real” world in which real choices have real consequences. In this real world of ours, our actions affect others. Because of Adam’s choice to sin, the world now lives under the curse, and we are all born with a sin nature (Romans 5:12). There will one day come a time when God will judge the sin in this world and make all things new, but He is purposely “delaying” in order to allow more time for people to repent so that He will not need to judge them (2 Peter 3:9). Until then He IS concerned about evil. When He created the Old Testament Laws, He established laws that discourage and punish evil. He judged nations and kings who disregard justice and pursue evil. Likewise in the New Testament, God states that it is the government’s responsibility to provide justice in order to protect the innocent from evil (Romans 13). He also promises severe consequences for those who commit evil acts, especially on the “innocent” (Mark 9:36-42).
In summary, we live in a real world where our good and evil actions have direct consequences and indirect consequences upon us and those around us. God’s desire is that for all of our sakes we would obey Him that it might be well with us (Deuteronomy 5:29). Instead, what happens is that we choose our own way and then we blame God for not doing anything about it (despite the fact that He has in the gift of Jesus). Such is the heart of sinful man. But Jesus came to change men’s hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit. So He is able to do for those who will turn from evil and call on Jesus to save them from their sin and its consequences (2 Corinthians 5:17).
God does prevent and restrain some acts of evil. This world would be MUCH WORSE were not God restraining evil. At the same time, God has given us the ability to choose good and evil, and when we choose evil, He allows us, and those around us, to suffer the consequences of evil. Rather than blaming God and questioning God for why He does not prevent all evil – we should be about the business of proclaiming the cure for evil and its consequences – Jesus Christ!
Conclusion: Yes, we can rejoice when evil is defeated, even if that includes the death of evil people. At the same time, we are not to rejoice at the eternal condemnation of evil people. God does not desire that evil people spend eternity in the lake of fire but He will reward evil people according to their works in an everlasting sense, and He definitely does not rejoice when they go there. Neither should we.