A Tool in the Hand of the Almighty
The next day a harmful spirit from God rushed upon Saul, and he raved within his house while David was playing the lyre, as he did day by day. - 1 Samuel 18:10
A while back I posted on reading hard things in the Bible. This passage from 1 Samuel is one of those hard readings. God clearly sends an evil spirit, or "harmful" spirit as the ESV translates it, to Saul that makes him do crazy things and try to kill David. The question that I always hear get asked is, "Doesn't this make God evil if he sends evil spirits to people?"
I had a thought this morning that I thought was helpful. You be the judge.
Deuteronomy 32:4 says, "The Rock (referring to God), his work is perfect, all his ways are justice; a God of faithfulness and without iniquity; just and upright is he." God is not evil. He is perfectly good. But in many places in the Bible, God seems to clearly use evil as a tool to accomplish his good purposes. Two other biblical examples that come to mind are Job and Jesus Christ:
And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, all that he (Job) has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand." - Job 1:12
"…for truly in this city there were gathered together against your (that is, God's) holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your (that is, God's) hand and your plan had predestined to take place." - Acts 4:27-28
The fact that God uses evil as a tool does not make God evil the same way that a tool in the hand does not impart its properties to the hand (or the owner of the hand). In fact, tools are often employed because we LACK in ourselves the necessary qualities to completely accomplish a good task for which that quality is necessary. Pounding nails into wood requires hardness. But my hands are soft, not hard. So I take up a hammer, which is hard, to pound in nails. But my hands remain soft. They, nor I, have not taken on the quality of hardness that the hammer alone possesses and no one would ascribe to me the qualities of the hammer. Neither does God take on the qualities of evil spirits or evil people when he uses them as tools in his hands to accomplish good tasks.