Have you ever heard someone say "God cannot look on evil" as a way to tell you that you are cut off from him because you have sinned? Well, if that is true, it sets up a lot of problems and doesn't solve any. Here are a few of them:
--Jesus who was God, came into a world full of sin in order to clean things up, and saw sin wherever he looked.
--The only kind of human for Jesus the God-man to see, touch, speak with, heal or anything else, was sinners--including his own mother and stepfather!
--Jesus visited sinners constantly, spent time with them and touched them. He rebuked Pharisees for trying to be holier-than-thou and avoid touching sin.
--Jesus, who was God in the flesh, "became sin" for us, a sinless sacrifice for sin, on whose shoulders the sins of all humanity were piled up to the heavens. (2 Cor. 5:21).
--Paul writes to us that "When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners...God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners...we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ...our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies." (Romans 5:6-10) While it's true that the blood of Christ, spilled out on the cross, is what cleanses us and makes us righteous toward God, all that occurred while we were helpless, sinning enemies of God.
--Psalm 51:1 asks God to have compassion on David. Now, if David's sins were not yet forgiven, and David was still a sinner in the Lord's sight, how would God look on him with compassion, if he cannot look on evil? (This is just one of the many verses showing God to be compassionate toward sinners.)
From this mistaken idea, we can also be led to believe that since we still sin and make plenty of mistakes and are offensive toward God, we are doomed for hell unless we personally accept what Jesus did for us, in a personal prayer of repentance and asking God to please apply that sacrifice to us. But the Romans passage shows that is not true: Jesus died for sinners while we were still sinners, showing his sacrifice was for all of us and not just those who understand enough to repent. His forgiveness through the blood of Christ comes before our recognition of our forgiveness. And how do we know that we will get the words right in our personal prayer of repentance, or even repent of the right things in the right attitude, to qualify for his forgiveness?
The commonly-quoted phrase "God cannot look on evil" is actually only part of a short verse in Habakkuk 1:13, and is taken completely out of its context to say something that passage does not even address. Here, the prophet is complaining that God is slow to do something about the evil that both God and the prophet see. The essence is, "How can you be God and not do something about this?" He continues to complain "Should you be silent while the wicked swallow up people more righteous than they?"
The truth is, God did do something about it, but not in Habakkuk's time. God the Father took care of evil by sending God the Son to handle sin and evil for all people for all time, and sent God the Spirit to draw people to understand the breadth and depth of God's mercy and to accept his forgiveness which they have already been given freely.
The truth is, evil still exists in the world in any place where God's love is not yet fully trusted and surrendered to. God will one day destroy all evil, after Jesus returns, but for now we -- even we believers -- still mess up, and evil still exists. He sees the evil in the world, and he sees us even in our sin, and has looked on us with favor (see also Ezek. 16) and rescued us through Jesus Christ. Already. Before we knew about it and could accept it. And already applies that same grace to everyone else we know, including those who don't yet understand his grace. Isn't that amazing?
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