Greg and Amy explain how demons can have free agency while still remaining under God’s authority. Demons act according to their own evil intentions, but God can use their actions to accomplish his good purposes.

Transcript

Amy: This comes from Jenny: “If God is sometimes said to have sent an evil spirit/demon, how much agency do demons have? How can they be both evil and under God’s command?”

Greg: Well, this is a question probing the nature of sovereignty, and I think it’s a hard one to unravel. You take things a little bit further than I do on these questions. I’m really comfortable with what you’ve said—that there’s nothing that befalls us that hasn’t, in a certain sense, passed through God’s hand.

Some might make the distinction between either directly or permissively allowing it, knowing the consequence—the ultimate end—and that he is going to accomplish something good out of it. And that’s the promise that we have in Romans 8, which is sometimes stated a little bit passively—the way you put it, things will work out. But the text actually says, “We know that God causes all things to work together.” So, this is a confidence that God is in control, no matter what he says he allows someone to do.

Now, Job is a perfect example. There in Job, you have Satan making a request to bring hardship on Job, and God gives him the latitude to interfere with Job’s life in different ways. But that happens because God has given permission. And there’s a lesson there that nothing is going to happen to us unless God permits such a thing. And so, I guess you could characterize that Job’s circumstance—though this isn’t the wording—that God sent the devil after Job. After a fashion, that would be true, just like the evil spirit that befalls Saul—which I think that’s the reference that was just made regarding David and in other circumstances—or a deceiving spirit that he allows to happen.

Just want to point out something, and this is part of my prayer this morning. I was praying about a lot of things about the nation. But it says in 2 Thessalonians that people are deceived because they don’t love truth. So, even if God liberates a spirit of deception, the people aren’t just “too bad, so sad.” They are cooperating with the process because they don’t love truth. And so, they are vulnerable to the lie. They are just kind of moving along in the same direction.

I mean, the question has to do with the boundary of the demon’s freedoms and God’s agency. Well, both are true in this circumstance. They just play a different role. And God’s ultimate goal is some good end that he will accomplish by allowing an evil means to be in play. But he has to allow it, or else it won’t take place. And I think that’s the critical thing we both agree on. You may want to take this a little further.

Amy: Well, I think the key here is the intentions. And we see this. It says, “How much agency do they have? How can they be both evil and under God’s command?” But we see this happening with human beings, too. And one example is the people who killed Jesus, right? So, God’s intention was for them to kill Jesus so that he could die for our sins, which is a very good thing. Their intention was to kill the Son of God for all sorts of evil reasons, and that doesn’t mean they don’t have agency, just that God wanted them to do that for his reasons. They still had agency, and I think the same thing is true with demons. I think they have agency. They just have their own purposes for doing something, whereas God has different purposes for doing those same things.

We see this again when God is judging Israel. So, he sends—it says directly—he sends a nation to punish Israel. So, his intention is the good justice, right? Their intention (and the text is really explicit on this—I think it’s Isaiah 10), but then God turns around and says, “And now I’m going to punish them because their intention wasn’t my intention. Their intention was they just wanted to destroy you. They weren’t seeking justice.” So, even though God sent them—an evil nation—to do something that needed to be done for justice’s sake, he still punished them because their agency had to do with a completely different intention.

So, we see these different examples of how this works. I don’t think it takes away the agency of demons just because God is using them for his own purpose. But ultimately, again, this means that God’s purpose prevails. So, no matter what intentions any person or spirit or anything has towards you, God’s intentions towards you are always good ones, and they’re always to make you like Christ, and they’re always as a Father to you, his child. And that is something that we can take rest in so that we don’t have to fear. We don’t have to fear these demons, because no matter what they do, God is working for our good. And that’s what I think we have to rest in, ultimately.