Good And Evil

Good and evil is the Bible’s basic moral pairing: the distinction between what is pleasing to God and life-giving, and what is contrary to his will and brings harm and death. Scripture treats the pair less as an abstract philosophical problem than as a matter of loyalty, choice, and conflict.

The text of Joshua 24:15 places “evil” on the lips of the people rather than in a definition: “If it seems evil to you to serve Yahweh, choose today whom you will serve.” The Hebrew word there, ra‘, can mean displeasing or wrong in someone’s eyes, so the verse records a human assessment that may itself be mistaken; its force lies in the pledge that follows, “but as for me and my house, we will serve Yahweh,” which locates the good in covenant loyalty rather than in private judgment. Paul argues in a different register in Romans 7:12, where the law is called “holy, righteous, and good,” grounding the good in God’s own command rather than in outcomes; Romans 7:13 then insists that the good did not become death, but that sin used the good to expose itself as sin.

Romans 7:14–25 treats good and evil as a condition of the person, not only a list of acts. The speaker finds no good dwelling in his flesh (Romans 7:18), delights in God’s law after the inward person (Romans 7:22), yet sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind and taking him captive (Romans 7:23), and cries out, “What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me out of the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). Linguistically, the Greek of this chapter moves between agathos and kalos for “good,” and the passage ends by naming the mind as the place where service to God’s law is still possible (Romans 7:25). Revelation 16:14–19 casts the same pair in eschatological terms: spirits of demons gather the kings of the earth for war (Revelation 16:14), Babylon is remembered before God and given the cup of his wrath (Revelation 16:19), and evil appears as organized cosmic opposition rather than private failing. That last reading of Revelation is interpretive suggestion rather than a claim the text states in so many words.

Christian traditions differ on how to fill out the concept. Classical Augustinian teaching, widely though not universally held, describes evil as a privation or corruption of good rather than a substance in its own right; other traditions speak of evil more as an enslaving power, picking up Paul’s language of the “law of sin” in the members (Romans 7:23). On Romans 7 itself, Lutheran and Reformed readers have commonly heard the regenerate believer’s continuing struggle, while others read the chapter as life under the law before conversion, and still others as a rhetorical voice not tied to one individual. Traditions also divide over whether good and evil are knowable by natural reason apart from revelation, and over whether Revelation 16 describes a future literal judgment or a symbolic depiction of God’s sovereignty over the nations.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.