Paul will say to people who would say, you know, if we did bad things and God worked good out of it, we should get credit for it. No, what you get credit for is the evil that you do. That is imputed to you. That’s led to your account that God can
Take your evil and work good out of it. It’s not to your credit.
It’s to God’s glory. If he’s working good out of evil, I tell you how gracious he is and how powerful he is. So, you don’t live in sin that God gets glory and think,
Whatever, you know. No, your evil is evil and God will judge you for your evil. And he did it all the way through the scriptures. Isaiah 10: 5 and following for about 10 verses. God said, oh, Assyria, the nation who is my big stick, Assyria is pictured in
Isaiah 10:5 and following, as God’s got a big club, so to speak, and a big club in his hand is the Assyrian Empire, armies. And he said, Behold, I send them ⁓ my club that I have in my hand, behold, I send him against an ungodly nation, Israel. So he does it. And then he goes on to say,
But does the club think it wields the man who has it? ⁓ He said, I’m the one who’s doing this. I’m the one that’s using their evil. He is my big stick to beat a wicked nation. How be it? He doesn’t mean, he mean if not so, he doesn’t mean to be my servant. He means to…
destroy kingdoms, not of few. He means to brag like a man ⁓ who goes to the bird’s nest and ravages and ticks the eggs. That’s what he thinks.
But I’m the one who’s getting a good thing done through his evil. One more illustration of Joseph and his brothers. His brothers. Let’s kill him. No, don’t. No, let’s not do that. Let’s sell him. Okay, we’ll get money out of it. So they sell him. They’re doing evil. Evil. Finally, when they come and they meet Joseph for the final time, he said,
Don’t worry, I’m not about to kill you. You meant it for evil. But God meant it for good. In another text there, he says, it wasn’t you who sent me into Egypt. But of course it was. He said it wasn’t you that sent me into Egypt. It was God to do what? To deliver nations, because he’s the fellow who
worked out how the famine should be dealt with, yes? So here’s the story, and Paul is making that point in chapter six. You cannot say because you’re wicked and God acts graciously and brings good out of your evil that you ought to get credit for it. You get noted for your wickedness. And it’s no glory to you that God who is gracious and powerful
can work good out of the evil you do.