How can an evil person have good sides? Last week I talked about Luke Chapter 16, where the evil rich man had one good side. This rich man knew the beggar, Lazarus, was sick and starving to death, yet the rich man feasted luxuriously and watched this poor beggar die. Surprisingly, this evil man had one “good side,” in that he did not want his five brothers to go to Hell. Atheists, liberal theologians, and Christians struggling with doubt, see this rich man’s one good side and question how God could call this man evil. Some justify this man’s neglect of Lazarus as legitimate, because they were not close kin. But I refuted those claims in my last post “Atheists deny Hell or say God was unjust to “The Rich Man”” so be sure to read it if you missed it.
Even strong Christians struggle to understand how God can call some people who do some good things “you cursed ones,” as Jesus said in Matt.25:41 and then say, “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.” We can see people who seem totally evil and agree they deserve Hell, such as unrepentant murderers who gloat over their killings. How can people have any good in them if they also practice evil, like this rich man in Luke 16 who feasted while watching the poor man starve?
I also wondered about this phenomena. For example, I heard about a Jewish man who was a Nazi hunter. The Jewish man was shocked to see this vicious killer warmly hug his own little son. There was a mass murderer, a drug cartel boss, who was always kind to his son. Both of these men tortured and murdered many innocent men, women and children. How could those men so mistreat others, yet so love their sons? How could the rich man so luxuriously feast and claim he cared about his five brothers, yet so callously watch Lazarus starve, and thus directly oppose the Jewish law of mercy and compassion for the hurting and weak?
A radio pastor explained how this can happen. For example, look at the other side of having good and evil in the same person. Loving Christians (those who are mostly good) can fall into temporary sin (evil) and hurt another person. So good can co-exist with evil in a loving Christian too. We call this the power of our sinful flesh and our temporary submission to that sin nature. But Christians repent of their sin and seek to comfort the one they hurt, because God’s good spirit dwells in them.
Evil people do mostly evil things. They enjoy this sin and never truly repent (at least they do not truly repent as long as they deny Christ.) They do not try to help those they have hurt. But this evil person’s ability to do good things does not come from his sin-nature. The ability to do good comes from this person’s “imago dei” or “Image of God.” This can be seen in Genesis 1:27: “God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Being made in God’s image causes us to be different from all the animal kingdom. We have a moral, spiritual and intellectual side, which reflects God’s essence. Even evil people are made in God’s image. Those people hate God and rebel against him. But God’s image is still stamped on those people. It is this image of God that enables even evil people to do “some” good things.
We have the freedom to love God and then do rational and creative things, and participate in God’s plan for the world. But this same freedom also enables people to hate God and turn from him, as did the two murderers I mentioned above. The glimpses of God showed, when those murderers were kind to their sons. Yet we must never elevate evil people when they do “some good” things. The very person who is made in God’s image can turn into a murderer taking the life of another person, also made in God’s image. They will still pay for their sin. For example, when someone murders another person that murderer is actually opposing the “imago dei” in the victim. The murderer has crushed a fellow image bearer. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image,” (Gen.9:6.) Evil, not repented of, will be punished by God. In this way, those evil people curse those made in God’s image, and thus also oppose the “imago dei.”
This is how the rich man could be so evil and hate the poor beggar by letting him starve, yet the same rich man could care about the eternal destiny of his five, evil brothers who also opposed God. This is how an evil person can have a good side. It does not come from the person him or herself. It comes from God’s goodness, reflected in the small good thing this evil person does. But a small act of what looks good does not save an evil person. Just being made in God’s image is not enough to save anyone. Even “righteous” Cornelius, the Roman Centurion in Acts chapter 10, was not saved unto eternal life, even though he lived a righteous life and gave money to the poor. He still needed to submit his life to his Savior Jesus Christ. But Cornelius did surrender his life to Christ. He did go to heaven when he died. The rich man went to Hell, because he never surrendered his life to Christ.
Doing some good things does not save anyone. People need to admit they are sinners and surrender their life to the Lordship of Jesus, as did Cornelius. We may be amazed by seeing a good work in the life of an unbeliever, but this does not mean they love Christ. We may be amazed to learn a mostly evil person did something kind. But they are still spiritually lost. Due to God’s image stamped upon us, all people have the capacity to do some good things but otherwise have an evil and unrepentant heart. Paul spoke of this as blindness in 2Cor.4:4, “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.” Christians can shine more and more of God’s image as Col3:10b says Christians can, “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”
So even evil people can reflect a tiny bit of God’s image when they do some acts of goodness. The evil people like those murders, and even seemingly righteous people like Cornelius need the Lord. He is available to all who ask. Let’s never give up on anyone, but keep on praying for their salvation.
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