“For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.”
– Psalm 5:4
This is both good and bad news! The good news: God is good, righteous, just, and holy. We can trust Him for these reasons. We can believe in everything He says without fear or doubt and we know that He is worthy of our worship and love.
But here’s the bad news: when we’re honest with ourselves we recognize that we each have evil within us. We have our moments, our breakdowns, our setbacks, our failures, our sin, don’t we? There are the actions we shouldn’t have taken, the words we shouldn’t have said, and the thoughts we shouldn’t have thought. So as good as God is, the bad news is we can’t dwell with Him.
But here’s the really good news: God still wants us to dwell with Him, He still loves us despite our sins and evil, and He is merciful, kind, and gracious. So He provided a way to deal with the evil within us, that we may live with Him forever. He sent His eternal Son Jesus into this world to live the pure and holy life we cannot and to die as an atoning sacrifice to pay the penalty for our sins. Through His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead, Jesus paid off the debt of sin for all who believe in Him. The record of evil is wiped clean, the power of evil is broken over our lives, and we receive eternal life in the knowledge and presence of God.
While God indeed does not delight in wickedness, through faith in Jesus Christ, God sees the righteousness of Christ within us and He delights in us!