If God knew that we would sin, why did he create the world?

If God knew that we would sin, why did he create the world?Our tendency in answering this question is to look at it from a man-centered perspective: what’s in it for us? Wouldn’t it have been better for us never to have sinned?

But the answer that the bible gives challenges us by taking a God-centered perspective. And it makes us step back and ask an even bigger question:

Why did God create the world at all?
God didn’t create the world primarily for our benefit, he did it for his glory. He created a world that would display his glory most fully and most perfectly. That is to say, every aspect of God’s character could be shown in its most extreme form.

If God had created a world in which no one sinned, what aspects of his character could he have shown? His creative power, his loving-kindness, his provision for his people.

But what about his mercy? Or his justice? Or his wrath?

And would we have seen even his creative power to its fullest extent if there had been no death and therefore no resurrection?

Could we have known the greatness of his loving-kindness if he had not shown it to faithless Israel?

Paul explains something of this in Romans 9:22-23
‘What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory…’

God’s wrath expended against unrepentant sinners demonstrates the riches of his glory, just as his mercy shown to the elect demonstrates his glory.