This is an interesting question. The most easy and quick answer is for His pleasure or because He wanted to. But is there more to it than that?
The answer to this question can only come from His word in the Bible and what it says about everything He’s already done in the past and everything He’s going to do in the future. So let’s jump in and see what we can figure out.
The Bible tells us that God is one God with a Triune essence of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This Triune essence is a “Relationship” essence. God IS a Relationship, and relationship is what brings Him His greatest pleasure. He loves it so much He decided to create angels to have a personal relationship with Himself and with each other; and then, following that, He created the human race to have a personal relationship with Himself and with each other.
Relationship is the “only” thing that God truly cares about the most. Why is that? Because relationship involves FREE WILL! We all know that God is a God of love. It is impossible to have love without free will. You can only love if you have the ability not to love. It is impossible to please God without free will because without free will you are simply a programmed type of robot. As smart as robots are becoming these days and as smart as they will ever be, will they ever be able to “love” you? Of course not. That involves free will which involves thinking and feeling. Robots will never think or feel. They can only do one thing – compute, and even that is limited by what their program allows them to compute.
The simplest definition of love is putting others before yourself. The opposite of love is pride – putting yourself before others. God loves us and desires that we also love Him back.
Angels and humans are sentient beings created in God’s image of spirit, soul and body. Both angels and humans have free will in order to love God back and obey Him, or not to love and obey Him.
Each angel was created “saved” directly by God to be perfect and without sin and to live eternally in His presence. The angels receive the very BEST God has to offer living with Him in heaven. They do have free will; and as we know from the Bible, God’s most high angel Lucifer decided he wanted to be like God and worshipped and committed the first sin in the Bible, the sin of pride by putting himself before God. His influence was so strong, approximately one-third of the angels using their free will also rejected God and fell.
God, knowing all things, knew this would happen before He created them but He did so anyway. They ended up being cast out of heaven. Obviously, this disappointed God greatly, and especially since they were receiving the very “best” God had to offer and rejected Him anyway.
It was then that God did something very different. He decided to create human beings. They would be very different from angels. How so?
Again, God knowing all things, knew human beings would sin and end up being born “lost” instead of “saved” like His angels when they were created. It appears He created the universe for the main purpose of creating “time” which exists “inside” eternity. God is eternal and does not need “time.” Only humans need “time.” Everything that happens “inside eternity” is eternal. This is why the angels that fell from “inside eternity” do not have a plan of redemption and there is no way for them to get “right” with God again.
This also explains why human beings now have “time” in order to be born lost; but, at some point inside our time on earth, we hopefully will come to know God through His Son Jesus Christ and go from being eternally lost to eternally saved. THEN when we “enter eternity,” our eternity is already set to live with God forever. For those who die and enter eternity without Jesus, their eternity is also set to spend eternity separated from God forever in hell. ETERNITY and God is what life is all about!
How else are humans different from angels? God “directly” Himself created each sinless angel. Everything God creates is sinless and perfect. Adam and Eve were created sinless and perfect. Once they disobeyed God and sinned, Adam became the father of sin when his sin nature was passed on to every human being that’s ever had a human father and mother (Gen 3:15). Human beings are created indirectly by God but created directly by sinful men and women through procreation. This is why all humans are born lost with a sin nature and separated from God, beginning with birth.
Sin not only affects human beings but affects “everything” in the entire universe. The Bible says all of nature groans for the children of God to be redeemed (Romans 8:19-23). The bottom line is: humans are born behind the 8 ball. Because of sin we do not live in God’s presence. We are not receiving the very best God has to offer. We temporarily live in a world that has “both” good and evil, both pleasure and pain, both love and hate, and many other opposites. With God in heaven, there are no opposites – only all good with no sin. This is what every human being should yearn for; but alas, according to the Bible, our free will prevents the majority of humans from coming to know God and spending eternity with Him.
Free will is the most dangerous thing on the planet for every human being because, with it, we determine our ETERNAL destiny.
So knowing this, what would you rather be – an angel or a human being? Here is a rhetorical question – is it easier for an angel to be “saved” or a human being to be “saved?”
So now we get back to the title of this article? Why would God do this – create a human race in a lost sinful condition and inside a sinful universe for their entire lives? Or, here is a better question: which pleases God more – for a saved angel to love Him and stay saved, or for a lost human to love Him and become saved? That’s another rhetorical question.
From the Bible, we know that around one third of the saved angels fell; and it “appears” from the Bible that approximately one-third of the lost human race will be saved.
And now we get to the pièce de résistance of the absolute best difference between angels and humans, and perhaps the “main” reason God created human beings.
And to best grasp this point, let’s ask ourselves this question: Has God done anything for human beings that He has not done for angels? He has. It’s a biggie! His love and His reward for lost human beings who manage to come to know Him and love Him through Jesus Christ is so great that He decided to do the unthinkable – allow us to become “joined” to Himself through the Holy Spirit that resides in all born- again believers. In John 14:20, Jesus says, “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.”
A good analogy for this is: God is Windows; angels are Mac. They serve and support Windows but are separate from Windows. We are a Windows “upgrade.” We are not Windows but we are a part of Windows, and thus are connected to God in a very unique way that angels are not. This helps explain why the Bible says we shall rule over angels.
It appears that God’s greatest plan and desire was to take His lost human beings created in His image and living in a lost universe, and reward those who came to love Him and know Him through His Son Jesus – to reward them with Himself for all eternity. THAT is how big a deal it is for God when each person becomes saved. The Bible says the angels rejoice when that occurs. Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
I used to be concerned about what would happen in eternity if I goofed up like some of the fallen angels and sinned somehow. I now know that is “impossible” for this reason: By being connected to God in a unique way, just like God would never sin with His free will, we will never sin with our free will. And we will be able to LOVE the way God loves; and how great is that?
Being connected to God for all eternity is wonderful but we will not be able to know what that “fully” means inside eternity until we get there. This is just one more reason to be saying daily – Maranatha. Come quickly Lord Jesus.
dcogburn@twc.com