Sin entered creation very soon after the world began. ‘Creation and fall … differ from each other in nature and essence, but chronologically they are close together.’¹Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 221.

But it didn’t start with us. That detail matters more than it first appears.

Sin did not break out on earth in the first instance, but in heaven, at the foot of God’s throne.

The First Rebellion Happened in God’s Presence

The Bible traces the absolute beginning of sin and evil to the mind and will of the devil.

Its account of the creation and fall of angels is fairly reticent. Genesis assumes Satan’s revolt but never reports it. We seem to be told only as much as we need to understand the nature and origin of humanity’s fall.

Still, the matter is enormously important, because the sin of a group of angels near the world’s beginning is the point at which evil first entered creation. ‘Sin did not break out on earth in the first instance, but in heaven, in the immediate presence of God, and at the foot of his throne. The thought, the wish, the will to resist God arose first in the heart of the angels.’²Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 221. An influential discussion is Anselm’s, On the Fall of the Devil, in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. with an Introduction by Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford University Press, 1998), 193-232. The fall of the devil is in some senses more difficult to comprehend than the defection of Adam and Eve. As God cannot be the author of sin, it is hard to imagine how or from where the devil (originally created good and living in the presence of God) could have got even the thought of disobedience. Anselm argues that for some reason Satan grew dissatisfied, wanting to be like God to a degree inappropriate and impossible for even so high a kind of creature. The fault lay in an inordinate level of desire, longing for what he had not been given, did not have, and ought not to have wished for. The devil, Anselm, says, ‘when he willed what God did not want him to will, he inordinately willed to be like God … Even if he did not will to be wholly equal to God, but something less than God against the will of God, by that very fact he inordinately willed to be like God, because he willed something by his own will, as subject to no one.’ (On the Fall of the Devil, 4; eds. Davies and Evans, 202). This violated the difference between Creator and creature, bringing devastating results.

‘The devil,’ Jesus said, is ‘a liar’, ‘was a murderer from the beginning’ (John 8:44), and ‘has been sinning from the beginning’ (1 John 3:8). From the flow of Genesis it seems unlikely the angelic fall happened between 1:1 and 1:31 — more probably after the sixth day and before the fall of man.³Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 221.

What Scripture Actually Says About It

Several passages describe spiritual beings who sinned and came under judgment. They tell us five things: the straightforward fact that a contingent of angels sinned (2 Pet 2:4); the nature of that sin — abandoning their ‘position of authority’ and departing ‘their proper dwelling’ (Jude 6); the extent, affecting a third of their company (Rev 12:3-4); the essence, said to be pride and conceit, literally ‘being puffed up’ (1 Tim 3:6); and two further reasons — envy of God (Gen 3:5) and dissatisfaction with their God-given status (Jude 6).

There’s also strong allusion to satanic-level rebellion in two prophetic passages (Isa 14:12-15; Ezek 28:2-10).

Why such sin entered these angels’ minds with no outside influence and no prior evil in existence is unexplained. It must have begun somewhere in the imagination, but how it became a reality among some of the spiritual creatures is hidden from us. Note what’s being ruled out, though. These were not creatures made faulty. They were made good, in God’s own presence, with every advantage — and they turned anyway. And yet:

‘no other account seems possible. Everything that is not the Creator is created by him. He creates all things “good.” Therefore, if there are bad creatures, they must have become bad; as it is with humans so it must be with spirits. But if the devils were once good spirits, what can they then have been but angels? … The fall of angels is indeed inconceivable, but so is evil as such; nevertheless evil occurs.’⁴Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology (Oxford University Press, 1999), 2:131.

Why It Matters That We Weren’t First

Biblical teaching is unique in tracing the original emergence of evil solely to the decision of intelligent spiritual creatures. Sin didn’t start with people. Evil on earth was preceded and prompted by evil above the earth, first emerging among ‘the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places’ (Eph 6:12).

So the absolute origin of evil is external to humanity. Satan sinned, tempted Adam and Eve, and they sinned. The angels who fell weren’t tempted by anyone — their sin originated entirely within themselves.

That’s a significant difference. Unlike the angels, ‘man did not come to the transgression of the law of God by himself exclusively but was moved to it from outside himself.’⁵Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 222; cf. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 377-78. The power of darkness is ‘cosmic’ rather than merely human.

This doesn’t excuse us — the rest of Scripture is emphatic that it doesn’t. But it does mean the human fall happened inside a conflict already running. We didn’t invent evil. We joined it.

Notice too what this says about the devil’s kingdom. He built nothing. Everything he has is taken from a good world turned against its Maker — which is exactly why every sin extends his territory and none of it is ever his by right.

The Snake Had a Passenger

Far from being mythological, Genesis presents the snake in Eden as a genuine animal: ‘the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made’ (Gen 3:1).

Later, ‘that ancient serpent’ is twice identified with ‘the great dragon … the devil and Satan’ himself, ‘the deceiver of the whole world’ (Rev 12:9, 14). We’re told ‘war arose in heaven,’ and that when Michael and his angels fought the dragon and his angels, ‘he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him’ (Rev 12:7, 9).

The Gospels tell us unclean spirits may sometimes enter animals (Mark 5:2, 11-13). On that basis the devil may be assumed to have manipulated and possessed the actual snake, using it for his own ends. The serpent effectively acted as a ‘spokesman’ for Satan.⁶Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 122. On the literal historicity of the speaking snake as a tool of Satan, see 123-130.

Which reframes the whole scene in Eden. It isn’t a fable about human weakness in the face of appetite. It’s an episode in a war that was already under way — and behind the question ‘Did God actually say…?’ stands a will that had already, in God’s own presence, chosen its own conceit over the Creator’s protection.

—

• 1
  Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 221. ↩︎
• 2
  Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 221. An influential discussion is Anselm’s, On the Fall of the Devil, in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. with an Introduction by Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford University Press, 1998), 193-232. The fall of the devil is in some senses more difficult to comprehend than the defection of Adam and Eve. As God cannot be the author of sin, it is hard to imagine how or from where the devil (originally created good and living in the presence of God) could have got even the thought of disobedience. Anselm argues that for some reason Satan grew dissatisfied, wanting to be like God to a degree inappropriate and impossible for even so high a kind of creature. The fault lay in an inordinate level of desire, longing for what he had not been given, did not have, and ought not to have wished for. The devil, Anselm, says, ‘when he willed what God did not want him to will, he inordinately willed to be like God … Even if he did not will to be wholly equal to God, but something less than God against the will of God, by that very fact he inordinately willed to be like God, because he willed something by his own will, as subject to no one.’ (On the Fall of the Devil, 4; eds. Davies and Evans, 202). This violated the difference between Creator and creature, bringing devastating results. ↩︎
• 3
  Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 221. ↩︎
• 4
  Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology (Oxford University Press, 1999), 2:131. ↩︎
• 5
  Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 222; cf. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 377-78. ↩︎
• 6
  Hoekema, Created in God’s Image, 122. On the literal historicity of the speaking snake as a tool of Satan, see 123-130. ↩︎