While God is the all-powerful and all-knowing Creator, it is a misunderstanding of evil to think that it is a created thing that God must have made. Evil is by definition an absence of a good that should be there. It is much like darkness, which is simply an absence of light, hence the common reference to evil as darkness in the Bible. But God’s Word says “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).
God is goodness itself, the source from which all good things spring, and there are many more Scriptures you can find on the goodness, holiness, and perfection of God if you search. Sin is a missing of the mark of God’s goodness, again an absence of a good that should have been there, whether it be of a behavior or quality of character. When God performed the work of creation, there was no evil. “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day” (Genesis 1:31).
This means that evil came afterwards, and God did not cause it. He simply gave mankind and angels the ability to choose what they will do. By our very nature, humans must be able to freely choose, because we are made in the image of a God who freely chooses to love, to create, to do good. And He also chose to allow angels that freedom, which the Devil/Satan abused.
Satan was created good, perfect, just like the rest of creation, as the Word says, “You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering… You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you” (Ezekiel 28:12-15).
That passage is a common one where the “Prince of Tyre” is taken to be the angel called Lucifer, also known as Satan. And another passage speaks to his fall: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God… I will be like the Most High’” (Isaiah 14:12-14). So we see that Satan made the choice to be selfish, to make himself the ultimate authority instead of God, the same thing Adam and Eve did when they fell, choosing to trust themselves (and the serpent, Satan) rather than God who had created them and cared for them.
That’s why the Bible says sin entered the world through those choices, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). Also, “He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:8).
The good news is, Jesus has made a way for all to come to repentance and recover a new nature of a good man, that of Jesus Christ who lived the perfect life to trade places with all of us who have chosen evil. We can die in Christ by faith and rise to new life as new creations with a new nature capable of good and destined for the ultimate good when Christ returns.