The writer of “Part of God’s plan?” (letter, Dec. 3) has a false argument. He starts with three false presuppositions.

The first is, God should be the way the writer wants him to be. Second, he presupposes that human beings are truly good. No one on Earth can say he has kept the Ten Commandments perfectly. We are sinners by nature and are born in rebellion against God. If God is just, he must punish sinners. God owes us nothing else. The third false presupposition is that God has done nothing about this problem of evil.

God, in his love and mercy, was not content to leave us in this hopeless condition. God became a man to live a perfect life in our place and die the death we all deserve (for our sin) in our place, and rose from the dead to prove it. He died for all of our (me included) blasphemy, adultery, lying, stealing, disobedience to parents, covetousness, idolatry, murder (hate anyone lately?), Sabbath-breaking and atheism. God the Father poured out all of his wrath on his own son that he might adopt us wretched sinners for his own. By grace through faith in Jesus Christ, God imputes the righteousness of Christ to the believer and Christ takes the sins of the world. Christ has propitiated God’s wrath and he calls us to repent and believe this good news.

Yes, it’s God’s plan. Romans 9:20: “Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?”

Jason ThorpWiesbaden, Germany