Sirach 33:14-15. "Good is the opposite of evil, and life the opposite of death; so the sinner is the opposite of the godly." Sirach tells us to look upon the works of God - they are all likewise in pairs - one the opposite of the other.

This is a wisdom book, so I know that this is true, but at first I had a hard time with this, my brain immediately wanted to find the exception - not everything has an opposite, does it? What is the opposite of God, for example? As I thought about it I see what Sirach is saying - that God shows us his many aspects by having created such a diverse world in which we can find an opposite for almost everything, but those opposites are all good - they are the "works of the Most High". " Remember Genesis, for example - God created day and night, the land and the sea, man and woman, all were "opposites", and all were good. God loves diversity and differences!

But Sirach opens with evil being the opposite of good and sin being the opposite of being godly. God did not create evil and sin. All that God created was good, including the angel Lucifer. But Lucifer had free will like the rest of us and he defied God, he turned away from God, and his fall was the opposite of good - it was evil, and it brought evil into the world.

Satan, though, is not the opposite of God, he is still one of God's creatures. God is everything, God is being itself. The only opposite to God is non-being. Or, put another way, the opposite of God is opposition to Him - that is, turning away from Him, from being to non-being, from life to death. And this is the definition of sin - the choosing of death over life at its fullest.