God’s Goodness
When you picture God, what do you see? I’m not talking about appearance. What is He like? What is his personality?
Sometimes when I talk to people about God, I hear them talk about Him as if He is like some kind of bully policeman with absolutely no sense of humor… and he just kind of walks around with this threatening look on his face, tapping his nightstick just waiting for us to make a mistake so that He can lash out at us in anger and condemnation.
Or He’s kind of like that angry parent who is always critical, no matter how well we do on our report card or in our sports game, he is always insisting that we could have done better. We just aren’t ever good enough for Him.
Or sometimes, I hear Christians talk about Him like He’s a demanding dictator who is barking orders. He demands a life of sacrifice and hardship. His plans for your life are going to leave you miserable, but it’s what you must do if you are going to please this demanding dictator who is your boss.
All of these distorted views of God, have one common theme among them:
God does not have your best interests at heart. He is not good and cannot therefore be trusted!
But is that true?
Absolutely not! This is the fourth blog post week in a series on the attributes of God where we are talking about God’s distinguishing characteristics, who He is by nature and will always be.
And the attribute we are talking about today is God’s goodness.
GOD IS GOOD ACCORDING TO SCRIPTURE
Scripture declares all throughout the Old and New Testament that God is good!
Psalm 52:1 declares:
The goodness of God endures continually. (Psalm 52:1)
In Psalm 119:68, the psalmist writes:
You are good and do only good. (Psalm 119:68)
Psalm 100:5 proclaims:
For the Lord is good and his love endures forever! (Psalm 100:5)
Furthermore, God even declares that He Himself is good in Exodus 33. He is having a conversation with Moses about being with Him as he leads the Israelite nation, and Moses says, “Show me your glory!” And in Exodus 33:19, it says:
And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you.” (Exodus. 33:19)
“My” goodness. God declares that He is good. It’s who He is. Goodness is part of His nature and His character.
Based on these Scripture references, the 17th century Puritan preacher, Thomas Manton, defines God’s goodness in this way:
He is originally good. He is essentially good. He is infinitely good. He is eternally good, and He is immutably good. (Thomas Manton)
We talked about God’s attribute of immutability in a previous blog post. God’s immutability means that He is unchanging.
God has always been good and that will never change. His attribute of goodness doesn’t change based on the day, your behavior, or how things are going in the world. God is good and He’ll always be good.
GOD’S GOODNESS IN OUR LIVES
GOD’S GOODNESS TO SHARE HIS INTIMACY WITH US
In a previous blog post in this series, we defined God’s attribute of aseity. He is self-existent. God is life itself. He is not a created being. He’s just always been here, and He has everything He needs in and of Himself.
God also exists as a Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). He exists in a perfectly intimate relationship within Himself.
So, God didn’t have to create us to bring Him something He was missing.
So, why did He create us?
He created us to share in the intimate, perfect relationship that He has within Himself.
God didn’t create us to bark orders at us. He didn’t create us to serve Him in detached, cold-hearted ways. He didn’t create us out of a desire to constantly catch us doing something wrong and make us feel shame for those things.
No, God created us to share in the intimacy He has within Himself.
In John 17, Jesus prays this…
“My prayer is…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you… I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. (John 17:20-23)
Jesus prays that we might be one with Him in the same way that He and the Father are one. In other words, that we would share in the intimate relationship they have with each other.
Are you experiencing the goodness of God through His intimacy? It all starts with having the right view of Him. If you don’t believe He is good, then you won’t experience His goodness.
GOD’S CREATION IS GOOD
In the creation account of our Bibles, we read this at the end of Genesis 1, in verse 31:
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Gen. 1:31)
In Psalm 33:5, the psalmist declares:
The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. (Ps. 33:5)
And it is full of His goodness!
Stunning displays of sunrises and sunsets, majestic mountains, vast oceans, waterfalls, fields of bluebonnets (Yes, I live in Texas!), a herd of horses running through a field, graceful swans flying together, and more!
And we know that what we see in God’s creation has even been impacted in some ways through the fall and sin entering our world, and yet we still see the goodness of God on display all around us!
And speaking of the fall and sin entering the world, that is yet another way we see the goodness of God on display.
GOD IS GOOD EVEN IN OUR REBELLION AGAINST HIM
In Genesis 3 after sin enters the world, God is pronouncing judgment on Satan, and declares:
…he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. (Gen. 3:15)
This is a reference to Jesus crushing the Satan through His finished work on the cross. In other words, immediately after we rebelled against Him in the garden, God announced that He was coming on a rescue mission for us.
God declares out of His goodness, “Make no mistake about it. You messed up. You turned your back on me and are now in bondage and slavery to sin and death, but I am coming after you! I will pursue you and sacrifice myself for you so that you can still experience my goodness in your life.”
And He does. He did come after us.
GOD DISPLAYED HIS GOODNESS THROUGH THE CROSS
Look at what we are told by the apostle Paul in Galatians 4:4-5:
But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. (Galatians 4:4-5)
Jesus came on a rescue mission for us by entering our world Himself to purchase us out of our bondage and curse to sin and the law.
And notice in verse 5, it says, “receive.” God’s goodness is so good that he offers us the salvation that He purchases for us as a gift. Salvation is not something to be earned, but something to be received by faith.
And at the moment we receive His gift of redemption and salvation, we enter back into that union and intimacy that He has always wanted to share with us even before the foundation of the world!
GOD IS SO GOOD THAT HE EVEN SHARES HIS GOODNESS WITH US
God’s goodness is what is known as a communicable attribute. It’s an attribute that He shares with us. In other words, God makes you good through His salvation.
You weren’t good. You were a sinner and unholy and unrighteous and even considered God’s enemy.
But when you enter into a union with Jesus, you are made good. You are made into a new creation in Christ. Your old self died. He killed off your sin nature and has given you a new nature. You are made holy. You are made righteous. You are made acceptable.
In Christ, you are made good. God shares His spiritual DNA with you through union with Christ, and you are made good.
Even more incredible than that is the fact that His goodness is now expressed outwardly through you in good works.
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Eph. 2:10)
As we live dependently on Him as the Vine and receive His goodness through us as the branch, God will express His goodness through us in good works towards others.
They get to be the recipients of God’s goodness through us, and we get to experience it flowing through us. Wow, what goodness!
GOD IS GOOD EVEN IN SUFFERING
Perhaps the most amazing thing about God’s goodness is that God is good even in suffering.
Sometimes that suffering is caused from our own choices in the form of consequences of sinful choices that we’ve made in our own lives, but even that is a display of God’s goodness!
Here’s why. Satan is out to steal, kill, and destroy. He is out to deceive us by tempting us to live our lives in sinful ways because He knows they are not God’s best for us.
Our enemy knows that we experience Life in Christ through our relationship with Him, so he tempts us with sin as a counterfeit life because he doesn’t want us to experience the goodness of God.
But God allows us to feel and experience those consequences when we do sin so that we’ll know that abundant life isn’t found in those sinful ways.
Allowing us to feel those consequences is what God uses to draw us back to Him and His goodness in our lives.
Sometimes, however, Satan causes suffering in our world and in our lives that is not a result of our choices. We get cancer. Someone leaves us. A loved one dies.
And God’s goodness isn’t found in those things in and of themselves, but His goodness can be experienced through those things.
He is with us in the hurt and pain. We are not alone. He provides comfort. He can give us peace and assurance in times of suffering, and He can even work for our good in some way as well (Romans 8:28)
GOD’S GOODNESS
If the enemy has deceived you into thinking that God doesn’t have your best interests at heart, please know the truth that God is good.
It’s one of His attributes. Goodness is part of His character. It’s in His nature to be good.
Now, our definition of good and God’s don’t always match up, and therefore, we must trust that even when things aren’t going well in our lives that He is good. But there is enough evidence of His goodness on display to keep us focused on that reality even when it can’t be seen from our perspective.
What’s our response?
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness! (Psalm 107:8)
We thank Him.
“Thank you, God, for your goodness. Thank you for allowing us to experience your goodness. Thank you for sharing your goodness with us and expressing it through us for others to experience. Thank you for even working for good in times of suffering. What a good God you really are!”
