The Goodness of God

Jesus was once addressed as ‘good Master’ by a rich young ruler. The response of Jesus might surprise us. He said to the ruler, ‘Why do you call me good. There is none good but God.’ When we think about that response, we can see that Jesus did not want the man to speak in an unthoughtful way. We can also see from his words that it is correct to think of God’s goodness.

Goodness, we might say, refers to both character and action. It describes who a person is and what a person does. When used of God, it must be seen through the fact that he is perfect. God is not only the best out of a range of levels of goodness. He is infinitely good, the highest good, continuously good, uniquely good. His goodness expresses his wisdom as well as his love, his intentions as well as his actions.

God is good in himself, although it is very difficult for us to grasp this reality. But we can safely assume several features of his goodness. One is that each person of the Trinity will be involved because they each desire good for the others. A way of expressing this is that they will want glory for each person. This will be revealed in the outworking of the eternal plan, the covenant of redemption.

Another aspect is that love will be displayed in whatever way goodness is revealed. God is love constantly; he does not only show or have love for creatures outside of himself, but love is the heart from which goodness comes, and love is the channel along which goodness flows within God. God loves himself for who he is.

We are also told that God is light. In him, there are no defects, no inappropriate desires or intentions, no failings, no reasons for regret at what he has done. His goodness is always fully involved in his initiations and his reactions. We will see this as we consider his goodness as it is expressed outwardly in his creation. To do this, we can think about his goodness in the original creation, in the incarnation of Jesus, and in the provision of salvation.

God’s goodness in creation

We are probably familiar with the account of creation in Genesis 1, of how the Lord made the universe, particularly the earth, with different features created or formed every day. At the end of Days 3 to 6, God says that what was made on each day was good. We are not told why that assessment is missing on Days 1 and 2. Perhaps we are to assume that the affirmation at the close of Day 3 covers it and the previous two days. 

We can see from the account that the display of God’s goodness was accumulative. At the close of Day 6, with the creation of humans made in his image, God says that his work of creation was very good. While the activities of the other days had given him pleasure (they were good), it was wholeness of the completed work of the six days that gave him great delight.

Moreover, we can see that with regard to some of his works he acted in precise order. Every day had its particular focus. It was not because he could not have made everything at the same time. Rather, he was providing himself as a role model for his human creatures to follow. To everything there was a time for every purpose under heaven.

A third feature of his goodness is seen in his giving his best provision to Adam and Eve. He could have made them first and put them in an unshaped world. They could have then watched as he made other things for them. That would have been impressive. But would that have been better than the method he chose. Instead, because he is good, he gave to Adam and Eve a mature world, with everything ready for them. 

A fourth feature of his goodness was seen in the arrangement he made with Adam that we call the covenant of works. It was straightforward and clear, warning them of the only danger that they faced, which was to disobey him in one area of life, their response to the fruit of a particular tree. We know that it is good to give a warning about potential danger.

A fifth feature of his goodness at that time was the revelation that One would come and deliver the human race from the disastrous consequences of disobedience. Adam and Eve, in their sinfulness, were informed that the great God of creation could do something else, which was to rescue them from their self-chosen descent into ruin and fear and poverty.

God’s goodness in the incarnation

The day arrived when the Rescuer came, not to Bethlehem at his birth, but to the womb of Mary. The Son of God did not merely come to be with us, but he came to be one of us. He was not going to rescue us from a distance, but was going to rescue us by going to where only sinful humans should go, to the place of punishment for their sins. But he would go there as a sinless human.

Was it not good of God to reveal the Saviour day after day after day? When he was born, who did God tell? Shepherds who were looked down on, Gentile wise men who were on the outside, and gave them special revelation that the Rescuer had come. Then when Jesus had to go somewhere to live, Nazareth was chosen for him, the place where nothing good came from. For thirty years, God gave to those citizens a daily revelation of himself. How good was God to them?

They saw Jesus, but in reality they did not see him because they did not understand who he was. But some others did — his disciples. How did they know who he was? Because God in his goodness told them, enlightened them. That is what Jesus said to Peter, is it not? He did not learn about Jesus through human knowledge but through divine revelation. John later wrote that when they saw Jesus they saw the glory of God. How good God was to them for those three years.

But then, Jesus was arrested, tried and put to death. Where was the good God at that time. Perhaps we can put it this way — he was piling your sins on to the heart of the Saviour. Do you know how heavy your sins are? It required divine strength to move them from you, if you are a Christian, and give them into the hands of Jesus, and it required divine enabling by the Spirit for him to receive the punishment due to them. Calvary was not an easy place to be, even for the Son of God. But it was his goodness that took him there and caused him to remain there until the price was paid.

The incarnation was not reversed by the death of Jesus. Instead, he continued his manhood after he rose from the dead and then ascended to heaven. His resurrection and ascension were for his good and our good, even as he indicated when he said to Mary Magdalene on resurrection Sunday that he would ascend to his God and Father and to her God and Father.

God’s goodness in his salvation

How is God’s goodness revealed from heaven? The Bible tells us that the Lord sends food and other benefits so that we will seek him. It is strange that people make a fuss about Christmas since God pours out his common grace every day? But the Lord does a lot more than send us physical blessings; he also sends to us the gospel in which he offers to us salvation from our sins. In the gospel his blessings are free, although we do have to repent of our sins and trust in Jesus. But when we respond correctly, we experience his goodness.

How does the Lord show his goodness when we believe? We don’t realise at the time what has happened to us. But we can put it this way. Through faith in Jesus, we are placed in a spiritual place from where we can see that God has blest us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. We spend our days discovering the goodness of the Lord as we live out the undeserved provision of goodness and mercy following us all the days of our lives.

What aspects of the goodness of the Lord do we find in those spiritual blessings? All we need to do is read the first section of the letter to the Ephesians. There we discover that God has loved us eternally and that he had a plan to make us members of his family. In that family, we would become heirs of an inheritance that belongs to the Saviour, and that we would be given the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our final entrance into it, and who would also work within us to give us foretastes of it through the provision of blessings such as joy and peace. How good is the God we adore!

Time is a great blessing for Christians. It is the place where we now receive blessings. But it is more than that. It is like a train that is taking us to the place of full blessings because it is inevitable that with the passing of time we are getting closer and closer to the destination. Is that not what Paul tells us when he says that all things are yours, whether things present or things to come? So time is an opportunity to taste and see that God is good, and that whoever trusts in him is blest. 

The prayer of Moses

Moses once asked the Lord to show his glory to him. The Lord was pleased to do so: ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name “The LORD”’ (Exod. 33:18). What did the Lord’s answer mean? We are told in the next chapter: ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation’ (Exod. 34:6-7). That is the goodness of the Lord. He is gracious, merciful, forgiving and a hater of sin.

It was a wise petition that Moses made when he asked the Lord to reveal his glory. The greater the petition, we might say, the more wonderful the answer. We are told to ask, and if we ask to see his glory he will reveal the greatness of his goodness. 

That is what David discovered in Psalm 23 when he realised that everywhere he went the goodness and mercy of the Lord was also there. He could not take a step without them following him through life. Whether in pleasant times or in difficult times, there he could experience the goodness and mercy of God. 

Where can we see the goodness of God beside our footsteps, goodness that is accompanied by his mercy? Here are some suggestions. We see it in the fact that his presence is with us wherever his providence takes us. We see it in answered prayer, we see it in the provisions of life, we see it in his restoration which happens much more often than we realise, we see it in his Word as he opens up a passage to our minds, we see it in the fact that he is there with us. 

This psalm reminds us that we should not only speak about the goodness of God when pleasant things occur. The good God is with us in the darkest of moments. He is faithful because he is good; he is kind because he is good; he upholds us in the trials of life because he is good; he guides us on the best road to heaven because he is good. 

Take another verse that speaks about the goodness of God: ‘We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose’ (Rom. 8:28). Eric Alexander pointed out three obvious aspects of God’s goodness in that verse. He is personally at work for us, he is ceaselessly at work for us, and he is universally at work for us.