Who Is God?: The Good One

This is a continuation of a series on the attributes of God.

When we speak of God’s attributes, we are talking about those characteristics that help us to understand who He truly is. One of these attributes is “goodness.”

Where It Is in the Bible

“The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”
(Exodus 34:6-7)

“Good and upright is the Lord.”
(Psalm 25:8)

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.”
(James 1:17)

What It Means

One of the most intrinsic attributes of God is His goodness. God is not good because it is attractive for Him to be so, nor does He follow after some sort of standard for goodness. God is actually so good that He is the source of goodness; He alone is the rule and measure of what we truly know to be good.

Why It Matters

To the Christian, the goodness of the Lord is a security. The Christian knows well that he has been bathed in the death and resurrection of Christ and now stands wholly righteous before God; and this being so, he also recognizes all that God will work in his life will be for his own good — for a good God would never work circumstances to the peril of the righteous. Romans 8.28 tells that “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” This is the believer’s rest and assurance. But not so for the unbeliever: the goodness of God demands all circumstances to work together for the bad of those rebellious and hateful towards God. God’s goodness will manifest itself in a wrathful justice against those who are defiled of holiness, for True goodness cannot abide evil.