God: Good

“God is good.”

What does this sentence truly mean? What is the true meaning of this well-known statement? How are we to live in light of its meaning?

When thinking about how to define “good,” I had a hard time because of two simple reasons: my view of goodness in the world is distorted and my view of God’s goodness is too low.

I have often heard - even from myself a long time ago - that we are all basically good people. We don’t kill people. We don’t lie that much. We don’t steal that much. We do some good things on occasion for others. We are basically good people.

The sad and sobering truth is this: We are not good people. We are not basically “good.” We are sinners by nature. When we are born we naturally want to sin and commit sins against God. 

Without God’s intervention, we are all sinful (Romans 3:23, 1 Kings 8:46, 1 John 1:8), everything we do against God is sin (Romans 14:23, Hebrews 11:6), we are morally incapable of loving God as we need to (John 3:5-7, Romans 6:17-18), and our sin deserves to be eternally punished by God and His wrath (Matthew 25:46).

The Bible portrays a very different reality than we believe that we live in.

Okay, so if that’s true… Why does that even matter?

Because God is good!

Karis Church, the church I am an intern and have been a member at for two years, sums up God’s goodness like this:

Our Lord is perfectly good. This means that He is morally excellent, but it means more than that. He is also completely satisfying. We were made to find our joy in Him. Coming to Him brings deep satisfaction.

God is perfectly good. He is way more “good” than we believe. We place a value on goodness based on our experience and our moral standard, but God’s goodness is perfect in nature because His nature itself is perfect. In His perfection, His goodness surpasses our finite understanding of “good.”

Everything that happens is tied to God’s goodness because He is by nature perfectly good in all ways, at all times, and in all situations. Those who believe in God’s goodness through His Son Jesus Christ will find refuge and comfort (Psalm 34: 8, Psalm 106:1-5, Matthew 5:4). 

Jesus Christ is the ultimate picture and revelation of God’s goodness. Jesus, God in the flesh, came to reconcile God to His chosen people. He, in perfect goodness, lived a perfect life. He, in perfect goodness, willingly died on the cross for sinners to be reconciled to the Father God. He, in perfect goodness, defeated death by raising from the grave three days after his death. He is perfectly good in all that He does.

In light of this, how we are to respond? 

By placing our faith in Jesus Christ and His perfect goodness.

There is no need to look for anything else to satisfy your thirst for something pure, everlasting, and fulfilling. We are all constantly looking for a greater pleasure, a greater high, a greater this and that. The problem is that we seek for “goodness” in all the wrong places.

We find perfect, pure, righteous, holy, just, loving, forgiving, gracious, and unchanging goodness in Jesus Christ alone!

God is good. God is good. God is good!

Trust Jesus. He is perfectly good.

God is good and gracious.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

Romans 5:1-11

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
(Romans 5:1-11, ESV)

God is good and gracious.

Jacob Luis Gonzales

God: Good & Gracious

Some of you might have noticed that at the end of most of my blog posts, I use this sentence:

“God is good and gracious.”

I started writing this as a simple reminder for myself of God’s goodness and His graciousness, but as I kept typing that simple sentence the more normal it became. The more I typed that sentence the more I began to gloss over the true and deep meaning behind those words. I’ll be honest, sometimes I need to be reminded of what those words mean. 

In today’s age we are so used to hearing jargon like this that I fear that we are all missing out on the profound impact those words should have.

“God is good.”

Okay, but what does that mean? How are we to define goodness? Is there a difference between how we see good and how God sees good? How is God’s goodness different than ours?

“God is gracious.”

Okay, what the heck is grace? What does grace have to do with us? How is God actually gracious to us? How does God’s grace change anything?

These are the things that I will be exploring in a short series called God: Good and Gracious. The next two Monday mornings will feature a short post.

I sincerely hope that you enjoy the posts and that they are an encouragement to anyone who doubts God’s goodness or gracious, which is all of us!

Jacob Luis Gonzales