Is God Good?

By: Mawuli Togbi-Wonyo

Is God Good?

Goodness is one of the well-known attributes of God. The theologically unschooled know about the goodness of God. Even the unsaved world knows this attribute to characterize God. Interestingly, while the unsaved world hardly has any good concept about the grace or holiness of God, it knows well that God is said and taught to be —or at least supposed to be-- a good God.
Goodness is also one of the first attributes of God to be revealed in Scripture, as we can clearly see in the Genesis account of the creation and the fall. Goodness so characterizes God that when Moses petitioned that God would show him His glory, God replied, “I will make all my goodness pass before thee…” (Ex. 33: 18-19); and when God did fulfill His promise to Moses in the next chapter (vs. 5-6), He proclaimed Himself as being “abundant in goodness.”
This is the attribute of God that is denied by the unsaved world. “If God is good, how come... why is there…?” They exclaim. It is one the questions that ministers find very difficult to answer, in the face of calamities, deaths, national disasters, etc. Sometimes, these objections come from the lips of believers. “Why do the wicked have it so easy?” “Does God really care for me?” And the complaint goes on incessant.
In Psalm 73, Asaph, the psalmist, almost succumbed to the same faulty and erroneous misconception on the goodness of God that is so prevalent today. This attribute has anymore been reduced and brought down to the pitiful human level of physical blessings. Man now becomes the standard by which God’s goodness is measured, instead of God. Thus, God is good so far we enjoy abundance of riches, health, and prosperity; God ceases to be good when circumstances turn against us, when disaster strikes, when diseases and sicknesses afflict, and when suffering becomes a shareholder in our days. To some others, God ceases to be good when their prayers seem to go unanswered or when things do not come or happen as expected, especially when the wicked and the unsaved appear to be enjoying the blessings of this life without sorrow. But goodness with God is not measured by human standards at all.
Scripture clearly teaches that God is good. Who reads the creation account and fails to see the goodness of God must be blind. The latter cannot be divorced from the former. When the Lord God created the world, He did so out of the goodness of His heart for man’s enjoyment. It was a display of God’s goodness. Scripture therefore attests to it by declaring that all that God made was good. And God was so good in creating man in His own image, something that is not said of any other creature. God is definitely good to man! And He put all things under man’s dominion, also an attitude of God’s goodness.
But, sin came into the world and distorted our view on God’s goodness until Asaph was tempted to judge God’s goodness by what he saw, which is precisely what the unsaved world and carnal believers are doing today. We have totally forgotten about sin and its consequences upon the world. Among believers, our view on this attribute of God is so distorted as to cause us to closely link mishaps and unfavorable circumstances in a believer’s life to God’s chastening hand for some secret sin.
Truth of the matter is: The world—and sometimes carnal Christians-- cannot understand the goodness of God any more than it can understand the other attributes of God. It is one of those things that are spiritually discerned. Only the regenerated man can really comprehend and accept it. God exhibits His goodness variously and that not to His children only but to the world at large, wicked and worst sinners included. Toward believers, God’s goodness is displayed abundantly in the unmerited salvation that is completely wrought in Jesus and freely given to us, in the forgiving of our sins, in the privilege of asking and receiving of God, in the fact that God now indwells us, in the continual provision of our daily needs by our Heavenly Father, in the daily protection that we enjoy from our spiritual enemies unawares, in the privilege of working for the Master and of receiving rewards for our labor, in the eternal life freely given to us and in future blessings that await us—the goodness of God towards His children cannot be measured nor the ways in which it is displayed numerated. God is always good!
To the unsaved world, though they may deny it owing to their being completely blinded to it, yet they enjoy a lot of blessings that God sends down on all men because of common grace. They still “bask” in the longsuffering of God which is an aspect of God’s goodness. They are extended and offered the same gift in Jesus, also an exhibition of God’s goodness; not to mention the goodness of God in sustaining the world and keeping it from falling apart, the sunshine, the rainfalls, the daily provisions that God sends them in His goodness to all men—whether it is acknowledged or not, God’s goodness is ever present with us.
True believers should acknowledge this and cease not to thank God for His innumerous acts of goodness toward us. At least we should never get over the thought of God dying on our behalf, the highest epitome of goodness and love ever displayed, in order that He might rescue us to Himself, an act that we can never deserve. If it be so then, we must accept whatever God sends our way, knowing full well that He who loves us with His very life cannot withhold anything good from us. Is God good? Scripture tells us the answer when it says, “…The earth is full of the goodness of the LORD” (Psalm 33:5). Yes, God is good! Always good!

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