Our Perception Of God’s Goodness
Out of Thy goodness, O God! Thou has reached down and blessed me beyond my comprehension. My praise to Theey O Gody fills my heart with joy in expectation of good things from Thee. May my life be a testimony of Thy goodness. Amen.
What kind of God is God? What is He really like? If God were to come and be visible and physically present among us, how would we find Him to be? Granted, we can never come before His unapproachable light and expect our earthly intelligence to grasp it. But if we could, what kind of God would we find Him to be?
That question is one of the most important that any of us could ask, and our answer really defines who we are. In the history of the world, no nation has ever risen above its religion, and no religion has ever risen above its perception of God.
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Religion is high or low base or pure, depending upon what the believers believe their God to be like. The history of Christianity will demonstrate that Christianity at any given time is weak or powerful, dependent upon what kind of God it perceives Him to be.
If I could find out what you really perceive God to be like, I could prophesy your future without much trouble, for you are always going to move in the direction of your perception of God.
The most important thing for us to do is to constantly work on our perception of God.
One of the perceptions we have of God is that He is good, and that out of His goodness flows mercy. God is kindhearted and of goodwill. In other words, God is kind and cordial, and we might even say good-natured with a benevolent intention.
God is not kindhearted a little bit; He is infinitely kindhearted. He is not gracious and cordial a little bit or a great deal; He is perfectly and infinitely gracious and good. Whatever God is, He is completely and enthusiastically.
God is not some absentee engineer running His universe by remote control. God is present in perpetual, continual eagerness, applying His holy designs with all the fervor of His rapturous love.
God, being who He is, cannot be indifferent. It is impossible for God to be indifferent. Either God loves with a boundless, unremitting energy, or God hates with a consuming fire. God said certain people were neither hot nor cold—that is, they were in between, half-asleep, lukewarm, so He would spew them out of His mouth.
God cannot be halfway on a question; either He loves with an infinite, boundless, overwhelming, and enthusiastic energy of love, or He hates with an uncompromising fire of holy hatred.
In thinking about this, let me say that no one has any right to say that God has an obligation toward someone. God has no obligation toward anyone. He has no obligation to anything. When we think of the creation of the world, God, out of His own goodness, willed it into being.
The good, enthusiastic, kind-hearted God willed to create everybody and everything, and make the heavens and the earth, and hang the stars in their place. He willed to do it. He did it out of His own goodness.
He did not owe anybody anything. He did not do it to perfect himself, because He was perfect to start with; and there was no start per se, because when we say that God started, then we make a creature out of Him. God is uncreated, timeless, and contains time within His heart.
Let me ask you this: Why, when we sin, are we not destroyed? You can write as many books on the subject as you want, but I can give it to you in one sentence: Because God in His goodness willed to spare us, and that is the only answer.
If you pay a man to lecture ten times, an hour each lecture, on why God spared humanity, he cannot tell you one thing more. God spared us and did not send us immediately to hell because He in His goodness willed to spare us.
Also, why did He suffer and die in agony when He did not need to do it? The answer is His goodness. He loved us, and by His mercy and goodness, He died for us.
Why does God answer prayer? Because of His goodness. Why does God forgive sin? Because of His goodness. It is because God is kindhearted and gracious and of benevolent intention with all the enthusiasm of an infinitely powerful God. That is why He hears us and forgives us.
To understand this means that you cannot go to God and argue your good points because you do not have any. You cannot go to God and argue, “Oh God, please bless us—because of thugs and so,” and think that God will listen to you.
You cannot argue God into doing something that would be contrary to His nature. If we learn that God does everything out of goodness, without any price and without any obligation, we will find God very easy to approach and find Him very wondrously near. Out of His goodness, God has ordained means to help us, and all those means are because of His goodness.
If you are baptized, it is not the water that has done you any good. God, out of His goodness, has ordained that if you will be baptized, you will be obeying His Word, and He will bless you for your obedience. So it is with everything.
“O God,” the psalmist says, “in Thy mercy, hear my prayer.” It is an act of God’s mercy to hear my prayer, even if it is the holiest prayer ever prayed. Nobody could reach God, except God in His goodness has willed us to be able to reach Him.
I think we can save people a lot of work if they can only grasp this about God. I believe our praying would rise and become effective, if we would see that the only claim we have is something that we do not personally have at all. It is the goodness of God. And, of course, the goodness of God was made possible for us through His atonement.
Jesus Christ is the kindest man who ever lived in the world, and God is the kindest God. Jesus was the God-Man. The love of God, the mind of God, and the heart of God are kinder than you can imagine. If you were to concentrate on the word kind for one hundred years, you would not be able to truly grasp how kind God is.
He is so high that the archangels veil their faces before Him, but He is so good-natured and kindly disposed that He would pat the head of a little child, forgive a harlot on the street, and be merciful to Israel, to the church, and to all of us. Every¬thing comes out of the goodness and mercy of God.
Another important truth we need to grasp is that God is not revolted by our wretchedness. God has no regrets about anything He has made. God is not revolted because of anything that we are or have done. When God created everything, He pronounced it good.’All the sin in the entire universe could never take away from God that which He has established and called good.
I have not always been a kind man. Sometimes I have been sharp-tongued toward people and may have offended people, but God is not like that at all. I could never have been a nurse because dirty things make me gag.
God never gagged at anything He created and has never been revolted by the humblest thing. There is nothing in your body or in your soul that turns God away from you. God is never revolted by you or disgusted by you, no matter how sinful, how impure, or how odd you may be; He never turns away, because God is good.
Out of God’s goodness flows His mercy. Again, let me state that mercy is an attribute of God; it is not something that God has—it is something God is. If mercy were something God had, He might use it up or leave it somewhere and forget it, but mercy is what God is. If anybody should ask what kind of God your
God is, simply reply, “Our God is good.” And should they say, “Tell me more,” say, “Our God is merciful.” He not only has mercy, but He is mercy. It is something God is, and it is as eternal as God.
God’s goodness is a source of mercy, and God is of infinite goodness—that is, He desires His creature’s happiness. God desires that you be joyful. He will allow you to suffer if that suffering will make you holy because He wants you to be holy.
The trouble with this is we try to get happy right away, after suffering, whereas God wants us to be holy in order that our happiness might last. Unholy happiness cannot last; it can only spring up like a dandelion and perish tomorrow.
So God takes us through many fires and many trials, and it is not so important that we be happy right now. He is thinking about our enjoyment forever. This is part of the goodness and mercy of God.
God has an irresistible urge to bless people. He wants to bless you and your family your business and your church.
God takes pleasure in the pleasure of His people. He suffers along with His friends, and He takes no pleasure in the suffering of His enemies.
Some of the monks of old used to beat their backs with whips and sleep in beds of spikes, thinking they could coax God into being more merciful. There is nothing you can do to increase God’s mercy. The mercy of God is as big as God, and God fills all space and overflows into a vacuity so that you cannot add anything to His grace and mercy.
Your coaxing cannot add anything to God’s mercy. You do not have to go to God and build a case for yourself, or throw up your hands and say, “God, be merciful unto me!” God will have mercy on you because God is merciful. That is the way God is. That is the way we can expect Him to be all the time—not part of the time, but all of the time.
God is the same good and merciful God at all times, without any change. If God could become less than himself and be imperfect, He would be no God at all. To be God and remain, God, He has to remain all that He is forever, and merciful is one thing that He is.
You can be sure you will never find God in a bad mood. You will never find God saying, “I am not going to be nice today. I am not going to bless them.”
Nothing that occurs or ever can occur can ever increase the mercy of God, diminish the mercy of God, or alter the quality of God’s mercy. William Shakespeare wrote:
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Some people believe that when Jesus came and was born in a manger and the angels sang, God became merciful. But it was the mercy of God that sent Jesus to Bethlehem’s manger. Someone else says, “When Jesus died on the cross, then God became merciful.” No, a thousand times no.
He died on the cross because God was already merciful, and nothing Jesus did when He came into the world made God any more merciful than He already was.
It was the mercy of God and the goodness of God that brought Him, and when Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God, the Father Almighty, He did not become any more merciful. God had been kind and loving all the time.
The same God who is merciful is also just and holy, and holiness cannot possibly have any fellowship with unholiness.
Justice, when it confronts human iniquity, demands judgment, but when mercy confronts human guilt and suffering, it wants to be merciful and can be, because Christ died. Christ came, died, rose, and lived in order that mercy might flow down like a fountain.
The cross is God’s channel. Jesus Christ’s dying and rising is the way mercy flows. It is the direction mercy takes, so all the poor sinner needs to do is step into the framework of the cross and believe in His Son. Turn your back on iniquity, and you will find that the mercy of God will confront your guilt and suffering and pronounce you clean
All of us are recipients of the mercy of God.
Mercy cannot cancel sin until there has been atonement for sin, but there has been atonement. Jesus Christ died, and what He did was absolutely complete. You do not have to know all about the atonement. You only have to know that Jesus Christ came down to die for you, and because of what He did, the mercy of God can flow to you like a river.
In dying, Jesus suffered a long time. I say again, I do not know how the perfect God could suffer. But I can bow my head and say, “Oh, Lord God, thou knowest.”
Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed
Alas! and did my Savior bleed,
And did my Sovereign die!
Would he devote that sacred head?
For sinners such as I?
Was it for crimes that I have done,
He groaned upon the tree.
Amazing pity! Grace unknown!
And love beyond degree!
Well, might the sun in darkness hide,
And shut its glories in,
When God, the mighty maker, died
For his own creatures’ sin.
Thus might I hide my blushing face
While his dear cross appears;
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness,
And melt my eyes to tears.
But drops of tears can never repay
The debt of love I owe.
Here, Lord, I give myself away;
His all that I can do. –Isaac Watts(1674-1748)