Many of us first learned one of God’s chief attributes when we were taught to say grace at mealtime by prefacing gratitude for the food with a confession about God. We learned to begin by saying, “God is great; God is good.” Almost instinctively, we think of God’s greatness in terms of majesty and power. In His greatness, God exercises ultimate authority. He sets the standards for right and wrong. In His greatness, God is perfect and holy. Yet God combines in perfect harmony ultimate greatness and admirable goodness. That God is both great and good are characteristics of God that we do well to remember for a lifetime.
‘Great is His goodness’
To grow up believing God is good is something that is absent in manmade religions, which often start from the premise that God is angry and must be appeased at every opportunity. The idea of an angry god pushes people into a fearful approach to life that seeks ways to defuse the imagined divine anger. God, however, has revealed Himself to be good and kind. While very capable of anger and judgment, God seeks to show us that His preference is for us to know Him as kind and good. Such was the realization of the Psalmist who was moved to exclaim, “Oh, how abundant is Your goodness, which You have stored up for those who fear You” (Ps. 31:19). In a similar way the prophet Zechariah exclaimed, “How great is His goodness and how great His beauty” (Zech. 9:17).
A way of forgiveness
Beloved and often quoted, Psalm 100 ends with the declaration, “The Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations” (Ps. 100:5). Our childhood table blessing captured this truth, “The Lord is good.” When we think of God as good, we think of such qualities as benevolence, mercy, generosity, patience, gentleness and longsuffering. When David was extolling God for deliverance from his enemies, he went so far as to say of God, “Your gentleness made me great” (Ps. 18:35).
Such characteristics as gentleness, goodness and kindness lead us away from thinking of God as a divine watchdog in the skies who is lurking over us to catch us in wrongdoing and rain down punishment on our heads. Our good God is not a tyrant who delights in wielding a club by which to beat the disobedient into submission or to frighten them into being good. God does not harbor unrelenting anger at imperfect people. While God takes human sin seriously, His basic goodness led Him to provide the way of forgiveness and restoration for wayward people. Romans 2:4 asks the question, “Do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?”
‘Be ye kind one to another’
Like many of you who are reading these lines, I was singularly blessed to have had godly parents who made churchgoing an important part of childhood years. To this was added the special blessing of Sunday School teachers who regularly emphasized the memorization of Bible verses. One such memory verse has remained with me all through the years: “Be ye kind one to another” (Eph. 4:32). Simple, everyday kindness is indeed a God-like virtue.
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