God is Good
By Tanja
Have you ever wondered if God is good? I’m sure you have, or maybe you’ve never doubted that God is good, and this question hasn’t shaken you.
In Genesis, where there is a record of the account of God creating the world, we see that everything that God created He proclaimed as good. From here, we can see that God must be good if He created us in His image and said we are good.
If you read the tone of how God blesses the first man and woman, it seems clear that only a good God is there at creation. If we knew the story after that, however, we would see how sin came to turn things up- side-down concerning what is good and what is evil? God didn’t make Adam and Eve like robots with no free choice. Only because He didn’t want humans to be forced to love and obey Him. He wanted humans who would choose to love Him out of their own will. Free choices led to bringing in the horrors of sin and death for all of us.
In James 1, I can see that God is good: When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” (James 1:13-14). One of the characteristics of God is that He is holy, and He is also righteous. God is without any sin, and that’s why Jesus was able to die on the cross as a perfect sacrifice for our sins, because He was blameless. James is writing here that we shouldn’t start blaming God and saying that He is terrible and everything bad is His fault and that the sin that we have is His fault. God is not associated with evil, and God is not evil. No, God is not tempting you!
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)
James knows that God is good, and that God gives us what is good.
James writes that “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (James 1:27)
This verse shows God’s character and how He wants His followers to act. He wants us to care about people who don’t have homes and families, and He doesn’t want us to be caught up in the temporal things of this world.
God is so good, that He doesn’t want us just to say we love Him and then hate our brother, sister, or people around us. That’s not good enough for Him, if we say we love God, that means we must love others just as much as we love God. First John says that God is love. Love is a good thing, and that is what you see when you look into the face of our heavenly Father, LOVE!
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:7-8)
The key to knowing if God is good is knowing Him personally. Do you know God? Do you love God? If you genuinely knew God, you would know that He is good. When you are the new creation in Jesus and a child of God, you can call God your Father. Jesus invites His followers to call the heavenly Father “Abba Father,” you can come to God without condemnation. It is then that you can come, knowing how great, caring, and loving your heavenly Father is.
There are many verses in the Bible about God’s Goodness:
Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.
Psalms 25:8
All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.
Psalms 25:10
I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Psalms 27:13
How abundant are the good things that you have stored up for those who fear you,
Psalms 31:19
that you bestow in the sight of all, on those who take refuge in you.
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.
Psalms 107:1
The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him,
Nahum 1:7
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.
Psalms 107:1
The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.
Psalms 145:8-9
Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
Psalms 34:8
God is good and loves all He has made, but He is also a God who makes covenants, like He did with Israel to be a holy nation, and now He makes a new covenant with Christians who follow Him. Israel experienced the goodness of the Lord only when they faithfully followed Him, this was because they had a covenant with God. When we live within that protection and the love of God as His followers, we will see good things and God’s blessing. However, that is not to say there will be no troubles in this world. Christians are God’s treasured ones and will see more of the goodness of God because we are the ones who have a relationship with God. Yet, God has a deep compassion for all people, and He is slow to anger.
In Genesis, we are introduced to a God, who creates the world with His goodness and creates Adam and Eve in His image. God is good, and so is His creation, and God insists that His created ones should be blessed. In the New Testament book of James, it speaks about the true nature of God, he can’t be tempted, and He is holy. God the one who gives good gifts and tells us to take care of people who are in need. 1 John 4:7-8 teaches that God is love and that if we love God, we will start to see God’s character and know Him. God is holy, righteous, merciful, kind, loving and just. The people of the Lord will know that God is good.
