The Goodness of God: Part 1
A few months ago I saw a question on Twitter, “What do you believe is the definitive characteristic of God?” There were a lot of good answers. It spawned some interesting discussion. My first inclination was to answer that his definitive characteristic was just that He was God, or to say his aseity, but this wasn’t really the answer the OP was trying to get. She wanted to discuss which of the particular character qualities of God in the Scriptures is most definitively descriptive of who He is. This is a good question. It’s interesting that God most frequently communicates who He is in terms of his goodness.
In Exodus 33 Moses is interceding for Israel. They have just angered God with the golden calf episode. He tells them to go up to the promised land, but that he is not going to go up in their midst. Moses says, if I have found favour in your sight, don’t do this. Don’t send us up unless you are going to go with us. It would be pointless for us and it would reflect badly on you. God tells Moses that he has found favour in his sight, so He will do as Moses asks. In response, Moses asks to be shown God’s glory. What is the Lord’s response? He tells him, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'The LORD.' And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” (Exodus 33:19). God then does exactly this a few verses later in Exodus 34. “The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
There is so much that could be said about these verses, but I want us to see here that God is proclaiming His name and then His goodness. God said I’m going to proclaim my name and show you my goodness and He passed before him, proclaimed His name and then this description, which defines who God is. Finally, he told Moses in 33:19 and in 34:7 how he was going to act. He was going to act in accordance with who he was, His goodness. He is merciful, he is gracious, he is slow to anger, he is abounding in covenant love and faithfulness, and he forgives sin, this was His goodness. This is who He is. And because He is merciful and gracious He will show mercy to those to whom He shows mercy and He will be gracious to those to whom He will be gracious. Undeserving sinners will receive his love, faithfulness, and forgiveness, because he is merciful and gracious. So, God defines himself in this way, in accordance with his goodness.
But this is not the only place that God defines himself in this way. It becomes a creed in the Bible. The prophets and the Psalmists describe Him this way, repeatedly (Num. 14:18; 2 Chr. 30:9; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:5; 103:8; 111:4; 112:4; 116:5; 145:8). Then, in Joel 2:13 and Jonah 4:2 we see the prophets add to this that He “relents from disaster”.
Jonah is my favourite description of this character. Jonah is the possibly the worst example of a missionary in Scripture. He is called and he refuses. In fact, he goes the other way. Finally, after a lot of arm twisting by God, Jonah begrudgingly preaches to all Nineveh over several days. The description we have of his sermons are a very brief proclamation of coming judgment. Could this have been one more effort by Jonah to thwart God’s work? I ask this question because of what happens in chapter 3 and 4. Jonah preaches judgment, the Ninevites repent, all of them, and God saves them and relents from disaster. This is the dream of any missionary isn’t it? Three or four days of preaching and the whole city, hundreds of thousands of people, including the king, repent! But Jonah doesn’t respond quite like we might expect him to. “It displeased Jonah exceedingly” (Jonah 4:1). In anger, Jonah says to God, this is exactly why I didn’t want to come here in the first place, God. I said this back before I ever left home. You are gracious and merciful, you abound in steadfast love, and you relent from disaster. I knew you would do this if I just preached. I didn’t want the Ninevites to be saved, but you did it anyway.
There are a couple notable things about this. For some reason Jonah feels terribly wronged by the Ninevites. It could just be a general Israelite distaste for Ninevah, or there could be some way that Ninevah or a Ninevite wronged Jonah or his family. For whatever reason Jonah hates Ninevah, we know one thing, God has been more wronged by Ninevah than Jonah has. And God is ready to be gracious and merciful while Jonah is just ready to keep on hating. But there is another notable thing. Jonah is more certain that God will act in accordance with His character than almost any other missionary or minister I‘ve ever met. The reason Jonah is angry is twofold. He hates Ninevah and he knows exactly who God is and how He promises to act. Jonah is absolutely certain that God will show mercy to whom He shows mercy and he doesn’t want to risk that. Consider that absolute trust in the Lord. It is an absolute trust that doesn’t respond in obedience, interestingly, at least not at first.
In light of this, how much do we believe what God says about himself? He tells us that this is who He is. He doesn’t change. He is the same in Jonah’s day, in our day, and on into the future. Do we pray for our children, our family members, our friends, our neighbours, the people in our towns and cities in faith, believing that God will act in accordance with the character that we absolutely know is His? Do we think of God and immediately think of his goodness in this way? Is our every prayer and thought for those around us an expectant interest in how this will be demonstrated? Do we catalogue the ways that we have seen God act in accordance with His character so that we can praise Him? We’ll consider this in an upcoming post. It is the question Psalm 136 leaves us with.
