God Is Good - Part 1

The previous two posts have examined the reality that God is great. God's greatness includes the parts of His character that show Him as powerful, amazing, awesome, divine, and outstanding. Jesus' power was revealed through His incomprehensible ability to heal any illness, His incredible capacity to cast out evil spirits, His impressive strength to perform miracles, and His inimitable act of rising from the dead. Jesus' greatness was also revealed through the impressive authority revealed through His life, ministry, and teaching. His greatness was shown through His intrepid boldness when confronted by falsehood and sin. Finally, His greatness was displayed through His infinite knowledge and inscrutable wisdom.

It is wonderful truth to know that God is great. God's power, control, authority, and wisdom are sources of great encouragement to the believer. They cannot, however, be fully appreciated if they are not understood in conjunction with God's goodness. God's goodness refers to His integrity, motives, love, care, compassion, and kindness for people. It is essential that a God so great would also be good. Without goodness, a powerful God would be a fierce dictator who would abuse His followers. Without goodness, an all-knowing God would not work to properly arrange the details of life; He would not reach out in love to those whose pain and struggle He knew.

God is good, and that goodness was demonstrated through the life of Jesus (for this study, as seen in the gospel of Mark). Jesus was good in regard to His purpose in life. It is common to refer to those who live sacrificially and who dedicate their lives to serving others as good people. Jesus displayed this type of goodness to the ultimate level. He could have stayed in heaven and avoided the pain of His earthly life and the shame of His bodily death. Because He is good, however, He was willing to leave the glories of heaven and live in a human body on a sin-cursed earth.

Jesus was dedicated to pleasing the Father and doing the Father's will. Jesus accomplished this even from the beginning of His ministry. When Jesus was baptized, the Father spoke from heaven, "You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased" (1:11). When Peter expressed opposition to Jesus' teaching about His impending death, Jesus described Peter's mindset, which was much different than that of Jesus Himself. Jesus told Peter, "You are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's" (8:33). Jesus knew very well the good and noble purpose for His life. "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many" (10:45). In the fulfillment of His good determination to please the Father, Jesus suffered terrible abuse at the hands of His enemies (15:15-19) and then gave up His life to provide the hope of salvation for the world (15:37).

In addition to goodness displayed through the purpose and motive for His earthly life, Jesus also showed His goodness through His ministry. The way in which He conducted His ministry and the things that He did within His ministry were good. Jesus' ministry was good in that He reached out to people who were truly needy; He interacted with the outcasts of society and with those who were rejected and looked down upon by others (2:15-17). Jesus' ministry was good in that He gave the people the truth they really needed; His ministry was filled with preaching good news to sinners (1:14,21,39). Jesus' goodness was displayed when He forgave sins (2:5). Jesus showed His goodness in His ministry as He gathered and called to Him men whom He would appoint to share in His ministry (3:13-14). He wanted His ministry to continue beyond His earthly sojourn, and He made preparations to accomplish that goal. Jesus was good in His interactions with those chosen men; He gave them careful instruction and training to prepare them for the ministry they would carry out (6:8-11).

Jesus revealed His goodness in His interactions with His followers. These interactions were permeated with patience and filled with encouragement and explanation. When the disciples misunderstood Jesus' instruction to them, He took the time to remind them of what He had done in the past. His words were intended to encourage them that they had no reason to be concerned with earthly things, because He would abundantly provide for them (8:17-19). Jesus prepared His disciples for His coming death, wanting to be sure they were not shocked or defeated by a major change they had not seen coming (8:31). Jesus gave His disciples a realistic but hopeful understanding of discipleship, as He explained the temporal and eternal aspects of such a life (8:34-38). He acknowledged that a life devoted to serving Him would bring hardship and loss, but He also assured His disciples that He would abundantly repay every loss (10:29-30). Jesus was good to His disciples, as He did not hide the hardships, but gave assurances and encouragement that would uphold them through the hardships and give them the courage to go on.

Jesus earthly ministry was a brief demonstration of the eternal goodness of God. Everything that was true of Jesus' ministry is reflective of the heart and mind of a good God. God is good, as He unceasingly seeks to reconcile fallen mankind to His own perfect self. God is good to extend grace to sinners. God is good to encourage, instruct, guide, and bless those who seek to follow Him. God's heart overflows with goodness, and His actions repeatedly reveal that goodness.

"I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep." John 10:11 (NASB)