The Goodness of God

“Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.”

James 1:16-18

Last week we looked at the reality that God does not tempt us. We have a sinful nature that we inherited from our first parents. When an external temptation is presented to us, it activates our own internal sinful desires, and we wrongly respond to that temptation. This is sin regardless of if it is a conscious or unconscious response. Of course, Satan and the world often present us with these external temptations that become sin to us when we respond to them. But we must never think that God is the author of sin, or he is the one leading us into sin.

God is good to all in some ways. “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt 5:45). We may think of rain as negative when we think of torrential rains that cause mudslides or when dams break causing massive flooding. Those are consequences of the fall and the general curse on all creation, but rain is a good gift. Without water we would not survive. We not only need water to drink, but our crops would not survive without the constant flow of rain. God does not just cause it to rain on the farms of believers. When the rains come, the believing and unbelieving farmers both receive this blessing.

To his children, God is good all the time. I honestly think this is one of the hardest truths to believe. In the abstract I think we know it is true, but when we are dealing with the ups and downs of our lives, often we struggle. We know God is good when we have enough money to pay the bills with some left over to save. We know God is good when we get a raise or a promotion at work or we get the highest grade in the class at school. We know God is good when we make the team or experience personal success. But do we feel that God is good when we lose our job, or we don’t make the team? Do we feel that God is good when the diagnosis comes back positive, or we don’t get into the school we wanted?

Our problem is that we are often short sighted. We see things in the moment, but we are often not able to understand how they fit into the big picture. God is doing so many things simultaneously and something that seemingly is random in our lives is a part of his overarching purpose. Even these he uses for our good, but we might not know or understand what that is in the moment. Perhaps it is to grow our character or ultimately to use it to lead someone else to him. An analogy I often use is one I heard years ago. If you look at the underside of a tapestry it may seem like there are random threads going here and there. It might not be possible to see the pattern, let alone the entire picture. However, when you turn it over suddenly you see how everything fits together. This is how things are compared to how they will be in eternity. We don’t see the pattern or the picture now, but one day when faith becomes sight we will see and understand. We will say with absolutely certainty, God is good all the time.