The Supreme, Inconceivable Goodness
God is morally perfect…Yet there is more. God is good to us in that His good (kind) pleasure is to save all who repent and come to Him through faith in His Son. When referring to our God, goodness is a word that is infinitely full of meaning…God is good by nature in all His actions. He is essentially, perpetually, superlatively, infinitely good.
John Snyder, Behold Your God: The Weight of Majesty
Stephen Charnock (1628-1680) was a British Puritan. After his conversion as a student, Charnock went on to serve as a preacher, senior proctor of New College Oxford, chaplain to Henry Cromwell, pastor, and author.
Stephen Charnock authored many books on the nature and work of God.
1. God is only originally good, good of himself.
1. God is only originally good, good of Himself. All created goodness is a rivulet from this fountain, but Divine goodness hath no spring; God depends upon no other for His goodness; He hath it in, and of, Himself: man hath no goodness from himself, God hath no goodness from without Himself: His goodness is no more derived from another than His being: if we were good by any external thing, that thing must be in being before Him, or after Him; if before Him, He was not then Himself from eternity; if after Him, He was not good in Himself from eternity. The end of His creating things, then, was not to confer a goodness upon His creatures, but to partake of a goodness from His creatures. God is good by and in Himself, since all things are only good by Him; and all that goodness which is in creatures, is but the breathing of his own goodness upon them: they have all their loveliness from the same hand they have their being from. Though by creation God was declared good, yet He was not made good by any, or by all the creatures. He partakes of none, but all things partake of him. He is so good, that He gives all, and receives nothing; only good, because nothing is good but by Him nothing hath a goodness but from Him.
2. God only is infinitely good.
2. God only is infinitely good. A boundless goodness that knows no limits, a goodness as infinite as His essence, not only good, but best; not only good, but goodness itself, the supreme inconceivable goodness. All things else are but little particles of God, small sparks from this immense flame, sips of goodness to this fountain. Nothing that is good by His influence can equal Him who is good by Himself: derived goodness can never equal primitive goodness. Divine goodness communicates itself to a vast number of creatures in various degrees; to angels, glorified spirits, men on earth, to every creature; and when it hath communicated all that the present world is capable of, there is still less displayed, than left to enrich another world. All possible creatures are not capable of exhausting the wealth, the treasures, that Divine bounty is filled with.
3. God is only perfectly good, because He is only infinitely good.
3. God is only perfectly good, because He is only infinitely good. He is good without indigence, because He hath the whole nature of goodness, not only some beams that may admit of increase of degree. As in Him is the whole nature of entity, so in him is the whole nature of excellency. As nothing hath an absolute perfect being but God, so nothing hath an absolutely perfect goodness but God; as the sun hath a perfection of heat in it, but what is warmed by the sun is but imperfectly hot and equals not the sun in that perfection of heat wherewith it is naturally endued. The goodness of God is the measure and rule of goodness in everything else.
4. God only is immutably good.
4. God only is immutably good. Other things may be perpetually good by supernatural power, but not immutably good in their own nature. Other things are not so good, but they may be bad; God is so good, that He cannot be bad. It was the speech of a philosopher, that it was a hard thing to find a good man, yea, impossible; but though it were possible to find a good man, he would be good but for some moment, or a short time: for though he should be good at this instant, it was above the nature of man to continue in a habit of goodness, without going awry and warping. But “the goodness of God endureth forever” (Psalm 52:1). God always glitters in goodness, as the sun, which the heathens called the visible image of the Divinity, doth with light. There is not such a perpetual light in the sun as there is a fulness of goodness in God; “no variableness” in Him, as he is the “Father of lights” (James 1:17).