The Good God

Steve just wrote about how unanswered prayer can sometimes cause us to doubt God’s benevolence.  Indeed, I’ve run into many atheists who have used just that argument, and during struggles in my own life it likewise becomes tempting to question whether or not God is good.  Indeed, I have never questioned whether God exists, but I have often questioned whether He is good.  Because I anticipate that I am not alone in that struggle, and because it could be used as a wedge issue, I want to delve into that a bit here. 

The first thing that we ought to examine when questioning whether or not God is good is whether or not we are even qualified to answer that question.  The truth of the matter is, each of us is a sinner.  To quote John Newton (who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace”) at the end of his life: “Although my memory’s fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.”

Too often in Christianity, we focus on the second part of that: how great a Savior Christ is.  And generally, there’s nothing wrong with focusing there.  That is, after all, the essence of the Gospel.  It is the very reason it is “Good News” in the first place.

And yet, Good News does not appear in a vacuum.  The Good News of Christ only works because of the Bad News in the first part of that sentence: “I am a great sinner.”

Now there are obviously countless Scriptural passages we could look at to demonstrate this fact.  To do a quick scenario, Jesus says in John 8:34, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.”  And 1 John 1:8 informs us, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”  So by these two passages, we know that each of us is a slave to sin.  Of course, Jesus says more.  In John 8:36, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”  So this once again gives us our great hope in Him.

But let us return to the first half of the equation yet again.  When we are saved, we are saved indeed, but our old self still remains.  It doesn’t disappear.  That is why Paul says in Ephesians 4:22, 24, “…put off your old self, which belongs to our former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and…put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

The old self is still there and it fights against the new self, and it is important to note that Paul is addressing believers.  That is, putting on the new self is not talking about salvation, but rather the sanctification of those who have already believed.  For instance, in the parallel passage in Colossians 3, Paul states: “In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.  But now you must put them all away...seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:7-8, 9-10).  Notice that the old self is described as being the way “you once walked”—past tense.  And in fact, the first verse of the chapter even begins, “If then you have been raised with Christ”, indicating salvation has already occurred to those Paul is addressing.

So this struggle between the old self and the new self continues, even after salvation.  This is why even though the Apostle Peter was able to preach the great sermon of Acts 2, Paul still had to later oppose him to his face because his actions were literally harming the Gospel message.

Now, why do I bring this up?  Because it is important for us to remember that even as Christians, if we begin to accuse God of not being benevolent, we have to know whether or not that accusation is coming from the old self or the new self.  The old self is evil.  1 Corinthians 2:14 goes so far as to say, “The natural person [i.e., the old self] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”

Think about that for a moment.  If we experience something in our daily life that seems to indicate God is not good, then which is more likely: that God actually is not good, or that we, who we already know are great sinners and who in our natural state cannot accept the things of God because they are foolish to us, do not actually know that “good” really is?

“I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.”  If I am a great sinner, I cannot trust my judgment of what is good and what is evil.  Instead: “For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him?  So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:11).  We have that Spirit, not just via our new self, but in the Word of God, written for us in Scripture.  And Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”  This means that even if our old self does not understand how something God does is benevolent, our new self can have that assurance—all things, even the things that appear not to, work for good.