The Lord Is Good

“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’ The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.”

Goodness is one of the attributes of God. God is good and all good comes from him. He is the origin, source, and cause of all that is good. God is originally good as Stephen Charnock says in his discourse on the Existence and Attributes of God (Vol. 2, p. 276). The goodness of God knows no beginning or end. It is infinite and always the same. We do not mean by this that good or goodness is God, but rather that God is good. God must be good or he is not God. There is simplicity in this. God is either good or not. Many have concluded that the God of the Old Testament is not good. How could a good and loving God do the things he did in the Old Testament? There are many Christians who think like this and struggle with this revelation of God. This is purely a mechanical reading or an interpretation of reading based on other factors (e.g. morality, culture, experience, suffering). It is not seen in the context of what it means for a nation (Israel) to be in a covenant relationship with a covenant-making and-keeping God.

The expansive goodness of God is inextricably bound to the holiness of God, for surely the pure holiness of God is a holy good and a good holiness. The goodness of God is, therefore, pure. All of God’s attributes are who God is. Psalm 52:1 says that the goodness (steadfast love) of God endures forever. This must be so since God is eternal. He is eternally good. The Creation account speaks of all that God made as being good (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). God is ultimately good in his essence and being. There is a natural perfection to all that is God. The actions of God are always good because they performed in perfect righteousness. Flowing from the goodness of God is all the benefits that we receive.

Goodness is a communicable attribute. Communicable means that we can be good. An incommunicable attribute would be the omniscience or omnipresence of God. We cannot be these things. It is because of the incommunicable attributes that the communicable attributes must be absolute and perfect. The essence of God abounds with the display of God. God cannot but reveal himself because of who He is. This is how we can connect the glorious decrees of God (his eternal purpose) with God’s revealing of himself. This revelation is made to us. On this basis, the knowledge of God is found in the revelation of himself that God has made. We can deduce certain truths about God from what he has made (his creation), but it is only when God speaks of himself in the Word that we can see and comprehend that God has made himself known.

Jeremiah falls back on the sovereign goodness of God as he speaks of being besieged and hemmed in by God. God’s steadfast love is his covenant mercy. It never ceases. It never ceases because it comes from an unchanging God. God’s love is always steadfast. It is good love and good mercy. The goodness of God is, first of all, spiritually apprehended by God’s people, and then it is seen in action. Jeremiah says that the Lord is his portion because his steadfast love never ceases; his mercies are always new and never end, and his faithfulness is great. He translates the attributes of God into God himself. God becomes his portion or possession. In view of this, Jeremiah says that he will hope in the Lord (vs. 24).

It requires patience and endurance to see the goodness of God in action. We may get impatient and frustrated that God does not seem to be delivering on his promises. This is why Jeremiah says in verse 25: “the Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.” Patience will be rewarded. We live in a world of instant satisfaction where we demand or expect instant gratification or solutions. We have been deceived into this way of thinking and living. It is only going to get worse in our world due to technology.

Along with all the technological, scientific, and physical benefits, there is a ceaseless expectation of having our demands or cravings met. We no longer operate on less, but on more. We crave more and more. This is what the world does. It squeezes us. It throttles us slowly with a vice-like grip on our souls. It always seeks to mold us, and it is always self-deceiving. It is the relentless pursuit of all that is not necessary, that demands more. The cravings of the world are never satisfied and never for our good. God’s goodness is for those who wait for him. Notice that we wait for God. Waiting in and of itself accomplishes nothing. There must be a purpose in waiting. Waiting is an expectation of something. It is that expectation that keeps us in our waiting. We know that there will be a delivery of that for which we wait. Jeremiah is waiting for God.

But he is not passive in his waiting. Verse 25 says that the Lord is good to the soul that seeks him. The word implies seeking with care or diligence. It is a purposeful or careful seeking. Jeremiah knows what he is seeking. This is why it is so important to learn about the attributes of God. The attributes of God are God on display, and if we do not know what God is like, then we can have no expectation of him in various circumstances. This also affects our prayer life. What will you pray for if you do not know whether God can actually do what you ask of him? It is because God is love that we can know that he loves us. It is because God is merciful that we can know that he is merciful to us. This is the application of the attributes of God to practical life. We pray the way we do because of our comprehension of God.

The attributes of God are a motivation to service. God’s goodness drives us to be good to others. Loving our neighbors and enemies is based on God’s goodness toward us. We must love others because God has loved us. In spite of our hate, God loved us, and the greatest display of that love is the gift of our Savior. Surely such a gift is from a good God?

Jeremiah says in verse 26 that it is “good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” The word quietly means silence. This implies the contemplation of God. We are living in a fast world. Time is precious and is easily wasted. It is not easy to find time to be silent before the Lord. This is one of the reasons we have forgotten how to think. Not too long ago, people had time to sit and ponder. Our urbanization has driven us to distraction. We are surrounded by noise and not silence. It is ceaseless. You can lie in your bed at night and hear the constant throb of engines on the highway. We are not used to silence. Silence is the intense display of time in motion. If you listen carefully to the ticking of a clock, it becomes intense. It sounds louder but in reality that is how it always sounds. It only sounds that way because we are not used to silence or quiet. Yet we know what peace and quiet are and how beautiful a sound it is.

The goodness of God is for our good. Apart from God’s goodness, we cannot be good. Psalm 14:3 says: “… there is none who does good, not even one.” This is why David cries out in Psalm 16:2: “I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” The Lord is good because he is our Lord; therefore, he does only good for us.