God Is Good, Part 1

These words have been sung by many for generations declaring the goodness of God. In the African American church, it is common to use this as a call and response. Someone would sing out “God is a good God,” and the church would respond, “Yes He is.” At other times you might hear someone say “God is good” and the response would be “All the time.”

While these things have become part of church culture, it requires us to dig deeper and think about what it means that God is good. If we are not careful, life can attempt to steer you away from this conclusion, so we must know what this means, and more importantly why it is true that God is good.

What Does It Mean That God Is Good?
To begin a conversation about the goodness of God, it requires us to know what it means that God is good. I must be honest, this understanding is a struggle for a lot of people to grasp because we don’t recognize what goodness is and why God is good.

To truly understand why God is good, it requires us to take a realistic inventory of who we are. God is perfect and holy while we are sinful and imperfect. Any conversation about God’s goodness must begin there because our sinful nature means that God should have nothing to do with us, yet he does.

If we miss our sinfulness in this equation, then we can falsely believe we deserve good things to happen to us. Yet we know all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Every single one of us has done something deserving of the judgment of God, yet we most often find God patient with us and not treating us as our sins deserve.