I still didn't finish the chapter this week, but Lord willing, I'll mange that next week. Without further ado then, the continuation of The Perfections of God...
First, God is most just.
First, God is most just.
God’s unswerving loyalty to His word and His covenant people guarantees our
protection by our enemies’ destruction. God’s justice seeks out those who oppose Him and who assault His people. (279)
The Old Testament uses two primary Hebrew words to describe God’s righteousness: sedek, meaning justice or righteousness, and mishpat, meaning judgment. (279)
Dr. Morecraft goes into a little more detail about each of these words:
God is righteous in and of Himself. He never acts out of character. He always acts in strict adherence to His own character; therefore, He is always trustworthy and reliable. Sedek denotes strict adherence to a standard. (280)
Without this righteousness, sedek, God would not be fit to be the governor or the judge of the universe. His government would be unpredictable and arbitrary, bringing terror and uncertainty rather than pleasure to those who yield to it. (281)
Concerning mishpat he says:
GOD’S JUDGMENT OR JUSTICE IS HIS DISCRIMINATION AGAINST EVIL AND FOR GOOD, GROWING OUT OF HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, PLUS THE VINDICATION OF HIS NAME, COVENANT AND MORAL ORDER, WHICH LEADS TO THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WICKED AND THE SALVATION OF THE RIGHTEOUS (Deut. 10:18; Ps. 25:9). (281)
Jesus is the revelation of both the righteousness (sedek) and the judgement (mishpat) of God.
He is the incarnate revelation of the holy and perfect character (sedek) of God (Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3), who always acts in accordance with God’s character (John 5:30; 1:18f). He is also the incarnate revelation of the judgment (mishpat) of God (Matt. 3:11f; John 8:16; John 12:47f; Matt. 10:34). His judgment will bring salvation to the world rather than annihilation (John 3:17). (282)
Jesus Christ is our only hope, because He provides for believers His own righteous life and His atoning death as the basis for our acceptance with God through faith. (282)
On the basis of the obedience and redemptive work of Christ, God credits to believers that which He Himself requires of us: perfect righteousness. This is called imputation (Romans 4)—the imputing of Christ’s righteousness to the believer. This imputation is possible because God’s judgment (mishpat) was fully poured out against our sins in Christ on the cross (Rom. 3:25; 1 Pet. 2:24). (282)
God’s righteousness and God’s judgment guarantee the triumph of the church over her oppressors. (283)
Second, God is abundant in goodness...
“God’s goodness is, to creatures, one of His loveliest attributes; because it is from this that all the happiness which all enjoy flows, as water from a spring.” 53. Dabney, Lectures in Systematic Theology, 169 (284)
God is good in two senses: 1) God is good in and of Himself. His glory is His goodness.
And God’s goodness is the sum total of all His perfections. Augustine said: “God is the supreme good—in Him alone is everything which all creatures need and seek to obtain. He is the one unto whom all creatures strive to attain, whether consciously or unconsciously;He is the object of every one’s desire. And the creature finds no rest except in God and in Him alone.… Let God be all in all to Thee, for in Him is the entirety of all that Thou lovest.” (285)
2) God is good in relation to His creation.
“The Lord is good to all” (Ps. 145:9). In this sense, God’s goodness is His abundant generosity and kindness toward His creatures. (285)
God deals generously, beneficially and kindly with the entirety of His creation. “The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord” (Ps. 33:5). (286)
No one on earth or in hell can say with honesty, that God was not abundantly good to him, while on earth. (286)
God’s goodness has a variety of manifestations. It is lovingkindness, i.e., gracious covenant loyalty. It is mercy, i.e., goodness shown to those in misery and distress. It is grace, i.e., God’s powerful, unmerited and undeserved favor which saves the guilty who deserve hell. It is love, i.e., that which moves God to reveal Himself and to give Himself to His people in Christ. It is patience and long-suffering, i.e., God’s goodness manifested toward those who are deserving of punishment. (287)
The best fashion in which God's goodness to creation is shown is through salvation.
We are greatly moved to admire the revelation of God’s goodness in our salvation,
when we consider that: (1) The misery of sinners is self-caused; and the sin that causes it is indescribably abominable to God; (2) The misery from which Christ delivers us is so immense and so terrible; and the blessedness He bestows upon us so complete and so everlasting; (3) The human being, ruined by his sin, was unnecessary to God and so trivial and insignificant compared with God’s Being; (4)
The attitude of sinners throughout all this plan of mercy is one of aggravating ingratitude, hostility toward God and rebellion against Him, up to their conversion; (5) The price God paid to save such vile and wretched sinners was the humiliation and death of His own Son, and the condescending work of His Holy Spirit; (6) The fact that God “exerted the highest wisdom known to man in any of
the divine counsels, and the noblest energies of divine power, to reconcile His truth and justice with His goodness in man’s redemption” is an incomparable display of God’s generosity and kindness to us. (287)
Some deny that God can be both almighty and good (the presence of pain, suffering, and "bad" things being a stumbling block for them).
The problems with this objection are twofold. (1) The argument rests upon a fallacious assumption that man, in and of himself, has the ability to determine good and evil apart from God and the Bible. It seeks to interpret God in terms of human existence. (2) God has clearly revealed that He is good and that He is almighty; and that He alone determines what is good and what is evil. (288)
The answer is to be found in two verses. Romans 6:23 says that “the wages of sin is death.” Some pain is the just punishment for sin, and by it God vindicates His character and restrains rebellion, teaching us that “the way of the transgressor is
hard.” Hebrews 12:6 states that “whom the Lord loves He disciplines.” Some pain is the chastening of a loving Father in the lives of His wayward children to make them what He wants them to be. In other words, whatever God does is good, whether it be pleasant or painful to us. (288)
A few applications of the doctrine of God's goodness:
As Christians we are called upon to imitate God’s goodness in our own relationships and thoughts. We are to be as open-handed, and as abundantly generous in our giving to others as God is toward us. (289)
The power of good is infinitely greater than the power of evil. Good will overcome evil. Your goodness toward others is the divinely instituted method by which God will defeat evil in the world and Christianize the world. (289)
Third, God is most merciful.
God’s goodness shown to those in misery is called His mercy. Although grace and mercy are expressions of God’s goodness, they can be distinguished.
[W]hile grace looks down upon sin as a whole, mercy looks especially upon the miserable consequences of sin. So that mercy really means a sense of pity plus a desire to relieve the suffering... 57. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies In The Sermon On The Mount, 2 vols. (London: InterVarsity Fellowship, [1959] 1966), 1:99–100. (290)
And because God is merciful, we are to be merciful. Christians are to be like their Father, regardless of what people in misery deserve; we are to keep being merciful, compassionate, sympathetic and helpful to those who are suffering. (290)
God is merciful in a general and temporal sense to all creation, including unregenerate men and women...Jesus showed compassion to all kinds of miserable people (Matt. 14:14; Mark 6:34). However, God is especially and eternally merciful to His elect people who are “vessels of mercy” (Rom. 9:23). Because God does not owe anyone mercy, and because the bestowal of mercy is purely voluntary on God’s part, He can say, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” (Rom. 9:15). (291)
God’s grace toward the undeserving is behind God’s mercy to those in misery. Divine mercy is not caused by anything outside God, rather it springs from His goodness alone. God is merciful because He loves to communicate Himself to His creatures and does not refrain from rescuing the miserable. (291)
God’s mercy is “an asylum for the penitent and pious, but not a refuge for the impenitent and impious.” 63. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1:44 (293)
Fourth, God is most gracious.
Salvation is all of sheer, unmerited, unearned, sovereign, almighty grace, which the triune God freely bestows upon His people in Christ, while they are sinners, justly
deserving His displeasure (Rom. 9:15f; Eph. 2:8f; Rom. 5:8). (293)
Grace is God’s eternal, free, unmerited, undeserved, unpurchasable, unearned and unobligated favor and power revealed in Christ which saves and transforms forever His hell-deserving sinners (Rom. 4:4; 11:6; 3:24). (293)
The source of grace is the blessed Trinity (Rev. 1:4–6). God the Father is the “God of all grace” (1 Pet. 5:10). God the Son bestows grace on His people (Rom. 16:20). And God the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of grace” (Heb. 10:29). Each person of the Trinity makes His own unique contribution to the nature and bestowal of grace. The Father bestows electing grace. The Son bestows redeeming grace. The Holy Spirit bestows regenerating, sanctifying grace. (295)
A Christian is defined in terms of God’s grace. He is someone who sees his only hope of escape from the punishment his sins deserve as the sheer grace of God, sovereignly bestowed upon men of God’s choosing and freely offered to all through faith in Christ. (298)
Remove sovereignty from grace and all we are left with is hopelessly lost mankind. (299)
Fifth (and finally for today), God is most loving.
The GOD of omnipotence, omniscience, sovereignty, wisdom and holiness, the God Who is unchangeable, infinite, eternal, holy and self-contained, Jehovah, Who does all things for His own glory, is love. (299)
The triune God loves Himself as the highest possible object of His loving. All of His love and delight are directed preeminently toward His own glorious perfections, as He stands in need of no man’s hand to be served (Acts 17), so He needs no man’s heart to be loved. He needs no object outside of Himself to love. (300)
There are two Old Testament words primarily used for "love":
(1) chashaq has the root meaning of “to bind, to join together,” coupled with the idea of delight, so that the meaning of this Hebrew word for love is that of a bond of intimate and delightful fellowship...(2) ahab refers to the action of love, the root meaning of which is “to breathe after, to long for, to desire strongly.” (300)
God’s love is holy love. His loving never disregards His own holiness (Isa. 43:4; Hos. 3:1; Ps. 11:7; Isa. 61:8). God’s love is eternal, unchanging love. When God sets love upon someone, He loves that person forever (Jer. 31:1–; 1 Kings 10:9). (300)
God’s love is totally undeserved and unmerited. (301)
The main New Testament word for love is agape.
Colossians 3:14 identifies love as the “bond of perfection,”... (301)
God's love is defined in the following ways: 1) it is self-communicating; 2) it produces joy...
Therefore, we can say that God saves sinners, not only for His own glory, but also for His own joy and gladness; because the salvation of sinners is rooted in God’s love for sinners. (302)
3) Is is eternal...
It is as eternal as the union between the three Persons of the Trinity. (302)
4) It is covenantal...
God has promised to love forever those whom He has made His friends and separated from the world unto His Son’s kingdom (Rom. 8:33). God’s love therefore is redemptive love. He saves those upon whom He sets His love... (302)
5) It is both sovereign and distinquishing.
God's love demands something of us:
God's love demands something of us:
God demands love in return from those whom He loves (Deut. 6:5; Ps. 119:47–48)... It shows itself in heart-felt obedience to God’s revealed will. (304)
Additional truths concerning the doctrine of God's love:
To say that “God is love” is to say more than “God loves.” It is to say that love is of the very essence of God, that all His works are rooted in His love for Himself and for His people. If He creates, it is in love. If He rules, it is in love. If He judges, it is out of love for His people. (305)
[From 1 John 4:9–10] (1) The majesty of the Lover: The God of the Bible, the Creator of the universe is LOVE and to display that love has given His Son for us. (2) The unworthiness of the loved: God loves sinners who do not deserve to be loved, but who rather deserve His condemnation for their sins. (3) The infinite worth of Him in whom we are loved: God loves us in HIS SON, the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us. (4) The excellence of the blessings which flow from His love for us in Christ: We are given eternal life. We are enabled to love. (305)
It is this unmerited, eternal love of the sovereign God revealed to believers through Jesus Christ that is mankind’s only hope of salvation (Acts 4:12). (306)
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