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CHAPTER FOUR

THE GLORY OF THE GOODNESS OF GOD

"How GREAT is Thy goodness!" It is not only that God is great - many may be great and greatly detested. It is that His goodness is great. In this category you find an unquenchable continuity, to the very margins of human reception, even beyond time, to the matrix of eternity, when man foreknown becomes His own, everyone reached; for He would have all men to be saved, not just all of this or that type, neither stated nor implied, but as between heaven and earth, God and man, ALL (I Timothy 2). That is His extensive scope. Not only that, but it is His desire that but ALL THINGS are reconciled in heaven OR in earth. There is no difficulty about His attitude and deep desire. It is useless to argue. God alone knows, and declares it in emphatic, even repetitive terms (Colossians 1).

Sometimes one embarks on something which by its nature, has limitations, such that beyond a certain point, it is no longer that thing. Thus love is no more love when selfish passion rules, self-affirmation engulfs or force flushes the situation like a flood. To use the term when it is severed both from source and meaning, is meaningless gabble.

Thus the extreme goodness of God by its nature, does not make the free compelled, for that is mere bullying, or illusion, or both. Thus there is no question of people being impelled contrary to their desire, to the very depth of their beings persons and yet free, as was highly responsible and justly condemned Adam. It is no good saying that the intention was good as you impress those to sail, like someone shanghaied, and force them to come. Nor is anti-actual thrust love, that is something conceived as intrusive irrespective of the preference of the person, notoriously unfree, simply conquest at greater depth, thus leading to salvation the income for responsibility or the outcome for love. THAT, it is neither a true, nor adequate and accurate picture or depiction of love.

Certainly God's love and salvation IS impelled on those who are foreknown (the Bible makes that the base category, Romans 8:29ff.). But that is a procedural consideration, in view of sin. The base for such an action, this before our time ever arose with the day, it is the will of God, and as to that how great is His goodness, and His love; for it is precisely like that of Jesus Christ on earth who, despite monumental errors of some, does faithfully represent the will of His Father, which HE ALWAYS did! (John 8:29).

Putting a vice in there to break it up, this infinite unison, is one of the most unmagnificent pieces of theology ever written, as noted before. Like David's adultery, this sudden lapse in a great theologian, stands out appallingly (Predestination and Freewill Section 2); but it should never be followed, nor any other unbiblical statement, whoever may make it. Man has far too much tendency to follow someone, anybody, when astray: it is not a defect of his design, but an attribute of betrayal when he is set against God (like a car without pneumatic tyres). He is so made that He is vulnerable and unfinished for function, when God is not in his thoughts, basic to his ideas, His word surrounding like bees at their hive.

What then is the actual position in terms of the Bible ?

God SO loved the world (quality unspeakable, the degree of it about to come as in "so", and to be shown in depth and dimension for what it is). What is in view ? It is the world being in this discourse the relationship between God and man, as the identities in view. Let us pursue John 3:16. He did act of loving, in this category, that He GAVE. The giving is contrasted with receiving, grabbing, exploiting, bending to profit and so forth. The move is not profit, though what is good is profitable; but it is love. It is this that we are told in the text.

Giving is the resultant.

The measure now is forthcoming. SO loved that He gave and what was that ? What was the precise extent of the giving ?

He has one Son. He is the ONLY begotten Son. How much a father gives for an only begotten son even in normal life, can be amazing, as the future unfurls its flags. But when it is God who is so dealing, who has so much power, but is both desirous and able to go to this extent, then we know it is beyond all comparison, being not only the converse in all matters of power and wilfulness, arbitrary desire and self-satisfaction, but a divinely conspicuous and perspicuous loving desire. It is loving something, not yourself, which is in view. It is paying which is the measure.

Thus we see the HEIGHT of this love.

It is so given with such height and quality that there is no limit on the use which may be made of this gift, the thing given, namely eternal life, as we learn and find. ANYONE can have it, if something is done ? something is featured, as ground. What then is it ? perhaps it is like a life of utter sanctity as a condition of having access to so wonderful a gift ? No! this not stated.

Anyone that God happens to want, then, is that it ? Not as such. There is no happening at work upon God. His wisdom measures and knows, implements in what is like Him, pure and good and sound; or for that matter, to be rebuked in due course; or to be welcomed as of His own kin. The terms of whosoever and gaining the gift, in this duality, mean that there is a turning from exclusivism to generality. Such is the divine desire as here expressed. This is confirmed by the way shown for anyone to avoid such divine height and quality of love. It is specified without question.

To avoid it, you PREFER something else (John 3:19). It is YOU who do this, not God who so acts. It is you who limit this, not God. HE acted to save the world (John 3:18). In fact He not only did this, but acted with the purpose, not to condemn it, to evacuate not to impel to hell, what is left over. Attempting to make God responsible for hell here, as if He willingly sent there, rather than did not INTERRUPT its just judgment, when the cure and remedy is not taken, is like a bushfire in a garden! Reject with this immense divine airlift, if you will, one provided to avoid justice' heavy toll, and you continue into an unforgiving territory; but do not blame God who foreknow His own with His own love as shown in Christ. Sin did not limit before it ever arose, or man was; God knows. Is it then no use to seek Him ? Of course not. What your inclination is is what is foreknown, and this ensures no trickery, confusion or mistake. Since God is on record that He would like to have ALL, then this gives more hope to any seeking, more reality to any seeking.

To make this some mystery dependent on unknowns, when God makes His desire and attitude and seeking for man and what He has been willing to pay, and the intensity and immensity of His desire so clear, and what He has likewise sought to avoid, to consider His desire as the reason for exclusion constitutes a virtually inconceivable arrogation of the text to other purposes. It may not be conscious, but it represents an achievement of confusion to be wondered at, when such blatant contradiction occurs. God so loved that He gave and WOULD HAVE all to be reconciled to Himself, yes all, yes in heaven as on earth, yes by this same means of redemption. It is broad enough; it is backed enough. Escape from His liberality, avoidance of His salvation is a dire open door; but there is nothing secret about it. HIS knowledge of who will come is secret, since it is special to Himself and His powers to know; but its basis is as open a secret as the light of the sun, which itself illuminates.

How good is this God and what enmities are readily aroused by the various outcomes of unbelief!

Thus have we looked at the extreme territory of God's goodness, its vast domain, then at the extreme action to implement it, and the extreme provision hitting as hard as might be, the magnificence of the divine love, in order to gain souls from their deserved destiny. It is never shown more glorious than when He so suffers for love's sake.

Now we turn to a third illustration, exhibit, manifestation of His goodness. In the Chalcedon^*1Council's formulation, we have some finesse language about the two natures in Christ, the human and the divine, which are indivisible, unconfusable and so on. In other words, He is seen as NOT LESS than divine and NOT OTHER than human, a genuine incarnation, definitive and direct. On one approach, however, it is made to appear, though not by the Council, that Christ being divine and this incapable of death, His divine nature did not die. Indeed, this appears to involve no small controversy.

Now the crucial point is this, that HE BEING God (John 8:58), and not so just in some part or particular, died for man thus showing the purity and majesty, the wonder and the witness of His love. Thus this contrary formulation is not to be admired. Its mystery is its grandeur. What is withheld is the knowledge of the result, except one does come and so qualify for the promises. This however is not a problem but a solution: it is all in hand and in very stream of goodness in wholly competent operation. Coming to Him actually even gives the information!

Now we look at His bearing it, including death. In fact, while it is true that the divine being CANNOT die or lie (Titus 1, I Timothy 6:16), truth being as surely unmanipulable when it is actual, indeed His who knows and is pure beyond confused contrariness, there being no limits to His power, being and condition, as for His life, He can choose His forms, in what mode He will be and act. To forget this as if such choice annuls Him, or would if He died in some form, is to forget the incarnation event.

His donation to part of creation, that is everlasting life for man and such beings (cf. Colossians 1:19ff.), comes because of who He is and what He did, and through His showing the One He exhibited (John 14:9). To act as if such participation were evacuative rather than directive: this is to forget the event. He was sent into a form, but did not cease to exist outside it in the eternal form which is God's own inveterate reality. God was not deformed by His coming, but neither was He withholding. Having power to express through His Eternal Word, He used it in human form and format, not an appearance, but reality, not in part but in whole in His character, status, nature. In the very bosom of His Father was He, the Lord, even when exposed in form on earth.

This, it is incarnation in flesh, not as to sin, but as to stature and position, Christ true God as true man. Now man can indeed die; and God in the enshrinement of human format can die in that format, and it is not someone else, but this FORM which dies, and this BEING who dies, IN THAT FORM. Christ died for me, Thou my God did indeed die for me. It is indeed amazing grace. He is one Person, who took upon Himself another form so that He might a) experience b) intuit as man c) suffer as a man does, but without sin as an ingredient, d) suffuse the relationships with His being, d) cover man's sin as a non-sinner who gives pardon because it is His earning which makes love and mercy able to achieve this, without their being molested and e) be resurrected, since death could not hold Him.

This last is as in Acts 2:24-32. Death could come, but not keep, lash but not last, sever but never secure. It can strike at His nature as enshrined in flesh, but it cannot touch His eternal form as God. If He dies in human form, He most certainly will arise. No liabilities can enslave God; and when He has paid (Matthew 20), there is no need for receipt. He arises. He who could heal others, even raise them from the dead, did not lack in His own case (John 2:19). Vast as was the chasm of mortality for incarnation that was genuine into mankind, far greater was the outreach, overreach, and conquest. " Death, where is thy sting!" (I Corinthians 15:55), indeed. Nevertheless, it first used it, before its obliteration in His dying and rising, the just for the unjust (I Peter 3:18)!

Death here can snare, but not keep. Even at that, it is foreknown to God and pre-ordained, even the date forecast (The Christian Prescription Ch. 2) for His death in the form of man. As to His eternal form, this is simply incapable of death. But He who has it took another form, being manifest as man. So He died where death not only counts for good, but is able to do so. There was no divorce, but a massive procedure in perfect expression, in perfect correlation with His Father, so that the form did not obstruct communion with His Father, but gave it a new expressive medium (John 5:43,8:29,46, 16:15).

He purges and mercy surges, like logs no longer tangled.

Dying as God encrypted, expressed, in flesh is greater than the stars which He created, even all of them, than the dimensions of time and space and all that is in it. Here lies the simple magnificence of what love is: motivated by no necessity, giving by no conditioning involvement: free of entanglement, it acts BECAUSE love is like that. God who is love, He is like that. It is He who is the original of it all, as of all goodness, who gave because of it, and gave all that could be given in a simple enormity of wonder.

Indeed, goodness which is poured out in this sort of love, is something which God exhibits to man, not only through prophets and the fulfilment of their precise words (cf. Matthew 5:17-20), but with what Christ showed. If you read Mark for example, there is a succession of wonders of healings and healings rather than merely feelings, an assertion of power and authority over spiritual diseases and evil inputs as well as physical ones, of kindnesses and willingness to continue serving even when needs are given at record levels, and even when they interrupt a desire for rest and recuperation. Also present, in Mark in particular, we find readily an authority which has no bounds to its power, no scope for embarrassment, such as forgiving sins and making the paralysed able to walk instantly as a signal of truth. ANY ONE crucial case like that would have ended any thought of His Messiahship, being God in flesh. But there was no one, so that only murder could satisfy envious priests or others, visionaries or voluptuaries, the subtly subversive or the openly disdainful. Their hate drove them to it; their logistics of rejection found no other way for specification. The Gospels fill out the aspects in a beautiful complementarity of testimony.

They tried, it is indicated, written, with the results just as Isaiah 54-55 showed would be the case.

The divine goodness is like that; it is like Spring wild-flowers when the conditions are right. The conditions here are readiness to repent, to receive and believe your God, for this is He is whether you opt for or against Him, the latter like wallabies insisting on crossing the road unnecessarily, just in front of your car as dusk bewilders or lights dazzle or confuse. Easier and better not to do so!

The flowering of the goodness of God when the works of iniquity cease is a thing so wonderful as to be contemplated with utter delight. How lovely are His ways! When not only avoidance of evil but the fragrance and naturalness of goodness is exuberant, that is an immeasurable beauty. Christ showed it, whatever the evils. When evil is spent, as in Revelation 19-22, then goodness' natural path comes direct from the Lord. It is He whom it is good to know, and for whom, to go.hddjjjj

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