The Greatness of God

Infinite, Eternal and Unchangeable in His Goodness

God has always been and always will be infinitely good. The catechism teaches, ascribing thereby to him that perfection of the divine nature which prompts him to deal bountifully and kindly with all his creatures. If it is God’s attribute of majestic holiness that emphasizes his transcendence over his creation, it is God’s his condescendence toward his creation. For just as the Catechism subsumes God’s knowledge under the rubric of his wisdom, so also the Catechism intends this beautiful word as the general category within which God’s love, grace, mercy, pity, compassion, long-suffering, kindness and other such expressions of his tender and fatherly character are to be placed. There are many verses in the bible that describes the goodness of God. One of these is in Exodus 33:19.

“The lord answered, All right. I am the lord, and I show mercy and kindness to anyone I choose. I will let you see my glory and hear my holy name”.

This and the myriad other passages that speak of God’s goodness to all - the just and the unjust and his love for the world which moved him to give even his own son for it, his tender and rich mercies which prompt him to relieve with the succor of a mother and the care of a father human misery and distress, and his grace – that unmerited favor of God which moves him to extend forgiveness to the undeserving guilty sinner – all affirm in their own way the infinite goodness of God. And even when he does what many of his rational creatures would contend is the ultimate misdeed of condemning the unjust man to hell, he is not being bad to him. He is simply being retributively just.

It is simply impossible for him to be bad or to take pleasure in the horrible end of the unrighteous.