Goodness, Wisdom and Justice: The Character of God

Why did God give the Law? Read the commandments, and God seems almost fixated on obedience. Follow the commandments; obey; follow the commandments again. Is He obsessed? To answer that, we need to know what the Law is. The Law is an expression of who God is. It reveals His nature, and above all His moral nature: His goodness, His wisdom and His justice. Understand those three, and we understand why He gave the Law and why He insists that we obey it.

Three Words for the Character of God

There are many aspects of God. His attributes fall into two categories: His moral attributes and His metaphysical attributes, such as His being spirit and being everywhere. When we speak of God’s moral attributes, there are three that encompass everything else: His goodness, His wisdom and His justice. The order does not matter. These three combined are what we mean by the moral nature of God.

Every other moral quality we attribute to God comes under one of them. Holiness comes under goodness. So do His concern, His compassion and His grace. His wisdom means that He knows what He is doing: He has a beautiful plan, if only we follow it.

Goodness

God is good. I define goodness this way: doing everything for the benefit of others.† When we say that God is good, we mean that He does everything for the benefit of His creation. In the end there are only two parties, God and His creation, because everything that exists other than God has been created by Him. So when we say God is good, we are saying that everything He does is for the betterment of His creation and helpful to it. He never does anything evil. Evil is whatever is destructive.

Goodness is not only wanting good things for someone. Anyone can say, “I am a good person.” What does it really mean? It means that I am actually doing something that benefits someone else. God’s goodness is not a theoretical goodness. It is a practical goodness, which people are able to enjoy. He showed it at the very beginning, when He created everything good (Genesis 1:31). He created the plants and the trees and everything else, and only then did He create human beings, and He told them to use everything He had made for their joy. They were not to destroy or exploit it, but they were to use it and have joy through it (Genesis 1:28–30).

We usually think about goodness in a very personal way. Think of the songs: “God is so good to me.” Think of the “testimonies”: “This happened to me, but God saved me. God is so good.” Whenever we say it, it is usually personal, subjective, even selfish: it means that I have been the beneficiary of something. That is not how God’s goodness works. His goodness is for all His creation.

What Goodness Aims At

What is the end goal of goodness? What does it create? Equality is a must. Peace is a must. Harmony is a must. There is no joy if there is no peace, no harmony and no equality. There is no joy if my needs are not met, if my relationships are broken, or if I am treated as an inferior person. But I would stretch it a little further. The ultimate aim of life is happiness. If we are not happy, we have not lived our lives well. The ultimate fulfilment of human life is joy: the joy of being alive, the joy of having this life, because this life has been given to me by God. People call it joie de vivre, the joy of living.

That is why God created everything: so that His creation could be happy and have joy. And joy includes peace, harmony, equality and all our needs being met. So goodness is whatever makes people happy, and the ultimate aim of God’s goodness is our joy. God wants that joy to be a reality for all His creation. That is the goodness of God: He wants us to receive it.

Wisdom

Wanting good things for others is not enough. They have to actually happen. So I define wisdom as the path by which goodness actually becomes a reality: making the decisions, and taking the steps, by which good things truly happen and enrich other people’s lives.†

God wants good things for His creation. But how do they actually happen? What are the steps? What is the method? What is the path that must be taken? God has a plan, a method, a way by which what He wants for His creation becomes a reality. He has thought it out. He says, “When you follow this, this is what will happen.” In His infinite wisdom He knows that this is the only path that can truly help people to be joyful. He decided that His creation should have a good life, and that decision includes what has to be done for that goodness to become real.

That path is the Law. The Law is the wisdom of God (Deuteronomy 4:6). God says, in effect, “I want My creation to enjoy My goodness, which is the joy they are meant to have. This is how you must live, and these are the decisions you must make, so that My goodness becomes a reality.”

Why was the Law given to human beings and not to plants or animals? Because human beings are the sentient beings God created. Not everything can make decisions. A tree cannot. An animal makes decisions by instinct, to survive, but it does not make plans. Animals do not sit together and say, “Let us take over the world” or “Let us destroy the forest.” Sentient beings are beings who can make decisions, think about their impact and, knowing that impact, still make them. Plants and animals live and die by their natural law. The Law of God was given to human beings, because we are the ones who decide.

So the commandments are never given without a reason. If someone says we must obey simply because God told us to, that is completely unbiblical. God Himself gives the reason: we obey so that we will be safeguarded and protected and have a wonderful life. All His commandments are for our welfare (Deuteronomy 6:24; 10:12–13). That is why Moses tells them to fear the Lord. To fear the Lord is to acknowledge God as God and to respect Him as the Creator: to respect His wisdom, His goodness and His justice. Every commandment He has given is part of His wisdom, part of His justice and part of His goodness.

Justice

The third attribute is justice. God wants His creation to enjoy His goodness. But that joy can be disrupted. Everyone should have food, clothing, air and water, shelter and relationships. When someone takes those away from another, or treats another as an inferior, inequality comes in and joy is destroyed. Why does anyone do it? For selfish reasons.

Then the goodness of God, and the wisdom of God through which it becomes a reality, have been shattered for individuals or whole societies. God has to step in and punish the person who is destroying that joy. Such a person is called wicked, because his actions bring not goodness but wickedness, and wickedness destroys harmony, equality, the meeting of basic needs and human dignity. So I define justice as God judging whoever disrupts that joy for selfish reasons.†

That is why God judges sin. In God’s eyes, sin is anything selfish that harms, or has the potential to harm, human beings in particular and God’s creation in general.† Everything He has told us not to do comes down to this: do not do anything out of a selfish motive that will harm or hurt His creation. There is no victimless crime. We may not notice the victims, or know them immediately, but every sin creates a victim, and that is what God is angry about. When I step on someone for my selfish gain, He is for the person I stepped on.

Many people have the idea that if God is good, He cannot be just: how can a good God punish? I have made this statement over and over again, and I want it to sink in: because He is good, He has to be just. If He did not judge the evil and the exploitative, they would go on exploiting people. And if an unrepentant person goes on saying, “We will not care what God says; we will be selfish and destructive,” that person has to be punished. Otherwise his deeds will destroy the whole world, and the joy of life will be taken away from those who become his victims. God will not allow that to happen.

God’s justice is not vengeance. Justice is for all, and it is objective. Vengeance is subjective. God sometimes uses words like “It is mine to avenge” (Deuteronomy 32:35), but they have to be understood in the language and context in which He uses them. When God judges, there is no prejudice at all. He judges objectively.

The prophets said this too. Whether they spoke to Israel or to other nations, their message, in effect, was the same. You have become idolatrous. You are oppressive. You are standing against the joy and peace that are supposed to be part of human life. Goodness and justice should have prevailed, and then there would have been peace and joy. Instead you have done evil and injustice, and there is suffering, anguish and misery. You human beings are the cause of the misery of your fellow human beings (Isaiah 1:16–17; Amos 5:11–15).

Right and Good

Moses tells Israel, “Do what is right and good in the LORD’s sight, so that it may go well with you” (Deuteronomy 6:18). The two words are not synonyms. “Good” is usually subjective: it means what is good for me. “Right” is universal: it means what is good for everyone.† Most of the time we concentrate on what is good for me, and the two can be very different. But God’s Law is always good for everyone, which is why obeying it is called righteousness (Deuteronomy 6:25).

We should think of the right first and the good next. What is good for everyone will later benefit you as well. When the whole society benefits, you, as part of that society, benefit too. That is the kingdom gospel. It is not “Jesus will do this for you.” It is that when everyone follows Him as God and obeys His commandments, the world becomes beautiful. Everyone has everything they need. There is no strife, no violence, no crying, no exploitation and no victimisation. What everyone gets, I get. But when I think only of myself, I may get things, and that does not mean anyone else has them.

Even “the good land” in the same verse is good in this sense. A piece of land cannot be good, since goodness is a moral quality. The land is called good because it would benefit everyone.

Doing right and good also includes doing away with evil. In the next verse Moses speaks of “thrusting out all your enemies” (Deuteronomy 6:19). God does not consider anyone His enemy because of race, creed or language. He considers people His enemies when they intentionally rebel against His commandments, which are good, and want to overthrow Him. Goodness has to be established and maintained, and for that, those who rebel and destroy it have to be punished. Doing right and good is not only doing positive things. It also means standing against what is wrong and refusing to be part of it. That is costly.

God Does Not Change

God never changes. His plan never changes, His will never changes, His nature never changes, and His love for people never changes (Malachi 3:6). Nothing we attribute to God ever changes. That is why we use the word “immutable”: there is no mutation, no change, in Him, however much time passes.

What changes is the way God speaks to people. Not everyone can be taught the same way. Languages and cultures differ. The very idea of God communicating is that people should understand, so the audience He spoke to directly had to understand what He said. For that He used human language, human culture and human ways of teaching. These are communication devices: things that enable communication to happen. Culture plays a role, history plays a role, language plays a role, social norms play a role. Behind all of them God remains the same. So His revelation of Himself in one place will never contradict His revelation of Himself elsewhere. If two statements about God truly contradict each other, only one of them can be true.

Many people, even within Christianity, say that the God of the Law was all for violence, destruction and anger, but that the God of the Gospels is gracious. (The division of the Bible into an “Old Testament” and a “New Testament” is man-made, and does not reflect the unity of God’s teaching as Jesus taught it.) But He has always been gracious and He has always been just. There is no distinction between how He is now and how He was before, because there is no change in Him. When God says, “thrust out your enemies” (Deuteronomy 6:19), and Jesus says, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44), we may think God has changed. He has not. God does not change, the Law does not change, and God’s mind does not change. The two statements speak of completely different things.

People also misuse the words “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). They pick out something God told someone and say, “You are the same yesterday, today and for ever. You did that for them, so will You not do it for me?” We play all kinds of gimmicks for selfish gain. But that is not what it means. It does not mean, “What I did for them I will do for you”, or “What I told them, I tell you.” It means that His character, His nature, does not change. He has always been loving, just, caring and gracious.

Jesus Himself shows it. Every good story has a character arc. The hero starts somewhere, moves forward, and also rises to another plane altogether; he is never the same at the end of the story as at the beginning. When it comes to Jesus, there is no character arc. He was who He was from the beginning of His ministry until He was put on the cross, and after His resurrection He is still the same. He moved forward in time, but there was no change in Him. He stood against those who distorted the teachings of God at the beginning, and He stood against them to the end.

The Message of the Bible in Four Words

So if someone asks what the core of the Bible is, we should be able to say this. God created human beings in the world He had already created, so that they could have joy and peaceful lives. That will happen only through goodness and justice, which are our responsibility. And goodness and justice become a reality through the teachings we receive from God.

It comes down to four words: peace and joy, goodness and justice. What is the end goal? Peace and joy. How will it be achieved? By goodness and justice. How do goodness and justice become a reality? Through God’s teachings. That is the beautiful cycle we need to understand and help others to understand.

Evil does not come from some power outside us. Goodness or evil, justice or injustice, comes from us, from the decisions we make. God gave us the freedom to make those decisions. That is why He gave us His Law. It is His goodness, shown in His wisdom and guarded by His justice, so that all of us can live in His world with joy.