Only one week before his death in July 1555, English Protestant John Bradford wrote from prison to his mother.
“I die not, my good mother, as a thief, a murderer, an adulterer,” he wrote, “but I die as a witness of Christ, His gospel and verity.”
Though he would soon become a martyr for his faith, Bradford trusted in God’s goodness.
Writing to comfort men and women who likewise faced suffering and death, he described the Christian life as a voyage on a stormy sea. Buffeted and beaten by the waves and breakers of life, Christian seafarers long for the day when they can take harbor on heavenly shores.
On these shores, he wrote, they would come into the presence of God and find “mirth without measure, all liberty, all light, all joy, rejoicing, pleasure, health, wealth, riches, glory, power, treasure, honor, triumph, meekness, felicity, beatitude and all that ever can be wished or desired.”
Bradford knew well that God is the source of all goodness, as Scripture itself testifies: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17).
When I moved to Missouri to begin work with The Pathway (then as associate editor), God laid on my heart a passage from the Psalms that has convicted and encouraged me for nearly a dozen years now: “I said to the LORD, ‘You are my Lord; I have nothing good besides you’” (Ps 16:2).
According to this Psalm, God is all Goodness and the Giver of all good things – and, without Him, nothing is good. This is a truth that Christian theologians have reiterated through the ages. Take, for example, the following:
• The North African theologian Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-430) wrote, “For God, to be is not one thing, and to be great [or to be good or loving] another; on the contrary, for Him to be is the same as for Him to be great.” In other words, God doesn’t merely have a good or loving disposition. Instead, He is Goodness, and He is Love (1 Jn 4:7-21).
• Likewise, medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury (A.D. 1033-1109) described God, in His very Being, as “supreme essence, supreme life, supreme reason, supreme health, supreme justice, supreme wisdom, supreme truth, supreme goodness, supreme greatness, supreme beauty, supreme immortality, supreme incorruptibility, supreme immutability, supreme happiness, supreme eternity, supreme power, supreme unity. And all this is nothing other than (God’s) being supremely, and (God’s) living supremely.”
• During the Protestant Reformation, theologians like Martin Luther and John Calvin recognized that we can only have righteousness in Christ. Apart from Christ, we have no righteousness, but are mired in sin. As Scripture says, “The LORD is our righteousness” (Jer 23:6). Luther wrote, “Through faith in Christ, therefore, Christ’s righteousness becomes our righteousness and all that He has becomes ours; rather, He Himself becomes ours.” Elsewhere, Calvin wrote, “Christ, when He illumines us into faith by the power of the Spirit, at the same time so engrafts us into His body that we become partakers of every good.”
• Twentieth-century theologian Carl F. H. Henry put it succinctly, “To know God is to know truth and the good.”
But why do I go on and on like this? Perhaps, because I need to remind myself of God’s goodness. Too often, when inconveniences and hardships arise, I doubt Him, grumbling at my circumstances rather than trusting the One God who is All Goodness and the Giver of all good things.
Of course, my struggle isn’t unique. After all, Adam and Eve questioned God’s goodness in the Garden of Eden. As for all of us, their descendants – well, as the saying goes, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
Given our natural human tendencies, therefore, it’s probably healthy for us to memorize and often repeat the words of Psalm 107:1, “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.” And perhaps we should once again take up the words I heard so often at church as a boy, “God is good all the time. All the time …” – well, I suppose I’ll let you finish the refrain.