The Nature of God

In this blog we will look at the nature of God and its meaning. First of all what do we mean or what are we referring to when we talk about the nature of God? In short God's nature means His characteristics, His attributes and His qualities. First let’s do a little word search. Characteristic means a distinguishing trait, quality, or property. Attribute means an accidental quality, although I believe that God’s attribute is by no accident. And quality means a degree of excellence. All three definitions revolve or center on quality. Look at quality again, a degree of excellence. So what is the excellence of God? Excellence means good. What is the “good” of God?

Being a children’s pastor I really want to focus on the goodness of Gods nature as if I were speaking to children. We’ve all heard growing up the little prayer, “God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food.” I could discuss many characteristics of Gods nature but as I said, this blog will focus on Gods goodness. His nature is good.

When being asked who is God, we could easily say, “I don’t know, no one really knows.” Perhaps that's how it should be but that will not suffice with children. God is totally beyond comprehension and giving some sort of explanation who He is can be very difficult. Let’s face it; there is no way we can know everything about God. So we should be up front and honest when talking to kids about what we do and what we do not know.

So how do I know that God’s nature is good? I really need look no further than His word, the Bible. From the beginning of the world God shows His goodness through His creation. In Genesis chapter one God speaks after each formation and verbally states it is good. The light was good, the dry land, and the gathering of the waters was good, the vegetation, plants yielding seed, and trees bearing fruit was good and on it goes. Each day was good. God not only created the heavens and the earth but verbally wants us to know that through His goodness good was done.

Psalm 100 is a prayer of thanksgiving. We are often thankful for the things that are good. Rarely are we thankful for the things that are bad. Most of the time we are thankful for material things. “I’m thankful for that new skateboard or playstation.” But as we grow and learn we understand that we are thankful for things that will never fade away. We are thankful for love, health, life, friends, and family and so on.

In Psalms 100:5 it says, “For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” Nothing thrills me more than to know that the nature of God is love and love is good. Also through Gods goodness is His faithfulness. It’s really hard at times to find a friend who is faithful, but God our forever friend is always faithful. And as we see in scripture His faithfulness will continue through all generations. That means that God will be faithful to me, my children, their children and on it goes, through all generations. God’s love and faithfulness is good. That’s His nature.

If love is good then nothing shows Gods love and goodness more than Jesus Christ the Son of God. God loves us so much that He sent His Son to this earth to be a sacrifice for all. Romans 5:6-8 says, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Because God is good, His nature is good and His love for us is good, He sent His Son. No doubt it was hard for Him to do, but that’s His nature.

While exploring the word of God, His goodness, His nature and excellence are easy to see. The nature of God, the excellence of God jumps from page to page. He gave us nothing less. Anything less is not of God. God not only demonstrated His love for us through the sacrifice of His Son but His goodness abounds around us everyday. The quality, the excellence of life, the faithfulness of it all is simply overwhelming. So what is the nature of God? Look around and see. The nature of God is good.