The Goodness of God

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION

“The triunity of God is the secret of His beauty. If we deny this, we at once have a God without radiance and without joy (and without humor!)….”

~Karl Barth (1886-1968) in Church Dogmatics

“Creation’s being is God’s pleasure, creation’s beauty God’s glory; beauty reveals the shining of an uncreated light. … Creation is only a splendor that hangs upon that life of love and knowledge, and only by grace; it is first and foremost a surface, a shining fabric of glory, whose inmost truth is its aesthetic correspondence to the beauty of divine love. … It is delight that constitutes creation, and so only delight can comprehend it, see it aright, understand its grammar. Only in loving creation’s beauty—only in seeing that creation truly is beauty—does one apprehend what creation is.”

~David Bentley Hart in The Beauty of the Infinite (2003)

“…all the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation is but the reflection of the diffused beams of that Being who hath an infinite fullness of brightness and glory; God . . . is the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty.”

~Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) in The Nature of True Virtue

“A sin…consists in doing, saying, thinking, or imagining anything that is not in perfect conformity with the mind and law of God.”

~J.C. Ryle (1816-1900), Anglican bishop, in Holiness

“Sin is the dare of God’s justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeer of His patience, the slight of His power, and the contempt of His love.”

~John Bunyan (1628-1688), writer of The Pilgrim’s Progress

“If God is holy, then he can’t sin. If God can’t sin, then he can’t sin against me. If he can’t sin against me, shouldn’t that make him the most trustworthy being there is?”

“We will want and choose to put to death what is earthly in us when we believe God is infinitely better than everything we are tempted to leave him for.”

~Jackie Hill Perry in Holier Than Thou: How God’s Holiness Helps Us Trust Him

SERMON PASSAGE

Galatians 5:22-23, Psalm 118:1, Psalm 34:8-10 (ESV)

Galatians 5

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Psalm 118

1 Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

  for his steadfast love endures forever!

Psalm 34

8 Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!

  Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!

9 Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints,

  for those who fear him have no lack!

10 The young lions suffer want and hunger;

  but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.