If you want to know what God is like, the Book of Exodus gives you one of the most direct answers in all of Scripture. Standing at Mount Sinai, Moses makes an audacious request: show me your glory. God’s response reframes the question. It is not visual spectacle that captures God’s essence. It is limitless excellence. ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you,’ the LORD announces (Exod 33:19). Goodness is not one attribute among many. It is the quality that sums up God’s name, his nature, and his will.

From this Sinai declaration, the theme of God’s goodness unfolds with remarkable consistency across both Testaments. It shapes Israel’s life and worship, frames the ministry of Jesus, and culminates in the gospel’s offer of every spiritual blessing. Tracing this theme is not a mere academic exercise. It is a journey into the heart of God.

God’s Goodness in the Old Testament

In the Psalms, the goodness of God receives about forty mentions. Psalm 145 gives perhaps the fullest panoramic view: ‘The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made … The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing’ (Psa 145:9, 15-16). God’s goodness is unrestricted, extending sun, rain, seasons, fruitfulness, and gladness to all people — including, as Jesus taught, enemies (Matt 5:45).

Sometimes Scripture simply states the fact: ‘God is good’ (2 Chron 5:13; Lam 3:25). Other passages link God’s goodness with his steadfast love (1 Chron 16:34; Psa 100:5) or with his mercy (Psa 23:6). Yet the goodness of God in the Old Testament is not merely emotional warmth — it is specifically covenantal. God’s ‘goodness is a covenantal category,’¹ expressed in his giving of gifts to Israel: Law, Land, prophets, and priests.  All of Israel’s life — political and religious — is dependent on what God has given, and this dependence is ‘the true basis of worship.’²

The Book of Genesis concludes with one of the most celebrated declarations about God’s overriding purpose. After years of slavery and false accusation, Joseph confronts his previously treacherous brothers: ‘You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive’ (Gen 50:20). This is the shape of Divine goodness: sovereign, purposeful, turning evil into redemptive outcome.

God’s Goodness in the New Testament: Jesus’ Miracles

The New Testament deepens and extends the vision limitlessly. The Christian good news arises directly out of God’s goodness. And a wonderfully clear window into the goodness of God in Christ is the record of his miracles. More miracles are associated with Jesus Christ than with any other figure.³ Activity on the scale reported in the four Gospels — some thirty-five different miracle stories, including frequent mass healings carried out before thousands of people — is utterly unique.⁴

Yet Jesus’ miracles are too often viewed only as proofs of his Divine identity rather than as revelations of Divine character. They were both. His mass feedings, raisings from death, exorcisms, and healings were signs, certainly — but they were also wonders: marvels of benevolence designed to bless, to restore, to liberate, and to demonstrate the nature of God’s kingdom. Peter’s summary is definitive: ‘He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him’ (Acts 10:38).

Every Spiritual Blessing in Christ

Beyond his miracles, Paul’s letter to the Ephesians offers what is among the New Testament’s most comprehensive catalogue of God’s goodness. ‘The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world’ (Eph 1:3-4). The blessing declared here stretches back before time began and extends into an eternal future. Based on the forgiveness of sins, moved by love, it delivers ‘a blessing rooted in eternity past, participated in now and connected with an eternal future.’⁵

The great relational good offered in the good news is our adoption as beloved sons and daughters into the family of God the Father (Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5). And that adoption is the reason the Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13). The Spirit is the personal presence of the Father’s love in us. In giving his own Son and Spirit, the Father gives his very self. And in Christ God gives his goodness a face.

This is Cyprian of Carthage, writing in the third century in North Africa:

‘Many and great, beloved brothers and sisters, are the Divine benefits for which the large and abundant mercy of God the Father and Christ both has laboured and is always labouring for our salvation: that the Father sent the Son to preserve us and give us life, in order that he might restore us; and that the Son was willing to be sent and become the Son of Man, that he might make us sons of God; humbled himself, that he might raise up the people who before were prostrate; was wounded that he might heal our wounds; served, that he might draw out to liberty those who were in bondage; underwent death, that he might set forth immortality to mortals.’⁶

1. John Frame, The Doctrine of God (P&R Publishing, 2002), 410. ↩︎
2. R. E. Clements, God’s Chosen People (Judson Press, 1969), 69, cited in Bruce K. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology (Zondervan, 2007), 506-7. ↩︎
3. See the discussion of “Other First-Century Miracle-Workers,” in David Seccombe, The King of God’s Kingdom (Paternoster, 2002), 284-289. ↩︎
4. Seccombe, The King of God’s Kingdom, 291-292. ↩︎
5. Darrell L. Bock, Ephesians [TNTC] (IVP Academic, 2019), 32. ↩︎
6. Cyprian, Treatise 8, On Works and Alms, in Ante-Nicene Fathers [ANF], ed. Schaff, 5:476; slightly amended. ↩︎