What does it mean that God is good? One of the most searching answers in Scripture is also one of the simplest: God is good in the way a father is good. Not as a metaphor or a distant analogy, but as a living, personal, familial reality. ‘If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,’ Jesus said, ‘how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!’ (Matt 7:11). The goodness of God is Fatherly goodness — strong, resourceful, affectionate, and certain.

This is the deepest dimension of what Scripture means when it declares that God is good. There is goodness at the heart of the universe, and that goodness has a personal name: Father.

The Father as the Source of All Goodness

God the Father is the beginning of everything, and all good begins with him. Fatherly goodness is at the foundation and origin of all things. ‘Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights’ (Jas 1:17). The goodness of God is firstly and primarily God the Father’s goodness, and it is this Fatherly goodness which we see reflected in the good gifts human parents give their children.

Christ made this governing reality unmistakably clear. He presented Divine kindness as parental. The generosity of God reaching out to the poor, the disabled, and the dispossessed is paternal in character. The ‘Fatherly nature of God’s goodness emphasizes the abundance, authority, responsibility, and tenderness of his character, reaching down in condescension toward human children in whom — as the archetypal and original big-hearted and proud parent — he delights.’¹

The Father’s Greatest Gift: Adoption and Sonship

The best and highest good is communion, fellowship with God the Father and with Jesus Christ, ‘the Father’s Son’ (2 John 3). ‘God’s pattern of dealing with us has always been determined by the model of sonship.’² Individual and personal sonship to God — and God’s Fatherhood to each of us — is established in two events: first, by our regeneration (new birth), and second, by our adoption into his family.

The Apostle Paul is expansive on this point. In Romans 8, he declares that ‘you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”’ (Rom 8:15). The cry ‘Abba, Father!’ — in all ethnicities and languages, addressing God as dear Father, my Father, our Father — is, says Scripture, profoundly good.

Calling God ‘Abba’ means that ‘we may speak with the Father just as Christ speaks with the Father, for the Father’s ear will open as readily to our cries as it does to the voice of his own Son.’³ This access is extraordinary. To come to God as a Father, through Christ, by the help and assistance of the Holy Spirit — ‘how full of sweetness and satisfaction it is!’⁴

Eternal Life as the Father’s Crowning Good

The Father’s goodness is centred and focused on Jesus Christ. It is as the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, our elder brother and mediator, that we enjoy the Father’s goodness (Heb 2:10-18). ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him’ (John 14:23).⁵ ‘This is that which Christ came to reveal – God as a Father … for the love of the Father is the only rest of the soul.’⁶ According to Owen, resting in God the Father ‘is the great discovery of the gospel.’⁷

Knowing the Father and belonging to him — conscious of his grace, mercy, and peace — is supremely good. For as the Saviour said, knowing the Father, ‘the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he sent, is eternal life’ (John 17:1, 3). This is not merely the future hope of the Christian. It is a present possession. ‘Eternal life is forever and yet also the present possession of those who rely on Jesus Christ.’⁸

There is personal security here: ‘because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever’ (2 John 2). No one can snatch us from the Father’s hand (John 10:29). We have new brothers and sisters. ‘The Christian life brings not only a new Father and a new disposition, but also new family relationships.’⁹ This family fellowship, forever and ever, is the Father’s goal in all his giving and goodness to us: ‘We are children of God; we, therefore, receive an inheritance from him. Our final destiny is to enter into the full enjoyment of that inheritance.’¹⁰

The gift of his only-begotten Son and the gift of his very own Spirit are the two ultimate goods the Father has to give. In giving his own Son and Spirit, the Father gives his very self. The biggest benefit and best good is an ongoing and everlasting personal experience of our heavenly Father’s ever-present love. This is the goodness of God made fully known.

1. Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology (Thomas Nelson, 1998), 199. ↩︎
2. Sinclair B. Ferguson, Children of the Living God (Banner of Truth Trust, 1989), 119. ↩︎
3. Ferguson, Children of the Living God, 33. ↩︎
4. John Owen, ‘A Discourse of the Work of the Holy Spirit in Prayer,’ Works of John Owen, Volume 4 (Richard Baynes, 1826), 82. ↩︎
5. There is ‘no lack, deficit, or neediness on his part. … The Triune God, though absolutely one, is not personally solitary. We can see that this most obviously by considering the eternal fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in which there is no empty space for loneliness or isolation. To put it as positively as possible, God is blessed eternally sufficient to himself, delighting in the love and light that make his Divine life. … God desires to dwell in the midst of his people, not out of need or greed but freely, truly, and deeply’ (Fred Sanders, The Holy Spirit: An Introduction (Crossway, 2023), 70). ↩︎
6. John Owen, Communion with God, eds. Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor (Crossway, 2007), 112; emphasis supplied. ↩︎
7. Owen, Communion with God, 107. ↩︎
8. B. B. Warfield, Selected Shorter Writings (P&R Publishing, 1973), 2:647-48. ↩︎
9. Ferguson, Children of the Living God, 53. ↩︎
10. Ferguson, Children of the Living God, 120. ↩︎