‘God is the Blessed One because he is at rest in the fullness of his perfections,’ wrote Herman Bavinck. ‘He is blessed in himself as the sum of all goodness, of all perfection.’¹ This is a breathtaking claim about the inner life of God. Before there was a universe, before there were creatures, before there was anything outside of himself, God was perfectly, completely, blessedly happy. And the secret of this happiness is not solitude but communion — the eternal life of love shared between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Understanding God’s goodness requires understanding God’s perfection. And understanding God’s perfection requires understanding that God is not one lonely person but three Persons in perfect, eternal communion. God is good because he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

God’s Perfection in Himself

What does it mean to say that God is perfect? ‘The perfection of God consists in all those divine attributes, as of one in whom there are no shortcomings.’² There is no good proper to God that he does not have entirely. He lacks nothing, needs nothing, depends on nothing beyond himself for his existence or happiness. Yet this self-sufficiency is not cold isolation. God’s perfection is the perfection of communion.

Yet God does not merely have attributes as qualities distinct from himself. Rather, his attributes are identical with his being. He is not simply wise, true, good, holy, just, and merciful; he is wisdom, truth, goodness, holiness, justice, and mercy. Everything that God has, he is. In this way, he is not only perfect in himself but also the source and fountain of all perfections found in creatures.

The Trinity: Persons in Communion

Divine independence must not be misunderstood as isolation. God’s perfect goodness is personal and relational in its very nature. ‘God is defined by his relations; he is a communion or fellowship of love. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mutually glorify and love each other.’³ The divine Persons do not exist apart from these relations, but exist in and through them, so that God is, in his very being, this communion.

This communion is living. The triune God’s essential goodness — his perfection — is his ‘life in himself’ (John 5:26): a life that originates in the Father, is given to the Son, and is shared in the Holy Spirit. God’s perfection is therefore personal, relational, and communal. It is the perfection of mutual love: a life of giving and receiving, of shared fellowship, in which honour, value, and delight are eternally communicated among the three persons.

The Perfect Life of Love

Because God’s life is this perfect communion, his character is perfectly unified and harmonious. As the triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — God’s identity, persons, relations, and fellowship are perfectly and eternally complete. His perfection is not something acquired but is an eternal fullness, consisting in mutual glory, harmony, honour, and love, enjoyed before the foundation of the world (John 17:5, 23-26).

God lives his perfect life in the abundance of many individual and distinct perfections. Each of these is perfect in itself and in combination with all others. His character is entirely coherent and integrated, lacking any tension or contradiction. In God, all possible perfections — goodness, wisdom, mercy, knowledge, power, and love — are united in perfect simplicity and unity.

This love is interpersonal, belonging to God’s very essence, and is eternally complete and perfect. It is this same love with which he loves us (Rom 5:5). The church, established by God’s free and loving will, is the outworking and visible demonstration of this perfection in the world. In the Spirit, the perfect love and fellowship of God are not only revealed but also shared with his people.

The Trinity as the Source of All Goodness

All divine goodness — whether in creation or redemption — has its source in the triune life of God. God is unique, but not solitary. His goodness is defined by his perfect life of reciprocal love, eternally shared among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The goodness of God is therefore fundamentally interpersonal — generated by divine relationships and marked by eternal honour, harmony, and glory. This same goodness is extended to all creatures in creation and redemption.

This truth transforms everything. When we speak of God’s goodness, we are not speaking about an abstract quality but about the overflowing love of the Trinity. The Father’s love for the Son, the Son’s love for the Father, the Spirit as the love that unites them — this is the goodness from which all other goodness flows. And because this love is eternal and perfect, it can never fail, never diminish, never grow cold. The goodness of God is as secure as the Trinity itself.

Because truth transforms everything, in the following sections we will explore three outworkings of God’s triune goodness:

(1) What is the distinction between divine and created goodness, is it merely one of degree?

(2) In what way is Christ the fulness of God’s goodness?

(3) What is the ultimate good? What is the highest purpose toward which all of God’s goodness aims?

1. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt and trans. John Vriend (Baker Academic, 2004), 2:208. ↩︎
2. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Eerdmans, 1996), 70. ↩︎
3. Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Zondervan, 2011), 294. ↩︎