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"The most terrifying truth in scripture is that God is good." - Paul Washer1
In our world of Christian slogans and catch phrases, “God is good” has become a mere cliché. It’s become so much of a cliché that sometimes it’s used more often as a call-to-order in a church service than anywhere else.
God is indeed good. Beyond good, really! He’s so good that He’s the very definition of good! He’s so good that He can’t be anything less than good! He’s so good that nothing outside of Himself can be good! He’s perfect! There really is no set of words that would fully explain just how good God is.
But why would that be terrifying?
It's terrifying that God is good because… we’re not.
We’re not good, plain and simple. And that’s putting it lightly. The Bible teaches that there is not a single good person on earth and that we can’t even do anything truly, completely good (Romans 3:10-12, 23)! We’ve broken every law of God (James 2:10).
And there’s the problem. God is so good that not even a single speck of evil can go unpunished, and we’ve never done anything that wasn’t evil!
Do you see what’s so terrifying about God’s goodness now? The fact that God is good means that each of us is doomed!
But in case that’s not terrifying enough, God’s goodness goes even further.
An infinitely good God would punish all sin, but God goes a step further than that. God is so good that He paid for sin Himself. He came to earth in human form and died, paying for and conquering every spot of sin in everyone who calls upon Him (Isaiah 53:5-6, Romans 10:13).
So when the Lord welcomes a believer into Heaven, it’s not because He’s merely turned a blind eye to their sin.
God welcomes believers into Heaven because they are really, truly, literally not guilty!
Does this mean that our sins never happened? No. They really did happen. But for those who have repented and put their trust in Jesus, someone else has been punished for those sins.
I really hope by this point that something in you is screaming, “But that’s not fair! Why can someone else take the punishment for what I’ve done? For what I continue to do?”