“You are good and do good; teach me your statues.” – Psalm 119:68
There are three sections to this verse, each with multiple doctrines and learnings. Furthermore, there is a logic here where who God is and what He does informs man’s righteous response, namely to beseech the Lord for teaching. Let us lay out the sections of this verse.
(1) “You are good.” – God is good.
(2) “You do good.” – God does good.
(3) Teach me your statutes.
First, God is good. We know that God Himself is thoroughly good, and all His qualities are good. No part of God is impure, evil, or anything other than good. He is altogether good. We know that God is good because the Bible says it very clearly throughout Scripture.
Exodus 34:6 says that the Lord is abounding in goodness and truth. Psalm 145 gushes at God’s goodness, saying, “men will speak of the might of your awesome acts, and I will declare your greatness. They shall utter the memory of your great goodness, and shall sing of your righteousness.”
We also see reference to God’s goodness through more indirect means, such as comparison. In Matthew 7, we hear that “if you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” This is not a question; it is an exclamation. Sinful man is capable of giving a good gift, and yet there is an infinite contrast against the gifts of a heavenly Father who is altogether good. Why are God’s gifts superior to man’s gifts? Because God’s nature is wonderfully superior to man’s nature.
We see this contrast similarly magnified in Genesis’ creation account. God created a blank heaven and earth and there was still perfection in the world. And God makes light and sees that the light is good. Why is it good? Because God made it, and God is good. And then He makes earth and water and see that these are good. Why are they good? Because God made them, and God is good. God then makes vegetation, and galaxies of moons and stars, and gazing upon them, God sees that these are good. Why are they good? They’re good because God made them, and He is good. God then made animals to fill land and sea. All these He spoke into being. Creatures that were good, spoken into being by a good voice, made by a good God. Finally, God makes man, and steps back, and reflects on “everything He has made,” this integrated system, and it is very good. Creation separately is good; together it is very good. Why is the everything very good? It is very good, because each element of creation can more perfectly glorify God in coordination with other elements. Just as God declares it is not good for man to be alone, and Adam gasps, “at last” when beholding Eve his companion, creation is at its best when working as a coherent whole, because it most visibly signals God’s goodness and glorifies God. God’s own goodness permeates His creation; His attributes are infused in what He has made.
This is important for man to understand. God did not call us very good on our own, apart from God. We were made in God’s image. Mark 10:18 explains, “No one is good except God alone.”
The goodness of man is entirely derived from God’s goodness. All good in man was emanated from God’s goodness. Romans 3 explains that our unrighteousness serves to display the righteousness of God. The contrast of God’s natures and ours reveals who God is – what His attributes are. When we see evil in man – ourselves and others – we can look at God and realize, this God is different than me. He is good, perfectly and thoroughly good. As for man, “none is righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (Romans 3).
There is no way anyone or anything can say they are good in and of themselves, on their own. This is because to be good requires one to be completely good. The whole cannot be declared good if even one part is not good. One evil deed nulls the adjective “good” in a person, because the rest of the goodness is neither whole nor complete. And this is all of humanity. There is no good nature in ourselves, but God is of a different nature – a fully good nature. God cannot be anything but fully good. We see this expressed through multiple good attributes in Scripture. For example, Hebrews 6:18 says it is impossible for God to lie. The only good we can find is by hiding in God’s nature by abiding in Him through Christ Jesus. Truth, or not lying, is an attribute of God. It is obvious to most of us that honesty is a good quality. And what we see here can be applied elsewhere: If God is good, all of God’s attributes are good. Moreover, it is a good thing that God has those attributes. It is good that God is infinite, all-knowing, merciful, and loving. It is also good that God is holy, righteous, wrathful against evil, and jealous for His bride. God’s patience and kindness and joy – these are good.
This leads us to point 2. God does good. One of God’s good attributes is His sovereignty, this is, His supreme authority over what happens everywhere. There are no limits to His rule, and everything that happens in this world is under His control.
Let’s hear this from God’s own mouth. Isaiah 46:9-10, “I am God and there is no other; I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying ‘my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all I purpose.’” Psalm 135 explains it very clearly: “Whatever I please, I do, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.”
God’s sovereignty is good, because God Himself is good, and sovereignty is one of God’s attributes. This is true and logical to understand, but it can be excruciatingly painful to believe. And it is often impossible to understand because there is profound evil in the world. And the evil in the world is not just out there somewhere in the ether; it comes close and touches us personally. It can even be found inside of us, because, well, we are not good apart from God, and we can often fail to abide in Him as we are called.
For those of us who are believers, we often have heard that God works all things together for our good. This comes from Romans 8:28 which reads, “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.” Note that this doesn’t say our good; it just says good. However, any good is God’s good to have, and therefore is also our good. God is the only one who is good. All creation and all events on the earth work together for God’s glory, for His good. For believers hidden in God through Christ Jesus, God’s good is our good. What glorifies God is good for us.
Only a few verses later in Romans 8, we are posed a question, “if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” These questions force us as believers to think. God is good. God is for me. And that means God can only do me good. He can only do good things to me. And the situations in life that surprise me, the people God brings to me, and the troubling sins I fight in the dark depths of my heart – all of these are designed by my Savior for my good, that I’d glorify God maximally.
Unbelief can reign strong in us, because we so easily doubt God’s providence and goodness in our lives. Difficult family lives, dreams deferred, disappointments leave us to ask: God was in control of this, but is it truly good for me that this happens? We face spectacular failures and witness horrible atrocities and sins. We suffer, and we don’t know why. And Scripture is unrelenting – this, too, is for our good.
Even seemingly mundane, arbitrary situations in our lives are sovereignly ordained for our good. We run into church and grab coffee, and someone bumps into us, and our coffee spills all over us. It seems utterly random, and yet it is for our good. We bring a coupon to the store and it somehow expired yesterday and now we have to decide whether we really want that box of cereal at a higher price. That is for our good. It’s important to highlight here the impossibility of fully comprehending how exactly these situations are good for us, or help us to glorify God. We might dig for reasons, or even reflect on past coincidences that connected in the end – and the Bible has enough examples for these to be worthwhile studies – but ultimately our efforts are speculation. We may claim to see in part, but only God can grasp the whole of how what looks absurd to us can be God doing us good.
While trifling annoyances may baffle us, great troubles in life can deeply unsettle us. Members in our congregation have miscarried. They have seen one spouse leave another. Family relatives have passed away. How can God be in control, know these things would happen, and decide to allow them for our good?
More practically, how can we be sure that God’s doings in our lives are truly for our good? The answer reveals how quick we are to forget what we learn. The answer is that God is good. We ran through the simple logic earlier, but it’s worth a reminder. God is good, which requires being altogether good. And if God is thoroughly good, all His attributes must be good, including His sovereignty. And God’s sovereignty means He is actively involved in all details of our lives, and works all things in believers for His good. Hidden in Christ, our good is God’s good, and what is good for us is what glorifies God. Thus, God’s goodness is a refuge in times of troubles. God’s goodness does not mean that our troubles are not actually troubles. It does not turn us into masochists who pursue sin, suffering, or persecution. Sin and suffering remain what they are. Yet God offers us a better promise – deep meaning in pain, and transformation of evil into good.
Only God is good. Therefore, no one but God has the ability to transform the evil of this world into good. When a young child goes to the doctor, that doctor is bound by a Hippocratic oath to do no harm, conversely only to do good to the patient. So when the needle comes out, and the child is screaming because it looks scary, and then the needle is penetrating the skin, and it’s hurting the child, and the young child weeps, the doctor may still be doing the child a good thing, and may still be a good doctor. And how can the child make sense of this? The only proper response for an understanding child, is to trust the goodness of the doctor. Unless the doctor is good, the shot is completely horrible and meaningless. Similarly in Job, Job asks himself, “Why should I take my flesh in my teeth and put my life in my hand? Though He slay me, I will hope in Him.” Job does not pretend his suffering is not happening. He looks to the Lord and acknowledges honestly, that God’s goodness is more worth trusting in than Job’s own goodness. This is fundamentally true; when we believe in God’s goodness, we can simultaneously experience deep anguish and share in the rich joys of praising God. We can develop a greater appreciation for the emotional complexity God experiences, and this can help us to glorify God in a deeper way.
Jesus’ death on the Cross is most demonstrative of the logical connection of God’s ability to both be good and do good. Let’s reflect on this through the facts that (a) the crucifixion was a good thing for God to do, and that (b) the crucifixion was only such a good thing because Jesus was good.
First, the crucifixion was both a tragedy and a good, God-glorifying act. Leading up to his crucifixion, Jesus sat eating with men who would betray Him and selfishly argue over their status in His Kingdom. He prayed with disciples who would deny Him and fall asleep on Him. He sweat blood. He was spit upon, mocked, blindfolded, and jeered. He was beaten physically, pierced by a crown of thorns, nailed to a cross, and left to hang there for several hours. What a Friday. These are tragic events, and yet we call it Good Friday. We say that it was good for this to happen. Good for whom? Good for just us? It doesn’t seem good for Jesus. And yet the Bible says that it is, that is glorified God for Jesus to die. When Jesus sat eating with disciples who would betray and deny Him, Jesus says of Himself, “the Son of Man goes as it has been determined.” While His disciples fell asleep on Him, Jesus prayed, “not my will, but yours be done.” When Jesus is betrayed, he commands His disciples not to strike the betrayers with swords, but grants the betrayers their lot, saying, “this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” And hanging on the cross, when rulers jeered, “He saved others; let Him save Himself,” Jesus made a choice to stay on that cross. He chose to save others, rather than save Himself. Jesus was in control of all these events, and they were good for even Him. In Isaiah 53, we learn that “it was the will of the Lord to crush Him [Jesus]; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offspring for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.” All sufferings Jesus faced were for Jesus’ own glory; they magnified His goodness. In fact, Isaiah 53 continues, “out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be righteous.” The crucifixion was deeply satisfying to God because it glorified Him. In this life, we may not understand exactly why this is so glorifying to God; we can only marvel at how Jesus found satisfaction at the anguish of His soul that made many to be righteous.
God the Father, of the same good nature as the Son of Man, on Good Friday turned His face away from the Son as the Son became sin. The fully-good Father was unable to share in this goodness with the Son, or allow the good to freely interchange between them. This is because the Son was made into sin, and the Holy Father unleashed full wrath for sin onto the Son. The Son who knew no sin became sin. If, then, the crucifixion was so good, why was it also so tragic? Why do we experience both deep thankfulness and trembling awe as we recount the events of the cross? It’s because Jesus who was so good became evil sin. It’s extremely important that Jesus be fully good; otherwise, this situation is not a big deal. It’s not a big deal for something evil to be evil, whether the evil is in part or in full. It’s also not a big deal for evil to be punished. When evil is punished, we feel a sense of justice, peace, satisfaction, and relief. Yet the cross is jarring because Jesus is not evil; Jesus is good. Jesus does not deserve the cross and yet He is hanging there willingly. God the Father strikes down the Son, and this is all so that we could be saved.
And thus the cross is both wonderfully good and infinitely tragic. And originally, we wanted to trace why we could trust that God does good using the logic that He is good. We can make this connection, because in order for the cross to be good and effective for salvation (and God’s glory), Jesus had to be good. Jesus needed to be sinless. He lived a sinless life to die a death He did not deserve. Why? Why did he do this?
This leads us to the third point: Teach me your statutes.
We don’t fully understand why Jesus died. We don’t know why he bore our sins, rather than someone else’s. We don’t know why he chose to keep hanging on the cross, when he could have stopped hanging there. And yet, we know that God has the answers to these questions. Thus, there are at least these reasons we would respond by approaching God, and in exasperation saying, “teach me your statutes.”
First, we know that God understands what He is doing, and we see only in part. And it is completely normal when we do not understand something, to approach the One who does for clarification. This applies to our own joys and sufferings – we have access to a God who knows everything knowable and has planned each moment in our lives with perfect wisdom. It is worth asking for clarity when we have confusion. In some cases, we get some semblance of comforting clarity – God allowed Lazarus to die, but he ended up resurrecting him later. In other cases, we may not understand this side of heaven. Why did Stephen die from stoning? It seems arbitrary to man, but it is not.
Biblically, there are reasons provided for some sufferings. These do not fully “settle” them, but help us to at least glimpse at the answer.
Remembrance for future Christians – In Hebrews 11, the Bible recounts the story of Moses as an example for future believers. The Bible says, look at Moses! “By faith, Moses when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.” The sufferings Christians face today are a powerful testament for future Christians to behold.
Refining fire – Suffering has potential to bring us into deeper intimacy with God, both because we will need God so much and because sufferings identify us with Christ who suffered ultimately. Philippians 3:10 magnifies knowing God, sharing his sufferings, and becoming like God in his death “that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
Revelation of God’s wrath – God’s wrath is good, and hard-hearted people like me sometimes need the smack of a two-by-four to stop sinning. Suffering will not always be visibly tied to specific human sins, but it can serve as a warning. Similarly, hearing that another person died in their youth can be a gracious help to a different young person deciding whether to pursue sin or righteousness. Lord, help that person have oil in their lamp when you come.
Second, we know that God is good, and while we don’t understand much of life, we see a mysterious beauty in his character worth approaching and experiencing. Who is this God who dies on the Cross for sinful man? He doesn’t make sense, because his ways are so much higher, but he is so beautiful – let us gaze at him and know him. We often may find God’s goodness so other-worldly from our own; it is a holy goodness. And let us all the more taste and see it!
Third, God’s goodness and deeds do not change, but human circumstances often greatly change throughout our lives. Our seasons of life change, our ages change, and our status in society change. Also, we ourselves change. Praise God, we can become different – even in our core natures through Jesus Christ. God’s statutes don’t change, despite our circumstances. It’s worth being near a God who does not change, in the midst of our own change. James 1 emphasizes that God’s goodness is something we can learn, because it is not subject to change: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
God is good, God does good, and He is willing to teach us. Let us run to him today!
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