The Goodness of God
(Mark 10:18) “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.”
These words are part of our Savior’s reply to a young man’s request. A certain person came in haste, “running,” as one eager for an answer, to ask his direction on what he should do to inherit everlasting life. Verse 17 describes him only in general, “There came one,” a certain man, but Luke describes him by his rank: “a certain ruler,” a man of authority among the Jews (Luke 18:18). He asks Christ a legal question: what should he do, or as Matthew puts it, “What good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” (Matt 19:16). He imagined that everlasting happiness could be earned by keeping the law; he had no notion of faith at all. Christ’s answer implies that there was no hope of the happiness of another world through the works of the law, unless one kept it perfectly, answering to every divine command.
He does not seem to have had any hostile or hypocritical intent in coming to Christ; he did not come to test him, but to be instructed by him. He seems to have come with a genuine desire to have his question answered. He performed a solemn act of respect, kneeling before Christ, prostrating himself on the ground. Besides, Christ is said (verse 21) to have loved him, which would have been inconsistent with Christ’s knowledge of human hearts and thoughts, and with his abhorrence of hypocrites, had this man been merely a pretender in his question. But Christ’s first reply addresses the title “Good Master” that this ruler had given him in his greeting.
1st. Some think Christ meant by this to draw the man toward acknowledging him as God: “You call me ‘good’; how is it you address me with so great a title, when you would not give it even to your greatest teachers?” Lightfoot, commenting on this passage, observes that the title “Rabbi bone” (Good Rabbi) does not appear anywhere in the Talmud. “You must acknowledge me to be God, since you acknowledge me to be ‘good,’ for goodness is a title that belongs only, and properly, to the Supreme Being. If you take me for an ordinary man, how can you in good conscience greet me in a manner proper to God alone, since no man is ‘good,’ not one, but the heart of man is evil continually?” The Arians used this passage to support their denial of the Deity of Christ, arguing that since he did not acknowledge himself “good,” he did not acknowledge himself God.
But he does not here deny his Deity; rather, he reproves the man for calling him good when the man had not yet confessed him to be more than a man, as Erasmus notes on this passage: “You see my flesh, but you do not consider the fullness of my Deity. If you regard me as ‘good,’ regard me as God, and do not imagine me a mere man.” Augustine says he does not disown his own Deity here, but draws the young man toward confessing it: “Why do you call me good, since you show no sign of recognizing me as more than a man? Though you come to me with greater regard than is commonly shown to the teachers of the law, why do you call me ‘good’ unless you acknowledge me to be God?”
If Christ had meant to deny that he was “good,” he would have met the man with a frown and sharp rebuke for giving him a title belonging to God alone, rather than receiving him with the courtesy he showed, as Heinsius observes on Matthew. Had Christ said “there is none good but the Father,” he would have excluded himself; but by saying “there is none good but God,” he includes himself.
2d. Others say Christ had no intention of drawing the man toward acknowledging his Deity, but was simply asserting his divine authority or mission from God. Maldonatus calls Calvin an Arian sympathizer for holding this view. Calvin comments that Christ is not here asserting the essence of his Deity but the authority of his teaching: as if he said, “You give me the title of ‘good’ without grounds, unless you believe I have a divine commission for what I declare and do. Many think me an impostor, an enemy of God, and a friend to devils. You must firmly believe I am not as your rulers report, but that I am sent by God and authorized by him; otherwise you cannot rightly call me good, but wicked.” The reason given for this reading is that it is uncertain whether any of the apostles at this point understood him to be God.
But this argument carries little weight, since the devil himself had publicly acknowledged him as the “Holy One of God” (Luke 4:34), John the Baptist had testified that he was the “Son of God” (John 1:32, 34), and before this Peter had openly confessed, in the hearing of the other disciples, that he was “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16).
I think Paræus’s interpretation is best, since it takes in both readings: either you are sincere or deceptive in this address. If sincere, why call me “good” and boldly fix so great a title on one you think no more than an ordinary man? Christ takes the occasion to assert that God alone is sovereignly good: “There is none good but God.” God alone has the honor of absolute goodness, and none but God deserves the name “good.” Trismegistus said much the same in his Poemander: all other things fall far short of the nature of goodness; call none good but God, for to do otherwise is a profane error. Other things are good only in opinion, but lack the true substance of goodness; God is good in a more excellent way than any creature can be called good.
1. God alone is originally good, good of himself. All created goodness is a stream from this fountain, but divine goodness has no source outside itself. God depends on nothing else for his goodness; he has it in and of himself. Man has no goodness from himself, but God has no goodness from outside himself. His goodness is no more derived from another than his very being. If he were good by virtue of something external, that thing would have to exist before him or after him. If before him, then he was not from eternity himself; if after him, then he was not good in himself from eternity.
The purpose of his creating things, then, was not to receive goodness from his creatures, but to give goodness to them. God is good by and in himself, since all things are good only through him, and whatever goodness is in creatures is simply the breath of his own goodness upon them. They owe all their loveliness to the same hand that gave them their being. Though creation declared God good, he was not made good by any creature, or by all of them together. He shares in none of them, but all things share in him. He is so good that he gives everything and receives nothing; he alone is good, because nothing is good except through him. Nothing has goodness except from him.
2. God alone is infinitely good. His is a boundless goodness that knows no limits, a goodness as infinite as his essence, not merely good, but best; not merely good, but goodness itself, the supreme, inconceivable goodness. All else is but a small particle of God, a spark from this vast flame, a sip from this fountain of goodness. Nothing that is good by his influence can equal him who is good in himself; derived goodness can never match primitive goodness. Divine goodness gives itself to countless creatures in varying degrees, to angels, glorified spirits, and people on earth, to every creature. And even after it has given all that the present world can receive, still more remains to enrich another world. No possible creation could exhaust the wealth and treasure that divine goodness holds.
3. God alone is perfectly good, because he alone is infinitely good. He is good without lack, because he possesses the whole nature of goodness, not merely some rays capable of increase. As in him is the whole nature of being, so in him is the whole nature of excellence. As nothing has an absolutely perfect being but God, so nothing has an absolutely perfect goodness but God. The sun has a perfection of heat in itself, but whatever is warmed by the sun is only imperfectly hot, and cannot equal the sun in that perfection of heat which belongs to it by nature. The goodness of God is the measure and standard of goodness in everything else.
4. God alone is immutably good. Other things may be perpetually good by supernatural power, but not immutably good by their own nature. Everything else that is good could become bad; God is so good that he cannot be bad. A philosopher once said that it is hard, even impossible, to find a good man. But even if a good man could be found, he would be good only for a moment, or a short time, because it lies beyond human nature to continue in a habit of goodness without going astray. But “the goodness of God endureth forever” (Ps 52:1). God always shines in goodness, as the sun (which the heathens called the visible image of the Divinity) shines with light. But no light in the sun matches the fullness of goodness in God: there is “no variableness” in him, as he is the “Father of Lights” (Jas 1:17).
Before I turn to the doctrine, the chief point of the passage, I want to note some things about the young man’s question and manner: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
1. The hope of gaining eternal life through outward observance of the law will not satisfy an inquiring conscience. This ruler affirmed, and no doubt confidently believed, that he had fulfilled the law: “All this have I observed from my youth” (verse 20). Yet he had no real peace in his own conscience. Something in him stirred and suggested that more was required, that what he had done might be too weak, too short, to unlock heaven’s gate for him. That is why he comes to Christ, seeking instruction to fill in whatever was lacking.
Anyone who considers the nature of God and the standing of a creature cannot reasonably think that eternal life would have been owed by God as a reward to Adam, even had he remained innocent. Who could think so great a reward was due merely for doing what a creature in that relation was already obligated to do? Would anyone think a man owed an inheritance of a thousand pounds a year just because someone paid him a few farthings, unless some agreement made that so? And if eternal life could not be expected even in the state of innocence, except from God’s goodness, how much less can it be expected now, after man’s fall and the universal corruption of nature that followed?
God owes nothing to even the holiest creature. What he gives is a gift of his bounty, not a reward for merit. The apostle challenges every creature, from the greatest angel to the smallest shrub, to show one instance of having given first to God: “Who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?” (Rom 11:35). The relationship between the creature’s duty and God’s gift of eternal life is not a business transaction. God gives; he does not properly repay, since repayment implies having first received something of equal worth. When God crowns angels and men, he bestows what is purely his own, not something owed to them by merit or natural right, though what God gives by virtue of a prior promise does become, once the condition is met, due by gracious obligation.
God was not indebted to man even in innocence. Now every man’s conscience should remind him that he no longer stands where he stood in that original integrity, and that he can expect nothing from God as wages for merit, only as the free gift of divine generosity. Man is obligated to do good, both because of the excellence of God’s commands and the duty he owes to God, and apart from some promise from God, he cannot hope for any reward beyond the satisfaction of having done his duty (Amyraut, Morals).
