What does it mean that God is omnibenevolent?
The word "omnibenevolent" is a way of saying that God is all-good — good in Himself and good toward everything He has made. The writers in this collection would press two questions on that idea: is God's goodness something He does or something He is, and does calling Him all-good mean He is soft on evil?
Love as God's nature, not only His behaviour
Scripture does not say God is holiness or God is righteousness; it says God is love. One writer notes that this is the one description given of God that is not measured against anything outside Him, and that love was flowing between the Persons of the Godhead before there was any creature to receive it.
James Boyd"God is Love." This is what He is in His nature, what He is in His very being. There is nothing but love between those Divine and Eternal Persons. "You loved Me," says Jesus to the Father, "before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24). "God is Love" is the only absolute description used of the supreme Being; and what a wave of infinite happiness and indescribable joy overwhelms the soul as we think about the marvellous fact that love is the nature of the One with whom we have to do.
Because it is His nature, it is not a mood that comes and goes. As another writer puts it, all that God is must act in everything He does: "if He be good, as God is, He must be good in everything He does" (Numerical Bible Notes).
Goodness that reaches every creature
The "omni" part is real. God's care is not restricted to believers; it covers animals and unbelievers alike.
W. W. FeredayIt simply affirms the truth of God's providential interest in all His creatures. With this agrees Psalm 145:9: "The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made."
That care continues even where it is never acknowledged. Notice how far down the list of recipients this goes:
J. T. MawsonHe keeps on giving, though the crowds never so much as thank Him for His gifts. He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust, and He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. He turns the very miseries that come from people's cruelty and injustice to one another into good for all those who turn to Him, so that their sorrows often become their greatest blessings.
Goodness aimed at bringing people back
God's kindness is not simply pleasant; it is going somewhere. It is meant to change the person receiving it — and the order matters.
C. StanleyThe difference between truth and error is this: it is not our repentance that leads to, or causes, the goodness of God toward us, but it is the goodness of God that leads to, and produces, repentance in us.
All-good does not mean indifferent to evil
Here the writers push back hard on a popular version of divine kindness. A God who shrugged at wrong would not be more loving but less — and we would become like Him.
J. N. DarbyHe is a righteous Judge, as well as a God of love. He takes notice of good and evil, and so He necessarily judges. Yet we are sinners, and, as regards such, what can righteousness do? But He is love. Does His love destroy His judgment against sin? Does it put an end to His righteousness? No — that would not be grace and love, but indifference to evil; and it would lead our hearts, sadly, to be indifferent to it too. Why should we not be, if God were? But it would be a real curse to us, and He would not really be the true and holy God.
Where the goodness of God is measured
Daily mercies show God's kindness, but they are not where its size is learned.
James BoydIt is not in His care for us along our pilgrim path, not in the mercies we experience daily, not in His tender grace meeting our every need — but it is in that cross, and in that cross alone, that we learn the greatness of that love, which is just as deep and wide and boundless as the heart it springs from.
And that same place answers the previous point, since "the very place which shows God's love to us shows us His holy hatred of sin also" (H. J. Vine).
Summary
- Source. Love is not a policy God adopted but His nature — what He is in His own being, before any creature existed.
- Reach. That nature spills outward to everything He made: sun and rain fall on the evil as well as the good, and He is kind to the ungrateful.
- Purpose. His goodness is not aimless kindness; it is what leads a person to repentance, never the reward for it.
- Guard. All-good is not all-tolerant. A God indifferent to evil would make us indifferent too, and would not be the true and holy God.
- Measure. Daily mercies hint at His goodness; the cross measures it — the one place where His love and His hatred of sin are shown together.