God the Father, Mentor's Guide, MG06

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G O D T H E F A T H E R

The goodness of God the Father Almighty is expressed in his moral attributes of his perfect moral purity, absolute integrity, and unbounded love. The moral purity of the Father is demonstrated through his holiness, righteousness, and justice. God’s absolute moral integrity is associated with the attributes of his genuineness, truth, and faithfulness. The love of God the Father is displayed through the attributes of his benevolence, grace, mercy, and persistence (longsuffering and patience). The wrath of God is a central and defining doctrine in the Word of God, and cannot be ignored without doing damage to one’s overall picture of the glory of God. God expresses his wrath in outgoing action as retribution against those who defy him and his good will. The wrath of God is never directed in an impulsive, unjust, or unthinking manner. It is always rightly given and associated with his just anger against all those things that oppose his rule and will. God’s wrath, as a moral quality usually associated with God’s severity and not his goodness, must be examined in conjunction to God’s goodness to be properly appreciated. Love and justice must be comprehended together. Any apparent tensions we may perceive between God’s holiness and his love are not real conflicts in God but merely reflections of our limited understanding of God’s perfect attributes and nature. No confusion or conflicts exists between God’s attributes in his nature or being. Everywhere God acts and works, he is and will forever be the one true God, always acting everywhere in perfect harmony with his love and his justice, his grace and his truth.

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