Every morning when I pray, I praise God because He’s good. I got to thinking about that, and I realized that my love for God is based on the fact that He is good. But my reverence for Him stems from the fact that He is also great. He is both. And this is significant to my walk with Him.
If we as humans only acknowledged that God is great, we would most certainly view Him as distant, and most likely bow down to some graven image of Him or to images of His mighty creation. Just like primitive cultures did with their gods. If God were only great, He would be unapproachable, and that would be a problem for us.
On the flip side, if we limited our view of God to just His goodness, we may tend to see Him as an indulgent, kind old fatherly figure who loves us just the way we are and holds us to no account. God is love and love is the answer. If God were only good, we would have no reason to fear or revere Him because he would be soft and tolerant.
But the fact is God is both great and good. His greatness is what causes us to bow our knee, to cry out in awe and wonder, and to fear Him. It is what causes us to realize that we do not deserve salvation, but wrath, and that the end of us would be just and deserved. But it is His goodness that causes us to rise up in endless praise of Him, grateful that He is good. It is His goodness that allows us to enter into His presence boldly and without fear. Because He is good, we can have a relationship with Him as a child, dearly loved, cherished, and secure. The great religions of the world can’t offer a god like that. I am so glad I serve a great and good God!