20:2; 3:14) and as directing all things. Personality does not limit
God. He is the one perfect personality. Personality in man exists
only in a more or less imperfect degree. Personality is understood
here not as "bodily," but as belonging to the spirit.


GOD IS GOOD

The Character of God is a subject of great importance to man. God is
the Supreme Personal Spirit, yet to know only this is to leave out a
very vital part in our estimation or knowledge of God. We desire to
know and feel that God is not only the greatest, but the best being in
the universe. Hence God is shown to us in the Bible to be inwardly
perfect and outwardly consistent with this perfection. The Old
Testament shows a struggle between God and man; God seeking to bring
man to the thinking of right thoughts and doing of right actions and
man resisting Him. The history of Israel is a story of a nation whom
God would make a righteous people; all the laws given to it, civil,
sanitary and ceremonial, were with the end in view to make it "a holy
nation"; all its prophets and teachers proclaim the righteous and just
character of God (Exodus 19:6; Leviticus 11:45; 19:2; 20:7, 8; Numbers
15:40; Deuteronomy 14:2,21; Joshua 24:19; Psalm 22:3; 99:3; 111:9;
Isaiah 6:3; 57:15). In Jesus Christ and His life upon earth we see the
goodness of God in its largeness. "In His gospel holiness is the
ideal, the substance of Christian character and the end in view in
Christian experience." He says, in the Sermon on the Mount, "Be ye
therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect"
(Matthew 5:48).

In Christ we have the one perfect ideal of moral excellence. In Him we