How do you know that God is good?

Thatgirloncfforums

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If you're afraid God hates you or is out to get you (feelings I've had before), consider that despite your sins, you are still alive. If God wanted to get you, he would have already done so.

Let's say you're trying to convince a sinner who has somehow gotten the wrong impression. Maybe he's afraid God hates him, or is out to Get him.

How do you make your case and convince him otherwise?
 
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TheWhat?

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If you're afraid God hates you or is out to get you (feelings I've had before), consider that despite your sins, you are still alive. If God wanted to get you, he would have already done so.

Fair point.
 
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TheWhat?

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Also, look at Christ hanging from the cross. Does he look like he's going to hurt you?

I dunno. I think I might be a little afraid of His Father though, if I were there.

But, as for our hypothetical, we can assume he's far removed from the crucifixion.
 
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St_Worm2

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How do you know that God is good?
Let's say you're trying to convince a sinner who has somehow gotten the wrong impression. Maybe he's afraid God hates him, or is out to get him. How do you make your case and convince him otherwise?
Hello TheWhat?, I believe that I'd ask him to think about the Cross, first and foremost. I'd also ask him why he believes that God, who sent His only begotten Son down here as a man (to die that horrible death on the Cross in his stead) to save him, suddenly changed His mind and decided to "hate" him, and to go out of His way to "get him" :scratch:

--David

Romans 5
8 God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.
10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

.
 
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Thatgirloncfforums

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I dunno. I think I might be a little afraid of His Father though, if I were there.
'If you have seen me, you have seen the Father'. Fear of God (which we all have) comes from not knowing God, but we know enough about God (that he is righteous and we aren't) to have a very skewed view. This skewed view comes from the fact that we know we are not ok. So we project our alienation onto him and think he must be angry.

But, as for our hypothetical, we can assume he's far removed from the crucifixion.

He still bears the marks as the lamb upon the throne who was slain from the foundation of the world. He's never far removed from his crucifixion.
 
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TheWhat?

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'If you have seen me, you have seen the Father'. Fear of God (which we all have) comes from not knowing God, but we know enough about God (that he is righteous and we aren't) to have a very skewed view. This skewed view comes from the fact that we know we are not ok. So we project our alienation onto him and think he must be angry.

Interesting. The crucifixion is such a perplexing thing it's easy to get lot in it. What I had in mind though was being part of the crowd that did that to Him. I really think I would be afraid of God in any such event, much moreso, the crucifixion of His Son. Not because of what I thought God did to the Son but because of what the crowd did. Although that might not be the case if I were a first century Roman -- life was brutal back then, but if I were a believing Jew I'd be terrified.

He still bears the marks as the lamb upon the throne who was slain from the foundation of the world. He's never far removed from his crucifixion.

Sure, fair enough. But, I'm referring to the person in the hypothetical. We can assume he is far removed from the crucifixion.
 
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Hammster

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Let's say you're trying to convince a sinner who has somehow gotten the wrong impression. Maybe he's afraid God hates him, or is out to get him.

How do you make your case and convince him otherwise?
The cross.
 
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Let's say you're trying to convince a sinner who has somehow gotten the wrong impression. Maybe he's afraid God hates him, or is out to get him.

How do you make your case and convince him otherwise?
The Bible makes it very clear that God is good, this is very clear in the Gospel. The fact that we know what is good is because we have been made in the image of God, His values are in our hearts.
 
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Ivan Hlavanda

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Let's say you're trying to convince a sinner who has somehow gotten the wrong impression. Maybe he's afraid God hates him, or is out to get him.

How do you make your case and convince him otherwise?

He gave up His glory in Heaven and died for the sinners who belong to hell. No one was ever more hated, beaten and suffered more than Him, yet He did it out of the love for us.

But you cannot convince someone. Tell them, of course, but you have to pray for them, because only God has the authority, to save and to give faith, and to give a new heart of flesh to replace the heart of stone full of sin.
 
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Confused-by-christianity

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Let's say you're trying to convince a sinner who has somehow gotten the wrong impression. Maybe he's afraid God hates him, or is out to get him.

How do you make your case and convince him otherwise?

Show them so they experience it, then you have a foundation to make an intellectual argument.
 
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fhansen

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Let's say you're trying to convince a sinner who has somehow gotten the wrong impression. Maybe he's afraid God hates him, or is out to get him.

How do you make your case and convince him otherwise?
Thats why God came in the flesh, to demonstrate and prove that He’s not some angry, distant being, aloof in His superiority, but a God who’s not opposed to getting His hands dirty, coming down and mixing it up with His own creation while showing that He’s always been on man’s side, always loved and wanted the very best for us. Enmity and jealousy and distance came from man, not Him.

He healed the sick, taught and showed that humility, gentleness, mercy and love were superior human traits, truly attainable as we enter fellowship with Him, and suffered an excruciatingly humiliating and painful passion and death in human flesh to demonstrate the extent He’d go in order to prove a love so vast and wide and deep that we can just barely begin to understand, and be moved by it. And to cap it He overcame death-and so our fear of it- by His resurrection, revealing that we were created to live eternally as well. He revealed what we need to know. We need Him in order to know anything truly worth knowing, we need Him in order to have eternal life. We need Him just in order for goodness to fully reign in the human heart. “Apart from Me you can do nothing”. John 15:5

Aside from that we see His handiwork. Alongside of various evils that we will experience in this world is the undeniable good inherent in creation: the beauty of nature, friendship, love, joy, laughter, gaining and growing in knowledge and understanding, pleasure, etc.
 
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