And because He is good (which includes loving & just) though He created mankind in His very image, He also gave us the freedom to choose who we would become. We could trust Him and the fact that He is good and live a life with Him built on love & trust or we could question His goodness, decide He’s holding out on us and choose to do things our own way, make our own rules for life, certain that we can figure it all out for ourselves.
Envy, jealousy, competition, being on top, lording it over (and their entire downward spiral) have been the results of mankind turning their backs on God and trying to define life on their own.
While God could step in and “make us” behave rightly it would be at the cost of our own freewill. That act in itself would automatically negate God as being good, instead His actions would describe a tyrant who instead lords it over his creation, first demanding then forcing them to behave the way He wants. Behaving in this way would go against His very nature. If He’s a good God then everything about Him is good…including the way He “rules” His creation. If He desires for His people to live sacrificial lives of love it is only because that is who He Himself is and if that is the kind of being He is then His very nature dictates that all He does would be in accordance with His own goodness. And at whatever point his actions contradict His very nature they would disqualify Him from being called good.
Yet, knowing the direction mankind would take, knowing the depths of destruction that would result, He set out from the very beginning to bring hope, rescue and redemption to all of creation but He did it in a way that doesn’t violate His very nature. He did it by coming to His own, living among them, sacrificing Himself in our place and triumphing over sin and death so that through Him the world can be made right again.
All around us we see that something has gone terribly wrong in this life. God nudges us with the realization of this and whispers, there’s another way. Come to me, believe in me, I came to make all things new and right once again. I am the hope for all the world. In me the world can find peace once again. I’ve won the ultimate battle against evil and will bring hope and rescue to all the world through everyone who will believe and follow me! But I will not rule with an iron fist that defies my nature of being good and loving. Instead my kingdom will come the same way a little bit of yeast mixes into the whole batch of dough (Mt 13:33).
If at this point you’re saying, “ok, but why?” Let’s say God exists and that God indeed is good. But now I’m wondering why? Why even create us and this world to begin with? What was the point even of that?
Again, let’s go back to God and His nature. In Scripture we get a picture of at least three things about God that would point to his desire to create. What is the picture that’s being painted that would suggest the reason for His desire to create anything? Not only are we given a picture of a God who is good, it also describes One who is the perfect definition of love AND who exists & flourishes in perfect community (God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit). His very nature of goodness, love and perfect community would birth the desire to share Himself with others, those He would create in His image, so that He could extend His perfect love and goodness by extending His community to include those He would fashion in His image and out of His great love. And so His desire to share perfect community with those other than Himself sets His creativity into motion, which would include His costly self-sacrificial plan (spoken about above) if there were to be a redeemed people He could dwell with who would freely love Him back through a life that worships Him (their loving Creator) and His goodness and who reflects His very image. :)