Stephen Charnock wrote an excellent tome on “The Existence and Attributes of God.” This work is full of rich truth of great benefit to the Christian. For your edification I am going to periodically post heavily edited excerpts from Charnock’s writings on the goodness of God.

Since God is eternal, He is deserving of our greatest affection and our strongest desire for communion with him! Is not everything to be valued according to the greatness of its being? How, then, should we love him, who is not only lovely in his nature, but eternally lovely and eternally possessing all true perfections? Since creation is lovely consider how it receives that loveliness from He who is the chief good that gives good to all men. God is infinitely lovely and superior to all other goods.

He is not a God of a few minutes, months, years, or millions of years. God is not of recent origin, but from eternity. He is above time. He is inconceivably immense beyond time. Loving him infinitely- perpetually- is an act of homage due to Him for his eternal excellency. We may love him perpetually since our souls are immortal, though we cannot love Him infinitely because our souls are finite. Since God is the source of all the excellencies of heaven and earth forever He deserves our affection, not only in this world, but in all eternity to come.

If we did not owe Him love for what we have from him, we owe Him love for what He is in himself. He is more worthy of our affections because He is the eternal God. He is more worthy of our affection because He is most excellent in His nature. His goodness to us ought direct our thoughts and affections to Him. His eternal excellency ought to be the ground and foundation of all our affections to him. Truly, since nothing but God is eternal nothing but God is worth man’s ultimate affection. We do right to set our love on Him who is always lovely and who cannot disappoint our affection.