Love and Righteousness: The Spectrum of God's Nature

The Psalmist binds together two aspects of the divine nature that many find difficult to reconcile: God is both 'good' (loving, beneficent) and 'upright' (righteous). He employs no qualifying phrases such as 'loving though righteous' or 'righteous yet loving'—language that suggests tension between these attributes. Instead, he declares their profoundest harmony without qualification. Maclaren illustrates this unity with a striking metaphor from spectrum analysis.…