Fruit of the Spirit ~ Goodness

The first prayer that I remember learning went like this. God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food. By his hand we all are fed, give us lord our daily bread. AMEN. The challenge for me wasn’t learning that prayer, it was being able to sit through it before dinner without laughing. For some reason when my family would sit at the table and say grace before a meal I would start to laugh, there was nothing funny going on, it was just nervous energy coming out. When I first became a pastor my sister wondered how I would ever be able to do my job because I always laughed when I prayed. I told her I’ve grown out of that – well, sort of. Whenever I visit my sister and her family and it comes time to say grace before dinner, both my niece and nephew who heard these stories of me laughing during grace will look at me and even before the prayer has started – we are laughing. Anyway, one of the great truths that we teach our children is that God is good, and today one of the responses that many churches use goes like this, God is good – All the time – & all the time – God is good.

God is good. Psalm 100:5 says, For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever. Psalm 107:1 says, O give thanks to the Lord for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. And Psalm 34:8 invites us to check out this claim of God’s goodness by saying, taste and see that the lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him. The word for goodness in Galatians 5:22 comes from the Greek word agathose which means being good in character and constitution and in a way that is beneficial in its effect. Like kindness, goodness is putting God’s love into action, it is being a benefit to others, but goodness goes deeper than that. Goodness is not just doing the right thing; it’s doing the right things for the right reason and from a heart that is right with God. Goodness is being good in character and constitution which means that we have the right heart and attitude. We can be kind and do the right thing without having the right heart, but the same can’t be said for goodness. Goodness means not only the right action – it means the right heart and the right motives behind those actions.

God is good because God always does the right thing and God’s heart is always right. In 1 John 1:5 it says this is the message we have heard from Christ and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. In God there is no darkness. In God there is no sin, there are no wrong motives, no hidden agendas, no hypocrisy and no selfish ambitions. Because God is pure and holy all God does is good. We see this clearly in the story of creation. Throughout Genesis 1 we see that everything God creates is good. After God created light on the first day it says, God saw that the light was good. When created the sea and dry ground, he saw that it was good. After he made the plants and the animals and the stars of the sky, God saw that it was good. Everything that comes from God during these 6 days of creation is good. Everything God creates is good because God is good, and we as God’s children have the capacity to be good because we are made in the image of God. Look at what it says after God created human beings. Genesis 1:31 Because we are in the image of God we aren’t just good, we are very good and God created us with the capacity for being good, not just doing good things, but being good in our character and behavior. God not only created us to be good, but God calls us to live a good life. Ephesians 5:8-10.

We are called to live as children of the light which means not just doing the right things but to do the right things for the right reasons. In many ways, Jesus was always more concerned about our heart than our actions. In Jesus Sermon on the Mount he doesn’t just tell us that we shouldn’t kill others, he says that we shouldn’t hate others. And not committing adultery isn’t enough – we shouldn’t even lust after others. For Jesus, right actions were simply not enough, in fact, Jesus has harsh words for people who did good things but didn’t do them for the right reasons. Matthew 23:23-28.

Three times Jesus tells the religious leaders of his day that while they look good on the outside because they are following the laws of tithing and giving and ritual purity – they aren’t good because they are doing it all for the wrong reasons. The only reason they are following the law is because they want to be seen as good. They don’t care about pleasing God and they don’t care about helping others, they don’t love God or love others – they simply love themselves and Jesus cuts through all their phony actions and looks directly at their hearts because that’s what matters.

Now before we judge these religious leaders too harshly, let’s be honest and admit that for all of us, being good is not easy. While we were created in the image of God to be good, and our desires is to not only do good things but do them for a heart tat is right with God, the truth is that each and every one of us falls short. Forget about having all the right motives and attitudes, we fail to just do the good things we want to do. Romans 7:15-25

What Paul makes really clear to us here is that if we try to be good on our own – we will fail. Even if we could disciple ourselves and do all the right things, chances are we would still not have all the right motives. As Paul talks about his inability to be good he comes to a place of complete despair – what a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? In other words – there is no hope of doing good and being good on my own – it’s just not possible, and that’s the truth. It is just not possible, so what’s the answer? The answer is Jesus Christ. That’s what Paul says, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The answer to being good isn’t going to be found somewhere inside of us – it comes from Jesus. It is only through our faith and trust in God’s grace and love that we have any hope of being good. It is only through Jesus Christ that the goodness of God can flow through us to produce any sense of goodness in our lives. So maybe the goal for our lives shouldn’t be to go out and be good, maybe the goal should be to give more of our lives and more of our hearts to God so that God can produce his goodness in us.

Paul talks about this process of becoming good in Romans 12. Look at Romans 12:1-2
If we want to be good, if we want to not only do good things but do them from a good heart, then we first need to understand God’s goodness, or God’s good pleasing and perfect will. And understanding God’s goodness only comes by the transformation of our mind and that only comes when we submit ourselves completely to God as a living sacrifice. While the language here in Romans is a little different than what Paul writes in Galatians, the message is the same. To know the fruit of God’s goodness and to experience that goodness in our own lives will only come as we submit ourselves to God or stay connected to God through Jesus Christ.

So goodness comes as we yield ourselves to God, but just knowing what is good is not enough, Paul tells us we need to hold on to that goodness. Look at Romans 12:9
As we yield ourselves to God we don’t just understand what is good in our minds, we find God’s strength and power to hold to what is good, or to do those right things and for the right reasons. But Paul goes on and says it’s not enough to just hold to what is good, we need to offer that goodness to the world. Look at Rom. 12:21. With the strength and the power of God at work within us we can overcome the evil of the world, not with our goodness, but with the goodness that comes from God. So God’s goodness is not just for us, just as God’s love is not just for us, and God’s kindness is not just for us, all of the fruit of God’s spirit is given to us to live out so that we can make a difference in the world around us. Through Christ we are to be a blessing to the world.

While we were created to be good and God calls us to be good, we can never forget that it is God alone who makes this goodness possible. Goodness only comes as we give ourselves completely to God through Jesus Christ So instead of trying to be good on our own, let us yield our lives to God so His goodness can fill our hearts and give shape to all of our attitudes and actions.