What Is Good?

Trust in the LORD and do good… Psalm 37:3

The whole meaning of life is summed up in that short verse: Trust in the Lord and do good. In fact, those two commands are intertwined to such an extent that we cannot have one without the other. 

If we really trust in the Lord—with all that implies---then He controls us. Trust results in setting aside our selfish will and allowing the Holy Spirit to produce His fruit, His character, and His deeds in us (Gal. 5:22). When we trust in the Lord, we will do good things. However, when we try to do good without trusting in the Lord, our good deeds are like filthy rags to God (Is.64:6). What may look good on the outside is motivated by how it makes us feel and what others think of us. Sometimes our good deeds are attempts to appease God.

So what does it mean to do good? The Lord told King Saul that “to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Sam. 15:22). So the kind of “good” God desires is our obedience to His commands. Often we try to substitute a good deed in place of simple obedience to His word. We imagine that God is pacified with our helping a neighbor or serving in the soup kitchen and won’t notice that we are living in sexual immorality, drunkenness, or deceit. But to truly trust in the Lord is to desire is to please Him in everything. Only when we obey Him from a heart of love can we offer good deeds that are acceptable to Him. Only when we trust in the Lord can we truly do good.

Have you tried to substitute your ideas of good for simple obedience to God’s word? Only God can define goodness, and it starts with obeying what He has already told us to do.

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Oh My Goodness!

The title is misleading. I don't have any goodness.

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Do you?

While you're thinking about that, ask yourself "If I do have goodness, then why do I have it?" If you have some innate drive to be good, do good works, think good thoughts, then where did it come from?

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Goodness is the sixth fruit of God's Spirit that he wants to give supernaturally, but it is often overlooked in favor of the more "flashy" ones. We like joy and peace. We will even acknowledge that we need patience. But goodness just lays there on the page, overlooked and under appreciated. After all lots of people are good, aren't they? Even the ungodly do good things, create goodwill, serve mankind.

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So why is goodness a fruit of God's Spirit 

if the ungodly can be good too?

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Focus on the words in the middle of that sentence: God's Spirit.

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Every human being is created in the image of God. We have the capacity within us to channel God's goodness. Without the breath of the living God surging through our beings, we'd be nothing but dirt clods. Any goodness I have exists only because I am created in God's image, to reflect his glory. To be like him. 

Any good in me is simply an imperfect reflection of Christ.

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Because left to myself, I'd stifle goodness every chance I got in favor of selfishness. Any opportunity to do good would be weighed on scales tipped in my favor, with the deciding vote being: "How will this affect me?"

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The kind of goodness God wants to infuse into us is the pure kind. The Mother Theresa kind. A goodness that flows through our words, responses, and actions simply because we can't help it. Being filled with God's Spirit requires that I have emptied myself of ME. God's goodness can't live alongside my self-centeredness.

Supernatural goodness isn't sidetracked by evil, by selfishness, by ambition. How often do you read in someone's obituary about how "good" they were? All dead people were wonderful, have you noticed that?

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Yet, lurking beneath the accolades are wrong choices, sin habits, selfish motives, and broken relationships that nobody mentions. That is man's attempt at goodness. Far from God's ideal.

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Goodness is what oozes from every pore because God has filled us with such energy to do good that we can't do otherwise.

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Goodness is repulsed at sin, nauseated by the world's shoddy imitations of it, and dismayed over what man has done with God's gifts. Goodness is good because it can be nothing else. It isn't taught or forced. It is a natural result of an intimate relationship with God.

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So, one more time...

Are you good?

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