Being Good

Galatians 5:22-23

Introduction

What would you rather be? Good or great? We think of historical figures such as Alexander the Great, Alfred the Great, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great. Who were the historical figures who were just good? A number of years ago, there was a very popular leadership book that was called From Good to Great. This book argued that it was not good enough to be good, leaders and companies needed to become great.

There is currently a movement in the United States called Make America Great Again and some are trying to duplicate that in Canada. They have very specific measures of what greatness is. But there has been a recent pushback with the slogan Make America Good Again. I am not going to go into the politics of it but I will observe that there is a difference between being great and being good and the difference is not just of degree.

We can have a great leader, in the sense of getting things done, being successful, meeting goals, and adding to the bottom line. But a great leader is not necessarily a good leader, in the sense of caring about those they work with, focusing on justice and fairness, and earning the respect of those who know them.

My understanding is that our world has been overly focused on greatness and I have seen this adopted by the church. When people describe a successful church, it measured by greatness in terms of size of congregation, building, programs, and budget. None of those things are bad, but they are not measures found in the New Testament.

There are those who grieve the loss of influence of the church in society and would love to Make the Church Great Again. What would it take to Make the Church Good Again?

As we look at the fruit of the Spirit as described by Paul, we have this reference to goodness. I fear that many Christians see this as such a vague concept as to have lost much of its power. I believe that goodness as a fruit of the Spirit is one of the most important things needed by the church.

Goodness in the Bible

In this passage, Paul lists goodness as one of the fruit of the Spirit. The NRSV uses generosity rather than goodness in this passage. Goodness is actually a more literal translation but I can understand why one might want to use generosity. We tend to use goodness in multiple ways. At a grocery store, we might have a careful look at produce to choose those items that are good. Here goodness is a judgment of value. We might hesitate to label ourselves as good, not that we would necessarily call ourselves bad either. We would want to ask who is measuring whether we are good or not. Obviously God would be the final judge of our goodness. And while we are forgiven and we trust in God’s grace, we are also well aware of our shortcomings and the areas in which we are not as good as we would be like.

But the way that Paul talks about goodness here is different. This goodness is an impulse within us that spurs us on to do good things. When you see a family need and you have the resources to help, hopefully your motivation to help is not based in guilt but rather a growing goodness within you. This is very often manifested in generosity. We cannot see that inner impulse within another person unless they act on it. 

But where does this goodness come from? If you do a search in the Bible, you will find that especially in the Old Testament, that goodness is most often attributed to God. People are called to meditate on God’s goodness. What do the biblical writers mean by goodness? Not just that God is perfect in every way but that God acts on goodness and we can recognize God’s goodness in how God treats us. God’s goodness is demonstrated through action.

When we get to the New Testament, we recognize a call to be good. “I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness.” (Romans 15:14) Depending on your church background, you might doubt our ability to be good. What about total depravity? Isn’t true that everything that we do is marred by sin and that it is only by God’s grace that we stand? Total depravity is supposed to mean that sin touches every area not that we are all totally depraved. And the God who acts in goodness, works in us to bring about goodness. Paul would not have told us to be full of goodness if we could not. And the concept of the fruit of the Spirit suggests that the seed of goodness is from the Holy Spirit. Having said that, we do have some say in whether or not we cooperate with the Spirit. I know that I have felt that inner impulse to do something good and for a variety of reasons, chose not to act on that impulse. Have you experienced that? My hope is that as I grow as a disciple, that I respond better to the goodness that God is growing within me.

A Good Church?

Let’s broaden this a bit to look at the church. A common question that people ask when they move to a new community is: “Where can I find a good church?” Now, we know what they mean when they ask that. What they are looking for is a church that has theology consistent with them, preaching that they find helpful, music they like to listen to, people that are friendly, offering the programs they want, and has a building that is both nice look at and practical. In fact, if it hits all of those requirements, it might be not just good, but great.

All of those things are good but what does a good church look like when we focus on the biblical concept of goodness? This would be a church that manifests the fruit of the Spirit of goodness, one that reflects the goodness of God.

It is so easy to leave the concept of goodness as a vague idea that can never be externally verified. We could say that we have goodness within us because we have been saved by the good God that sent Jesus to us. But look at Jesus for a moment. None of us would deny that Jesus was good. Why do we believe this? Not just because theologically we believe that Jesus is God in the flesh. We know Jesus was good because of the good things that he did.

What good things does the church do? Not just our local congregations but the church in general? Would people outside the church recognize the church as good? I think it depends on the person and the context. There are people who have been traumatized by toxic churches. But there are other people who have been blessed by good churches. Churches that show goodness in a way that looks a lot like generosity.

I need to acknowledge one thing. For some churches, “good works” is a dirty word. They see in that phrase an attempt to earn our own salvation and to say to God: “Our salvation, that was us.” Therefore the only good work is to tell other people that there is no such thing as good works. I hold to salvation by faith as strongly as anyone. But we still have a Bible that tells us that God plants goodness within us. Paul in Ephesians 2:10, just after explaining salvation by faith, tells his audience: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Conclusion

Do we need more great churches? For the first number of centuries, there was not one church that could be described as great by the world’s standards. But there were a lot of good churches, congregations made up of people who were cultivating the fruit of the Spirit which is goodness. 

After the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, there was Emperor named Julian in the fourth century that sought to return Rome to the old gods. He had massive resources that he poured into a project that we could call Make Paganism Great Again. The temples were rebuilt, pagan priests were employed, sacrifices were offered, everything that one would imagine was needed for a religion to be great. There was a problem. Julian recognizes the problem is a letter:

“No Jew ever has to beg [because they take of their own] and the impious Galileans support not only their own poor but our pagans as well. From this, everyone sees that the people lack aid from us. That is disgraceful for us.”

While Julian was trying to make a religion great, the Christians were busy being good. Julian’s project died with him. And yet churches are often caught by the hope of becoming great. Being great is not bad, but it’s not good either. The Holy Spirit has planted seeds in us as individuals. As congregations, we are an orchard of the fruit of the Spirit. One of that fruit is goodness. Let us be good to others as God has been good to us.