Today we continue the Fruit of the Spirit series by focusing on the fruit of goodness.
As a young boy, I remember my dad teaching me a bedtime prayer to pray every night: “God bless me, Mummy and Daddy, Gran, Pa and Grandma, Great Aunt May and Aunty Roma. And make me a good boy. Amen.
There is almost an inbuilt instinct within parents to want their children to be good. From a young age we teach children to be good: “Be a good girl for mummy.” “Make sure you’re a good boy at school today.” “Be good in church.” “Father Christmas won’t come if you haven’t been good.” From an early age we are taught that approval from others—even our own parents—comes from our performance…from ‘being good’—whatever ‘good’ happens to look like.
The way that ‘good’ is used in this context is in a moral sense—good behaviour of sitting quietly, asking politely, being kind to others, using good manners. But that’s not the sense of ‘goodness’ that Paul speaks about in the Galatians 5 text, where the word for ‘goodness’ (agathosune) means uprightness of heart and life; righteousness, and zealousness to do good for another person’s benefit; generosity. In many ways goodness is similar to kindness, which was the fruit of the Spirit we focused on last week, and the two are connected. Goodness has to do with an inward righteousness that displays itself in the outward actions of kindness. Kindness flows from goodness—from an upright heart. Goodness is more about a person’s character and nature while kindness relates to behaviour.
Why might there be the need to teach our children to be good, or to pray for God to make us good? Perhaps it is because we know that it is too easy to follow after that which is not good for us. Since goodness is a fruit of the Spirit—something that the Holy Spirit works in us—then it is true to say that goodness (uprightness) is not naturally present in us.
In our natural condition we are born in bondage to the powers of sin as we confessed again this morning. In Ecclesiastes 7 we hear: “Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins.” (Ecclesiastes 7:20). The human heart is so corrupted by sin that our will is twisted in on itself. Jeremiah put it this way: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
That’s why looking to our efforts to ‘be good’—in other words, keeping the law for our righteousness—will never work. Such striving only shows us that the more we aim to keep the law, the more we are aware of our failings (which is why people make excuses for their behaviour—if we were without sin there would be no need for our self-justifications and excuses!). Even the most dedicated devotion to following the law for righteousness and goodness (like that of the Pharisees whom Jesus confronted) still only ends in death. Isaiah was even more confronting as to the severity of our natural situation when he said: “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” (Isaiah 64:6).
Nobody, then, has the right to claim goodness for themselves. That’s what Jesus taught when the rich young ruler came to him and said: “Good Teacher! What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”
Jesus was challenging the young ruler to recognise the truth that no one is able to set the ultimate standard and expectations for goodness except God himself. So Jesus pointed to the Commandments. The rich young man replied “All of these I have kept since I was a boy!” (his parents would have been so happy that he had been so good!). The rich man held to his obedience to the law as the basis for his perceived deservedness to claim eternal life. But Jesus, who knows the human heart, exposed the rich man’s idol: “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
When the young man heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy.” (Luke 18:22-23). The irony was that placing his wealth before following Jesus made him very poor—in fact, spiritually bankrupt.
Only God is good, Jesus says. God needs no one and nothing outside himself for his goodness. Before anything came into being, there was only God and God is good. His creation derived goodness from its creator: “God said…let there be…and it was so…and God saw that it was good.” At the conclusion of his creative work—before the human impact of sin—God saw all that he made and said it was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). God’s nature and being is infinitely good, holy, and perfect and therefore so are his will and his ways. Just as true love can only come from God because God is love (1 John 4:8), true goodness can only come from God because God is good. In James 1 we hear: “Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:16-17).
The greatest gift God has given us from above is his good and perfect Son; our Good Shepherd. God demonstrates his own love for us in this: it was while we were still sinners—while we were not good—that Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). And so, when we look to the Cross, then we see how good God really is. For there, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). On the Cross Jesus took upon himself the sin of the world in exchange for his very own righteousness—a pretty good deal, don’t you think? A joyous exchange, as Luther described it.
That is God’s goodness in Christ for you. This mercy for the world in Christ that Paul writes to Titus of, is made certain for you in baptism:: “But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:4-7).
Throughout history, God has shown his undeserved goodness to his people. His goodness, not ours, is the basis of a personal relationship with him. God’s goodness, revealed in his undeserved saving help and love to his people was the reason to praise him in the congregation of old. At the completion of the Temple, where God promised to dwell with his people and bestow on them his favour from heaven, the people were exhorted to: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good (1 Chronicles 16:34). They are words of acclamation of God’s goodness repeated through the ancient hymnal of the Psalms at the Temple. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.”
Now God has shown his goodness to us in the new Temple, his Son; the Lord Jesus Christ in whom the fulness of divine favour and saving help is found, as we heard in the Ephesians reading today: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” (Ephesians 1:3-8a).
Jesus, our Good Shepherd, is the reason we too acclaim God with the words from the Psalms: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good”. They are words we use in our worship, after we have come to the Lord’s table, where we receive the fulness of God’s saving help and divine favour to us through his Son’s body and blood that he gives us. That’s how we know and experience personally that God is good. He says: “This is my body, given for you. This is my blood shed for you, for the forgiveness of your sins.”
They are words for God’s people of all times and places, which is why the one tree here with all the fruit of the Spirit is a helpful illustration. Often, we think in individualistic terms—the fruit that the Holy Spirit grows in each Christian. But the Holy Spirit grows his fruit in his church—the one communion of saints of all times and places—including you here today—made holy by the Holy Spirit, to bear the Spirit’s holy fruit. In Galatians 5 before speaking of the works of the sinful flesh and fruit of the Holy Spirit, Paul addresses the whole congregation: “You, my brothers and sisters…”
The Holy Spirit doesn’t grow fruits in us; giving different fruits to different Christians. The Holy Spirit grows the fruit of the Spirit in us. The Holy Spirit doesn’t give one person patience, and another goodness. The one Spirit grows in his one church all his fruit. Since there is no good and perfect gifts other than that which is given from above, the Holy Spirit grows in his church the fulness of God’s love, the fulness of his peace, joy, patience, kindness, and so on. Paul’s words to the Christians at Rome: “I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness” (Romans 15:14) are true for us, too. We are not good in ourselves, but derive our goodness from the Holy Spirit, who lives in us.
So if you sense at times you are being unloving, don’t just try harder to be loving, ask the Holy Spirit to keep on growing the fruit of love in you. If you, like me, struggle to be patient, don’t just try harder to be patient—that only results in greater impatience! Instead, ask the Holy Spirit to grow the fruit of patience in you. If you’d like to show more goodness in your life, don’t aim for the world’s standards of being good, pray to the Holy Spirit to keep on giving you God’s own goodness.
Then, may God by his power bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith (2 Thessalonians 1:11) so that, as the Holy Spirit goes to work to make us into the image of Christ, together, our light shines before others, that they may see our good deeds and glorify our Father in heaven.
Rejoice that God who began a good work in you will bring it to completion (Philippians 1:6). For at that completion, we will hear our Father in heaven say: “Well done, good and faithful servant! Come and share in your master’s happiness!” Amen!
