Goodness
You know that stuff that comes up from the ground that we eat? We call that fruit. I hope I’m not insulting your intelligence, just wanted to throw that quick reminder out there to you, because apparently it’s a big deal to God. You could argue that concept of farming, harvest, fruit, and feeding are the most used metaphorical tool that God uses throughout Scripture. God really likes to talk about fruit, because it communicates such simple yet profound truth to our souls. Jesus talked often about a spiritual harvest, and would use the quality of fruit as a way of exposing who people truly were. Jesus was, and is, such a good communicator because he taps into all of our senses to get the message of His love across to us, with one of those senses being taste. Taste is one of the highlights of the human experience. Tasting delicious food truly is a life-giving thing that we get to experience often. Get this: It’s such a wonderful desire, that Satan was able to tempt Adam and Eve into sinning against God through their sense of taste. While Satan used taste to pull us away from God, God uses taste as a way to draw people to himself. This verse highlights the power to which we can know and walk with God.
“Taste and see that the Lord is GOOD..” - Psalm 34:8
Here’s my favorite word to describe God’s character - Good. God is good. Everything about Him is good. Even when things are bad in this world, God doesn’t change and is still good. It’s a simple word to describe the complex God. At the core of His amazing essence, is simply, goodness. What’s amazing is, as the verse above implies, we can spiritually consume and taste the Lord’s goodness. When we taste the fruit of the flesh, it tastes rotten, sour, and has an weird texture. But when we taste the fruit of the Spirit, it is filling, sweet as honey, and supernaturally satisfying. To take the analogy further, the spiritual fruit that God produces through our maturity in Him, will fall off of us and feed those around us. Think about it, when we are obedient to the Spirit and producing Holy Spirit fruit, God is thereby feeding a hungry world that desperately needs the nourishment of God. We get fed by God, and as a result, others get fed. Living the supernatural life with Christ is the most fulfilling thing we could ever do. As we study the spiritual fruit of goodness, let’s think about the healing and feeding of those around us.
Fruit #6 Goodness
What is goodness?
There are a lot of similarities between the fruit of goodness, and the previous fruit of kindness. To get a better grasp of goodness and what it is, I’d recommend getting a healthy understanding of kindness first from my teaching on kindness (check it out at here). In short, kindness is a genuine, godly heart condition, and through that heart condition, the goodness can flow out. Kindness relates more to an inward change, where goodness relates more to the outward expression of that kindness.
The word that Paul uses in the original Greek in Galatians 5:22-23 is, Agathosyne, which comes from the primary root word of agathos. Spoiler alert: These words mean “good”, “not bad”, or “not having fault”. Pretty simple right? But to understand the reality of goodness, we have to understand the reality of how good God truly is. As we look at the main biblical text for this lesson, we’ll get a better grasp of what goodness actually is to our Lord, and how we can produce more of it as well.
The concept of goodness is the focal point of the gospel - we all need to “get good” with God. In this popular story in the NT, contrary to our initial thoughts, money isn’t the issue, but ‘goodness’ is! Let’s read it.
16 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” 17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” 18 “Which ones?” he inquired. Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.” 20“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. - Matthew 19:16-22
V16 - Our words reveal what’s in our hearts, what can you see in the heart of this young man?
The good: There is at least some humility and courage for him to come to Jesus.
The bad: He thinks that doing a ‘good thing’ can get him eternal life.
V17 - Jesus flips our understanding of goodness
-He confronts this man around his understanding of agathos, with the intentional “why?” question. Essentially he’s saying, “why do you call me good, when you don’t even know God?” Jesus is communicating that, if you want to be good, you need to keep the commandments. Which wasn’t a challenge to the young man to try to be better, but rather a way to expose his self-goodness as a sham - which he does in the following verses.
Goodness = Perfection = God
-There is no goodness apart from God. While things in this earth like nature and living beings were declared as ‘good’ by God at creation, sin has infected all of them and made them ‘not-so-good’. While we can acknowledge the goodness that God designed, we understand that all created things are not in the perfect state that they were meant to be in.
-Like all the fruits of the Spirit, goodness is purely supernatural. People may seem to be ‘good’ in their own eyes, they are actually terribly evil (Judges paraphrases). That sounds harsh, but the more that you mature in understanding God’s goodness, you’ll understand the devastating ugliness of false goodness. If we want to be good, God must dwell and work through us. Thankfully.. He will when we let Him!
-There will be no ‘good’ people that go to Hell. The only the people that inherit eternal life are those that God made good through their faith in Christ and the regenerative power of the Holy Spirit.
-The goodness of God’s character is often doubted, but sin and pain highlight His goodness rather than detract from it. We have all been in a place where we’ve questioned God’s goodness, but as we know God in a deeper way, we’ll have the proper lens to see how and why He does things the way that He does.
What can we specifically do in those moments where we doubt God’s goodness?
How do we produce more goodness in our lives?
As we continue through this passage, there are four principles I’ve highlighted that can help us produce the fruit of goodness in our lives.
V18-19 - Focus on God’s big goodness.
-The young man wants specifics, thinking he can achieve God’s approval by works. But he is missing the big picture here, and we have to be careful not to do the same thing.
-Any achiever personalities reading this? Check yo’self before you… well, you know. Don’t try and earn God’s approval, God will always out-give you, and out-perfect you.
-Jesus lists off six commands from OT, saying “this is the start to being good”. That’s only the beginning of being perfect! You’ll then have to repeat it over and over, and never mess up if you want to be good. Jesus was making the task of goodness impossible for a rhetorical reason, but the rich young guy wasn’t getting the hint from Jesus.
V20 - Don’t lie to yourself and God.
-If you didn’t catch that, this guy is full of it. He has not kept all of those commandments, he’s a liar.
-Don’t try to justify your goodness to God by your own merit. It’s like a kid with chocolate all over their face, promising their mom that they didn’t eat the chocolate. It’s more ‘good’ to confess and be healed.
-Remember that Jesus has always been about our hearts, not just our behavior. When He preached the sermon on the mount, He took the commandments to all new levels, by claiming that you were guilty even if you sinned in your heart. By exposing the wickedness, He presents an opportunity for the war for goodness to be won in our lives.
V21 - Change your definition of goodness to perfect.
-Jesus does a strategic word-swap here: “goodness” to “perfection”. The reality is, they are the same thing.
-Perhaps trying to be ‘good’ feels achievable in our minds for some reason, while trying to be ‘perfect’ feels impossible. Changing that definition can motivate us to actually give up trying to be ‘good’ on our own.
V22 - Surrender to Jesus.
-This is a tragic end to the young man’s justification of his goodness. When it came down to it, he liked his own goodness more than he loved God’s. Producing God’s goodness is hard, because it requires a radical shift in not just thinking about protecting and providing for ourselves.
-This can bring us sorrow when we realize what it means to truly be ‘good’. Godly sorrow produces repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10), and repentance brings about the goodness of God to live through us.
What are instances in your life where God’s goodness was flowing out of you? How did you get to that point?
The rich young ruler was over-confident in his abilities, what are ways that you can be like this?
