We Have Made Goodness Sound Boring
Goodness has a branding problem. When people hear “good,” they often think safe, bland, harmless, or boring. A “good person” sounds like someone who follows the rules, avoids trouble, and does not make much of a dent in the world.
And yet, goodness is one of the deepest things we long for. You want a good doctor when someone you love is sick. You want your children to go to a good school. You want a good mechanic working on your car. You want a good judge making decisions in the courtroom. You want a good friend when your life falls apart. We may not always want to be called good, but we desperately want goodness from everyone else.
That tells us something. Maybe goodness is not weak. Maybe goodness is not bland niceness. Maybe goodness is one of the strongest and most beautiful qualities a human being can possess. When Paul lists the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, he writes, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness…” (Galatians 5.22). Goodness is one of the signs that the Spirit of God is alive and at work in a person.
Biblical goodness is deeper than being agreeable, polite, respectable, or useful. Goodness is moral beauty. It is wholeness. It is integrity. It is the life of God becoming visible in an ordinary human being. Many of us settle for something smaller. We settle for being decent, nice, liked, and respectable. But God does not merely want to make us pleasant. He wants to make us good.
We Know the Good, but We Are Divided
The difficulty with goodness is that many of us are divided. We want to be generous, but we are guarded. We want to be truthful, but we manage appearances. We want to be pure in heart, but we are pulled by hidden desires. We want to be humble, but we also desire to be admired. There is a gap between the person we want to be and the person we actually are.
Paul names this struggle with pinpoint accuracy in Romans 7: “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Romans 7.18). That sentence is painfully familiar to all of us. We want to be patient, but we snap. We want to be honest, but we twist the truth. We want to be generous, but we guard our possessions. We want to love God with our whole heart, but our hearts are pulled in a dozen directions.
This is why goodness cannot simply mean “doing good things.” Of course, good actions matter, but the fruit of goodness goes deeper than behavior. The real question is not only, “How can I do more good things?” The deeper question is, “How can I become the kind of person who actually loves what is good?”
God Alone Is Good
There is a wonderful moment in the Gospel of Mark where a man runs up to Jesus and asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answers, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10.18). At first, that can sound like Jesus is rejecting the title. But he is doing something deeper. He is forcing the man, and us, to think carefully about goodness.
Goodness does not begin with human opinion. It does not begin with what a culture finds impressive, useful, profitable, or successful. Goodness begins in God. God is not good because he measures up to some standard outside himself. God is the standard. God is the source. God is the measure of all goodness.
This is important because our virtues are often fragmented. What I mean is that we can be truthful without being gentle. We can be merciful without being honest. We can care about justice while losing compassion. But God is not fragmented like we are. His mercy, justice, holiness, patience, kindness, and truth are all good. There is no shadow in him, no contradiction, no hidden selfishness, no corruption beneath the surface. God is good.
If we want to know what the goodness of God looks like in flesh and blood, we look at Jesus. Peter says Jesus “went about doing good” (Acts 10.38). Jesus touched lepers, welcomed children, healed the sick, forgave sinners, confronted evil, lifted the ashamed, told the truth, and moved toward the people others avoided. He was not simply a nice man doing random acts of kindness. Jesus was goodness in person.
His mercy was good. His truth was good. His anger at evil was good. His tenderness toward sinners was good. His refusal to compromise with darkness was good. His death for the ungodly was good. On the cross, the goodness of God looked like self-giving love poured out for people who could not save themselves. When the Spirit grows goodness in us, he is not simply making us better behaved. He is making us more like Jesus.
We Become Like What We Behold
Goodness is fruit. That means it grows. We often want God to make us patient, pure, truthful, generous, and whole in one dramatic moment. Sometimes God changes people suddenly. But most of the time, fruit grows slowly.
There is an old story about a poor peasant girl in an Italian city who came across a beautiful statue of a Grecian maiden. The statue had a graceful form, a noble expression, and a kind of beauty that seemed to awaken something in the girl. She stood and stared at it. Then she went home and washed her face. The next day she came back and looked again. Then she went home and combed her hair. The next day she returned again. This time, after looking at the statue, she went home and mended her torn clothing. Day after day, she came back. Little by little, she changed.
That is a great picture of formation. We become like what we behold. If we constantly behold what is shallow, bitter, cynical, or cruel, we should not be surprised when those same things take root in us. However, if we behold Christ, something begins to change. We begin to love what he loves, grieve what grieves him, and desire what is true, clean, merciful, just, and life-giving. We begin to see sin not merely as rule-breaking, but as soul-damage. We begin to see holiness not as restriction, but as health.
This keeps us from two mistakes. First, it guards us against moralism. Moralism says, “Try harder to be good so God will accept you.” That is not the Gospel. We are accepted because Jesus is good, and by grace we belong to him. Second, it prevents passivity. Passivity says, “Since goodness is the fruit of the Spirit, I do not need to do anything.” That is not the Gospel either. Fruit is grown by the Spirit, but we still make ourselves available to his work.
So we return to Scripture. We confess our sin. We come to the Table. We pray when we would rather distract ourselves. We tell the truth when we would rather hide. We do the next good thing in front of us. Not to earn love. We practice goodness because the Spirit is teaching us to love the good.
Goodness Becomes a Sign of the Kingdom
When goodness grows in a person, other people feel it. Not because the person is perfect, impressive, or constantly doing spiritual things. They feel it because goodness has a weight to it. A good person makes a room healthier. They are the kind of person you can trust with the truth. They do not make mercy feel cheap. They do not make holiness feel harsh. They are not flawless, but the goodness of God seems to cover over those flaws.
That kind of goodness is desperately needed. The world does not need more people who are impressive, clever, successful, powerful, or entertaining. We have plenty of those kinds of people. What the world needs are good people. We need good parents, good friends, good neighbors, good leaders, good doctors, good teachers, and good churches. We need people whose lives can beautifully and charitably share the truth about what God is like.
This is part of what Jesus means when he says, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5.14). Then he says, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5.16). Notice what Jesus says. The goal is not that people would see our goodness and admire us. The goal is that they would see our goodness and glorify the Father. Goodness is not about managing our image. It is about reflecting God.
Of course, that kind of life does not come naturally to us. It is the fruit of the Spirit. So the invitation is not simply, “Go be good.” That will either crush us or make us proud. The better invitation is to look at Jesus. Look at his mercy, his holiness, his truth, his compassion, his courage, his cross, and his risen life. Then ask the Spirit to grow that goodness in you.
The good life is not the life where we finally get everything we want. The good life is the life where the goodness of God becomes visible in us for the sake of others. And that kind of goodness is not boring. It is beautiful.