Fruit of the Spirit: Goodness
by Jonathan Pless
Last week I wrote about who the Holy Spirit is and one of the fruits he bears in the life of a believer, kindness. If you missed it, here’s a quick recap:
The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity - God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. He is someone; a being with a mind, emotions, and a will. He is God.
The Holy Spirit shares the characteristics of God the Father, such as omniscience and omnipresence, as seen in 1 Corinthians 2:10-11 and Psalm 139:7-8.
The Holy Spirit is a divine Person, and He is intimately involved in our salvation, along with the Father and the Son, as shown in Romans 8:11.
The Holy Spirit has thoughts and knowledge (1 Corinthians 2:10), and He can feel sorrow and grief (Ephesians 4:30).
The Spirit can make intercession for believers (Romans 8:26-27).
He also has a will and makes decisions (1 Corinthians 12:7-11).
He is both a Comforter and a Counselor (John 14:16,26; 15:26).
As Christians, we have the Holy Spirit producing His fruit in us. We also have the Holy Spirit's power available to conquer our natural desire for sin (2 Corinthians 5:17; Philippians 4:13).
The fruit we talked about last week was kindness, and you can read that here. Another in the list we find in Galatians 5:22-23 is goodness.
The Greek word translated as “goodness” in Galatians 5 is agathōsynē - meaning uprightness of heart and life. This word means to have goodness for the benefit of others, not for the sake of being virtuous.
Goodness can manifest in many ways: praying for the sick, volunteering at a pregnancy center, picking up trash, or praying for an enemy.
No matter how goodness looks in your life, the motive is for the goodness of others. It wouldn’t be “moral uprightness” to do these good deeds for the sake of virtue, would it?
Misbelieving Goodness
One of the primary traps we can fall into when it comes to goodness in our lives is that we can work and do good deeds to obtain (or keep) salvation. We can believe, even subconsciously, that the volunteering, serving, caring, and need-meeting we do for the people around us earns us favor with God. This is a false gospel. The work for our salvation has already been done by Jesus Christ. There’s no amount of good works which can save you (see Ephesians 2).
One of the blessings of salvation is that our character changes as the Holy Spirit works within our lives. We may begin as people who do good for the sake of our own reputation, to earn something from a person or from God, or to make ourselves feel good. But by God’s grace, He is shaping us into people who desire to do good works for the good of others and for the sake of glorifying our Lord.
Jesus and Goodness
Let’s backtrack briefly to last week when we discussed kindness and meekness. Remember Jesus’s example of kindness?
Jesus was born in Israel a couple thousand years ago. He lived on earth as a normal man, except he never sinned. When he was about thirty years old, he began his ministry, teaching, healing, and proclaiming the kingdom of God.
After three years of ministry, he was betrayed by one of his close followers and sent to an illegal trial. He was quickly condemned to death by both the Jews and Romans.
He was whipped, beaten, mocked, and scorned before being made to carry his own cross to be executed. He died on a cross—a brutal, violent death. Through all of this He did not protest or try to escape death. He willingly accepted the punishment from the Roman empire despite knowing He did not deserve it. But why?
Why would an innocent Jewish man meekly go and die several thousand years ago though he did no wrong? Before we answer “Why would Jesus die?” we have to have a zoomed-out, macro view of our predicament. We have to understand that God is the one and only good, perfect, righteous Judge of all things.
Righteous judges must judge rightly.
We have all sinned. We’ve all gone against God’s holy Law. We’ve all stolen, lied, etc.
When we work, we receive wages. The book of Romans describes death as “wages.” When we sin, we receive death as the rightful payment.
Since God is a righteous Judge, he legally has to give us our payment—death.
Jesus took on our payment when he died on the cross a couple thousand years ago.
Keeping with financial terms, he paid our fine.
This is wonderful news! We humans cannot pay our fine in total through our own death. We have sinned against an eternal God, so we would have to pay an eternal debt.
The great news gets better. Yes! Jesus takes on our debt, but also credits us with His righteousness.
Now, when God (the righteous Judge) sees us in court, he no longer sees a debt to be paid. He sees our debt as paid and His own Son’s righteousness. God remains righteous and we are free.
This is the greatest news anyone can ever hear.
This news reminds me of the chorus from a song by City Alight:
“Oh the Goodness, the Goodness of Jesus
Satisfied he is all that I need
May it be, come what may, that I rest all my days
In the Goodness of Jesus”
There is no greater example of kindness and goodness than Jesus. Why did Jesus do the “good works” of dying for our sin? It was for the good of another - His people. Perfect moral uprightness of heart and life. You and I have mixed motives when we seek to demonstrate goodness, but the Spirit is at work to shape our hearts and our actions to resemble the perfect example of goodness. Though we fail, we cling to the good news that He has already perfectly obeyed, and we can walk in gratitude that our feeble attempts at goodness do not need to earn us anything. We rest in His finished work, and trust that He will complete the work He began in us.
God is good. Through the person and work of the Holy Spirit in us, God reproduces His kindness, meekness, and goodness in our hearts, and it shows in our lives.
This goodness empowers us to live lives characterized by the desire to act righteously and for the practical benefit of others.
As others see the work God has done in us, they will "give glory to your Father who is in heaven" (Matt 5:16).