The “Fruit of the Spirit” Series
“The Good Life”
(goodness)
Galatians 5:22
The French philosopher, jean Jacques Rousseau, once said, “Happiness is a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.” That is what he would call today “the good life.”
There are many today who would agree with him. There are some who say that the good life is physical. They believe it just doesn’t get any better than a hot tub, a back rub, and a drink at the pub. But then there are others who say the good life is material. They think that if you’ve got the mansion, the Mercedes, and the money, you are living the good life.
But God says the good life is spiritual. We read in our text: “the fruit of the spirit is goodness.” Contrary to many opinions, goodness is not feeling good, looking good, or owning good; it is being good and doing good. Since it is the fruit of the spirit, we know that goodness can only come from
God.
Goodness is not something that man manufacturers. It is something that God gives. Rom. 3:12 says, “There is none who does good, no, not one.” People are not basically good. People are basically bad. You see, goodness is only possible with God. Have you ever thought about the fact that if you take the word “God” out of the word “good”, all you are left with is a big fat “o?”
In fact, the word “good” comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word that had the same connotation as “God.” “Goodbye “is an abbreviation of the Anglo-Saxon way of saying, “God be with you.” Good literally means “to be like God.”
The Lord Jesus said something very revealing on one occasion, both about good and God. The rich young ruler came up to him, and said, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “why do you call me good? No one is good but one, that is, God.”(Mark 10:17-18)
Now get that down in your heart. Only God is good. We do know that God is good. Ps. 34:8 says, “Taste and see that the lord is good.”
We know God’s work is good. “God works all things out together for good to those who love him.” (Rom. 8:28)
We know that God’s Word is good. The bible says in Psalm 119:39, “Your judgments are good.”
We know that God’s ways are good. “Every good and perfect gift comes from above.” (James 1:17)
We also know that God’s will is good. Paul spoke of the “good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Rom. 12:2)
If you are going to talk about good, then you are going to have to talk about God because without God, there is no good. We don’t have to wonder what goodness is. God tells us specifically what it is.
Notice Micah 6:8
We find in this verse a description of Scriptural goodness. And before we look at it in detail, let me give you a good definition of goodness: “Goodness is personal Godliness lived out in a practical way.”
So with that in mind, how does personal Godliness express itself in our lives in practical ways?
First of all,
1. The Good Life Produces Fairness
According to God, the first step of goodness is “to do justly.”
To understand that, we need to get a handle on what is means to be “just”. When a person is just it simply means he does what is right. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church said he lived by this creed:
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
For as long as you can.
Saint Francis of Assisi once said, “Preach the gospel all the time; if necessary use words.”
Why is it so important to do the right thing? Your testimony as a Christian depends upon it. The people around you have the right to judge your faith by what they see on the outside.
But it goes a step beyond merely doing the right thing. Doing right also means your attitude is in keeping with the actions. A lot of people know how to talk the talk and put on a good show, but inwardly they are not good. And on a scale of 1 to 10 they don’t do “bad”. But just because you don’t do the wrong thing doesn’t mean you are good in terms of God’s requirement to “do justly”.
We must be extremely careful, not only about what we do, but how we do it and why we do it, or we wind up bringing reproach and shame to the name of Christ, becoming a stumbling block to others who may never hear the gospel, and robbing ourselves of the blessing of being right with God.
And let me emphasize again, the significance of doing good. Never underestimate the power of even one person to have a tremendous influence by simply doing good; by simply doing the right thing at the right place at the right time.
Laying aside personal politics, we have some great examples of what it means to do the right thin from the lives of many of our presidents. One such story comes from the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In fact, nearly everyone who worked with Ronald Reagan has a story about some act of goodness that he performed.
There is one that was relatively unknown until told by Peggy Noonan in her biography of Reagan, “When Character Was King”.
The story refers to Frances Green, an 83 year-old woman who lived in California. She lived in a bad neighborhood, and survived on Social Security.
But for eight years she had been sending a dollar a month to the Republican National Committee. She did it because she loved Ronald Reagan.
One day in the mail she received a very nice fund-raising letter from the RNC as she was on their list from her tiny donations. It "invited" her to meet the President at the White House. Of course you had to be a donor of considerable size to rate that privilege. Frances Green didn't notice that part. She assumed that the RNC was inviting her to meet President Reagan because of her faithful giving all these years.
Frances Green was thrilled. So she took every cent she had and purchased a four-day train ticket to Washington. She could not afford a room so she slept in a seat in coach. She reached the White House on the appointed day and got in line with the tourists. She was refused entrance because her name was not on the list.
Frances Green was confused and her spirits were crushed. Didn't they understand that she had been invited? Fortunately, an executive from the Ford Motor Company was also standing in line, and got her story. He asked her to stay in town for a few days while he did what he could for her.
The executive spoke to some of Reagan's staff, and the story was run up the chain of command to Reagan's personal secretary Kathy Osborne, who told the Old Man. Reagan said to bring her in and they set the time.
The Ford executive gave Frances Green a tour of the White House, but was worried that she would never get to meet the President.
Ed Meese had resigned that day and the White House was a bit chaotic. And they stood outside the Oval Office as the NSC and various Generals walked out. Reagan saw them standing there and motioned Ms. Greene inside.
He said: "Frances! Those darn computers, they fouled up again. If I'd have known you were coming I'd have come out there to get you myself."
And he sat down with her and gave her time on that busy day. And in doing so, he gave us an example of what it means to “do justly”.
Secondly, not only does the good life produce fairness,
2. The Good Life Promotes Forgiveness
The second thing God requires is that we “love mercy.” The Hebrew word for mercy is "khesed" and it is one of the most beautiful words in the Old Testament. It is used over 250 times. One English word alone cannot really translate it. Sometimes it is called mercy. Sometimes is called grace. Sometimes it is called love. Sometimes it is called loving-kindness. But it is really all of those things and more simply tied into one.
Now you notice he says we are not only to be merciful, we are to “love mercy.” I think the reason he said that is this: when you love mercy, then you will live mercy. There is something liberating about mercy, and about goodness; about treating the lowest, the littlest, and the least with kindness and with grace.
Saint Augustine once said, “He that is good is free though he be a slave; he that is evil is a slave though he be a king.”
We all know that God is a merciful God, and we all know that God is a good God, but it is amazing the places where you can see how God is both good and merciful at the same time.
For example: did you know that you can see the mercy and the goodness of God in lightning? Now I know that lightning often terrifies us and can be terribly destructive. But did you know that God is performing a service through that electrical flash called lightning, that without it we could not live?
All living things depend on the chemical element nitrogen. Your body contains molecules known as proteins. Proteins are made up of several elements, including nitrogen. Nitrogen is essential for proteins but it is very hard to make into proteins.
Even though 78 percent of our atmosphere is made of nitrogen, we do not get any nitrogen from the air we breathe. We simply inhale and exhale the nitrogen without using it. The nitrogen in the air is so strongly bonded together, it takes a great amount of energy to break these bonds to free nitrogen to make a protein.
When lightning slices through the atmosphere, it knocks breaks that chemical bond, freeing the nitrogen atoms. Those atoms then combine with oxygen and hydrogen in the atmosphere forming nitrates.
But the process isn’t over yet.
Rain then carries this new compound to the earth enriching the soil with nitrates which are the building blocks of proteins. Plants pick up those nitrates, and synthesizes them into proteins which can be used by animals and by us.
Simply put, without lightning and the other processes built into creation to process nitrogen, life could not exist. Isn’t God good?
That lightning is a picture of the goodness and the mercy of God. No wonder we are told to love mercy.
Too often I am afraid we love judgment and loathe mercy. When it ought to be the other way around, we ought to loathe judgment and love mercy.
I heard about a shame-faced employee who came before the president of his company. His head was down because he had been caught in embezzlement. He did not know what was happening. The very best he could hope for was to be fired. The very worst that he hoped for was a prison sentence.
The man behind the desk looked at this man with his head down, and said, “Sir, I want to ask you a question. Are you guilty?” The clerk said, “Yes sir, I am guilty. I have been embezzling for several years.”
Then the president said, “I want to ask you another question. I shall not press charges against you because if I did it would surely mean that you would go to prison. But if I forgive you, and if I keep you on this job, can I trust you from now on?”
This employee said, “Sir, if you will forgive me and give me another chance, I promise you with all of my heart and soul, as much as is in me is, that you can trust me.”
Then the president’s eyes filled with tears, and this is what he said: “You sir, are the second man who fell and was pardoned. I was the first. I, too, committed a crime just like yours.”
Then he said, “The mercy that I have shown you is the mercy that I myself received. May God have mercy on us both.”
Listen: far too many of us are so quick to remember every wrong thing that’s ever been to us. We carry it all around carefully logged and ready to pull out and use at precisely the right time.
At the same time, we have no recollection of how critical we are or how judgmental and condemning we are to others. We forget about how God has forgiven us and restored us time and time again.
At the same time, we stick our self-righteous nose in the air and strut around like God is so blessed to have us in His company. After all, we’re the spiritual ones. We are the ones who know God better than anyone else.
But I am here to tell you, the person who really knows God is the one who understands and practices forgiveness and demonstrates mercy. It is a part of what it means to be good. That’s why the third thing found in this verse is so critical.
3. The Good Life Proceeds From Faithfulness
We are “to walk humbly with your God.” Now we learn what the real secret and the real source of goodness is. It is walking with God. It’s sad that civilized man has learned how to travel to the moon and mars and explore the heavens, but we don’t know what it means to walk with God.
You see, the truly good person will have a walk with God, because goodness is the work of God. What God is telling us is this: being good comes before doing well.
Merv Griffin was once interviewing Charlton Heston who played the part of Moses in “The Ten Commandments.”
He asked Heston if playing Moses had any impact on his spiritual outlook.
Charlton Hesston thought for a moment, and then simply said, “Merv, you cannot walk barefoot down Mount Sinai and be the same person you were when you went up.”
My friend, without a walk with God, you cannot be good, but if you do walk with God you cannot help but be good.
There are some who say that goodness is a matter of the head. They say if you know what is good then you will do what is good. But we know that is not so. Paul said in Romans 7:19, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.”
There are some who say goodness is a matter of the hands. They say that goodness is simply treating others good. The fact is, doing good does not make you good. There some murderers on death row who are good to their mothers, but they are not good people.
Goodness is not a matter of the head nor a matter of the hands. Goodness is a matter of the heart.
Jesus said in Matthew 12:35, “a good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.” Goodness is not a matter of what you know, nor what you do. It is a matter of what you are.
If you want to put it simply, you could say it like this: What’s down in the well always comes up in the bucket. Goodness is the fruit of the Holy Spirit living in you.
The fruit of the spirit ripens, but it never rots. No matter how good you are, as you grow in the Lord and walk closer to the Lord, you will find that your goodness will get even better.
Have you ever thought about the fact that a musician is judged, not by how long he plays, but by how well he plays? In like manner, what really matters to God is not how long you live, but how good you live.
Some of you will remember the days of the Susan B. Anthony dollar. It only lasted for three years, and there is a very good reason. It looked too much like a quarter and people didn’t like all the confusion.
The public said loudly and clearly that a dollar ought to look like a dollar, and it ought to look like it’s worth four quarters, not just twenty-five cents. That coin that many thought would revolutionize our monetary system, seemed like “chunked change”, and it was taken out of circulation.
My friend, the world expects believers who call themselves Christians, to be good and to be Godly; to be the real thing and not a cheap imitation.
This world is full of badness; what it desperately needs is goodness that is produced by knowing Jesus, loving God, and bearing the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Let’s pray
