GOODNESS: (agathosune)

GOODNESS is very like kindness. Both seem so unspectacular that they hardly merit devoting time and space to. They seem even the sort of qualities that truly spiritually dynamic believers would have left behind with the milk of the Word in spiritual Kindergarten. Kindness and goodness appear genteel and old hat to this thrusting and self-assured world. They are qualities seen as belonging only to gentle, elderly people who move slowly and smile a lot (not that I have anything against such people!). The young and newly middle-aged don't talk much of goodness. To call somebody 'good' is not to pay them the highest of compliments. They'll probably assume you think them such bland characters that 'good' is the best you can say about them!

I hope the last chapter dispelled some false notions about kindness. The purpose of this chapter is to do the same for goodness. Goodness isn't a bland, low-key characteristic—it's one of the most invaluable and dynamic forces we can have in our life. It's a quality which, probably more than any other, helps keep us on the straight and narrow. And, what's more, it adds sparkle to life!

Four appearances

The Greek for goodness in the New Testament is agathosune. The good news is, it appears only four times so we can indulge ourselves a little and look at each appear-ance of the word—something we weren't able to do for previous aspects of the fruit because the words appeared too many times. But, more good news, scarcity of appearances need not be a problem when it comes to determining the meaning behind a Bible word.

We'll take the appearances of agathosune in the order they come in Scripture. The first is Romans 15:14:

"And I myself [Paul] also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another."

The verse doesn't give away a lot at first glance about the nature of goodness. But the clues are there. Paul mentions that his Roman brethren are "full of goodness." He had already praised them for their faith (Rom.1:8), which he said was "spoken of throughout the whole world"—by which I'm sure he meant the whole world of believers, not the entire population of the globe, many of whom would have been perfectly indifferent toward the faith of the Roman believers. Paul also praised them because their "obedience is come abroad unto all men" (Rom.16:19)—again I'm sure the word all is meant in a restrictive sense. Not everybody in the whole world knew of their obedience, but the Christian world did. And now in Rom.15:14 Paul credits his readers with being "full of goodness" and "having all knowledge" (italics added). Again the apostle applies superlatives to the Roman believers, and again we have to be careful about the superlatives. Just as their good qualities were not known and admired throughout the entire world, it's not likely we are meant to believe the Romans were completely full of goodness and knew all things. In fact, if they already knew all things, Paul was wasting good parchment and ink writing to them; and dear sister Phoebe, who is thought to have carried the letter to Rome, was wasting her time and energy taking it.

Absolutes rarely, if ever, apply to humans. Even Christ refused to be addressed as "Good Master" saying "there is none good but one, that is God" (Matt.19:16,17). Christ was there making it clear to someone who thought goodness could be earned by keeping the law, that in the final analysis only God was good. Human beings do not attain such perfection. Even Christ, Trinitarians should note, did not equate himself with God in absolute terms. God may choose to impute goodness on His own terms, but that's another matter; it's not inherent or earned goodness.

The Apostle Paul writes as he does in Romans 15:14, about full goodness and all knowledge, because he is winding up his remarks and giving his reasons for writing. He writes to the Romans not because they have full goodness or all knowledge in the impossible absolute sense, but because he is convinced they have sufficient goodness and knowledge to be able to comprehend and practise what he is telling them. Otherwise there was no point in writing. It's not that they were perfect in goodness and knowledge, but that they were perfectly able to know and effect what he was telling them. They had enough goodness and knowedge.. And what is ever more needful than enough? It's as good as a feast, as the saying goes. So it was in a sense 'full', and it was all, for Paul's purpose. With such goodness and knowledge they would be perfectly able to "admonish one another" from Paul's letter to them, and lead one another along the right road, away from the false doctrines and unChristlike practices Paul was warning them against.

If only

If only believers could always have enough goodness and knowledge when dealing with unchristian doctrines and unChristlike practices. The knowledge part is relatively easy to come by, but the goodness often needs working at. Sometimes, one feels, this precious aspect of the fruit of the Spirit is sadly lacking when it comes to the business of admonishing one another. Both the admonisher and the admonished can have a short-fall in the goodness department. The admonisher may wag the finger and take a haughty 'I know best' attitude, while the admonished smarts and takes up a defensive and rebellious stance, probably as a direct result of the attitude of the other person. And the two parties move ever further apart, adding reason upon reason for their differences. All for the lack of a little, simple goodness! Which is why I believe goodness is not so little or so simple. Before we comment further on the nature of goodness, let's look at the next two verses that include the word. First Galatians 5:22:

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith..."

A familiar verse! This is where we came in, isn't it? This is the verse which picks out goodness as a fruit of the Spirit, and in doing so alerts us to the fact that there must be more to this quality than we generally give it credit for. Goodness is one of the eight qualities which combine to produce love, and consequently combine to produce the whole, balanced, spiritual personality of a believer. And in the next of our four verses, the importance of goodness as an aspect of the fruit of the Spirit is highlighted.

"(For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth)" (Eph:5:9).

Here's a verse to pause over and ponder! If this were a Psalm, the word Selah would surely appear. It's actually a parenthesis, hence the brackets, and was never meant to stand on its own. We have to see it in its natural habitat of the surrounding narrative to appreciate what it means. It's an important and helpful aside on Paul's on-going argument.

In the previous chapter of Ephesians, chapter four, Paul lists all the good things we need to "put on" when we become a believer, and all the bad things we need to "put off." Becoming a believer gives the soul a change of clothing. Then in chapter five he changes the metaphor to a familiar one of light and darkness, day and night. He opens the chapter by telling us, "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us..." Then he lists many of the evils of which we are all capable, and in the midst of making comparisons between our opposing good and bad inclinations, Paul says:

"For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them" (Eph.5:8-11).

The Apostle was telling the Ephesian believers that their chief source of defence and strength against the unfruitful works of darkness was the fruit of the Spirit. And the only aspect of that fruit he mentions explicitly is goodness. (Though righteousness and truth are found in aspects of the fruit.) But what stands out the most to me in this narrative is the way in which goodness works in "proving what is acceptable", and in reproving the "unfruitful works of darkness." This proving and reproving is the effect of goodness. This is the important work it does, and why it is such an important part of the fruit of the Spirit. Do you see the link with the first verse we looked at from Romans 15, where we read of goodness supplying the ability to admonish one another?

It must be significant that the only two verses which show goodness in a context that could help us understand its nature, show it in relation to admonishing and reproving. What is that trying to tell us? It's telling us that goodness must be at the back of any reproving that goes on. It makes perfect sense, because only from the vantage-point of genuine goodness can any acceptable admonishing or reproving ever take place. Only those who have some goodness themselves can possibly reprove others for their shortcomings. Otherwise we have hypocrisy.

We'll come back to this all-important point about the nature and application of goodness in a moment, after we've looked at the last of our four references:

"Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of [this] calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of [his] goodness, and the work of faith with power" (2 Thess.1:11).

This verse obviously caused the translators some problems. Although they put "his (God's) goodness" in the verse, there is some ambiguity in the original language over exactly whose goodness is meant—whether God's or the believers. Some other versions (NIV, NEB, Diaglott, Good News, Weymouth, for instance) impute the goodness to the believer rather than to God. The Speaker's Commentary cites four alternative renderings of the verse by different scholars. So the AV rendering is open to dispute. And I believe that in view of what we've discovered about goodness and its connection with reproof and admonishment (and in view of where that will lead us in a moment), it is doubtful that the goodness of God is meant here. It must be the believer's. When you read through 2 Thessalonians chapter one you find that the chapter is chiefly about the differences between those who "know not God" and who "obey not the gospel of our Lord", and who are consequently heading for destruction, and "all them that believe" (and who "stand fast"—2 Thess.2:15) who are heading for salvation.

It's quite evident that the believers of Paul's day were going through a time of much reproving, and proving what was acceptable, and much admonishing of one another in order to keep themselves from going the way of destruction. And only spiritual goodness would equip the true believers adequately to deal with the troublesome ones. So I suggest that the verse should be read as follows:

"Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of calling and fulfil all the good pleasure [all the delight and desire] of [your] goodness and the work of faith [yours again, though unstated] with power."

In a nutshell: The fulfilment of their delight in goodness would be their salvation. I believe it's as simple as that.

But where is all this leading? What exactly is the quality of goodness? Are we any nearer to understanding another aspect of the fruit of the Spirit? Certainly.

Stating the obvious?

Maybe it sounds like stating the obvious, but: Goodness is that quality of character in a believer by which he or she is able to combat badness—evil. He or she can direct it towards other believers who are in error, using it to strengthen and validate the admonitions and reproofs. It's certainly not a quality which anyone can come by naturally, of themselves. We can only obtain it from the Spirit Word, which is what makes it a fruit of the Spirit. It can only come to us from the sort of familiarity with the Word that we gain from delighting and meditating in the Word. But let's not take away the idea that goodness is only a gladiatorial quality, to be marshalled as part of our weaponry against erring others—a sort of higher moral ground from which we can more easily pick off the enemy! True, as we've seen from the verses we've looked at, having goodness does give us credibility when trying to straighten out an errant believer, but that's not its primary function. Its more important role is what it does for us inside our own heads and hearts, not how we employ it out there dealing with others.

Being and doing—again

We need to remind ourselves that all the aspects of the fruit of the Spirit are about being rather than doing. They are all qualities of character, not things to do. Actions flow from the fruits, that's inevitable, as we've already discussed in an earlier chapter, but the fruits are not the actions. There are numerous mentions of good works in the New Testament—and 'good' is agathos, a close relative of agathosune—but I've steered away from them in order to keep to the point: Goodness is the quality of character that lies behind, and must precede, all truly good works. It is also, as something of a by-product, that particular quality of character which equips us to admonish one another, and to reprove the erring.

Talking to yourself

As a quality of character, goodness works something like a conscience. As a matter of fact it most likely is the conscience of a believer. It is the inner voice of the Word which is reproving and admonishing us. This is how the Word should affect us, and it is precisely how the Word was intended to affect us. Its readers or hearers in Old Testament times were told as much. This is what the Law should have done for all those who delighted and meditated in it day and night. The Proverbs tell us: "When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee" (Prov.6:22). This is a reference to the inner dialogue that the Word will establish in our hearts/heads if we give ourselves sufficiently to it. The Psalms tell us the same: "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee" (Ps.119:11). This is not hiding the Word so it cannot be found!—this is to lay it up in your heart like a prized possession. Back to the Proverbs for the full explanation:

"My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; So that thou incline thine ear to wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasure; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God" (Prov.2:1-5).

We all talk to ourselves, don't we? It doesn't mean we're mad. Not usually. We all have a constant stream of words and sometimes pictures passing through our minds. Much as we might wonder whether some people have anything at all going on in there, we all have something going on. One epitome of laid-backness once said "Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits." But it's actually quite difficult to 'just sit'. Numerous meditational disciplines have been devised for the very purpose of trying to stop the flow of thought and clear the mind for a time, because this can be beneficial; it's supposed to help relaxation. We are naturally thinking beings, talking to ourselves the whole while. Just try to stop thinking for as long as you can and you'll see what I mean. After a few seconds (if you make it that far) you'll start wondering how you're doing, and, zap! you're out.

The nature of our self-talk is extremely important to our spiritual and mental well-being. For most people—that is, those whose minds are untouched by attention to the Word of God—the nature of their stream of consciousness is determined almost entirely by other people, by society. Their self-talk is governed by, "What should I think about this or that?" "What should I do?" "How should I feel about this?"—it is largely determined by what society has conditioned them into believing is acceptable for them. This came about mostly over their formative years through input from parents and other family members; teachers and other authority figures; friends and role models; and it continues down the years through bosses, governments and associates. All these influences have combined to determine what is 'right' for most people. This mishmash of influences procures the general haphazard morality by which most people live their lives, and which rather loosely holds society together.

Any goodness such people may have is not the real thing, not a fruit of the Spirit. It may appear to be genuine Biblical goodness, but it isn't. Ask the majority of 'good' people in the world why they would not steal or murder, and they would answer 'because it's wrong', or 'because I believe it to be morally wrong,' but they will rarely say 'because God tells me in His Word it is wrong.' That's the difference, isn't it? The goodness which God wants from us and which is a fruit of the Spirit argues from an understanding of what the Word of God says, not from what 'I think'. The self-talk of the believer is marked by the gentle but firm inner reprovings and admonitions of the Word of God. This is what it means to have the mind of the Spirit, or the mind of Christ. Our devotion to God's Word puts a new voice in our heads. "When thou awakest, it shall talk with thee," as the Proverb says. This is the presence of goodness challenging the old society-induced and flesh-induced voice of evil.

"In the beginning"

In the beginning mankind was made "very good" (Gen.1:31). Adam's and Eve's inner dialogues were with the unsullied voice of goodness. Evil had not occurred to them. They had only the godly counsel of the angels to affect their thinking, no knowledge of anything else.

When they were deceived by the serpent, what they did was to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen.2 & 3). That changed everything for them. That disobedience introduced a new voice into their heads. Their inner dialogue changed. And the new voice was loud and strong, and it spoke to them of doubt and fear (making them want to hide from God); it spoke of anger, lust and all kinds of evil. And the original voice of goodness became overwhelmed, weaker, smaller and quieter, and in need of constant reinforcement to prevent it from disappearing entirely in the face of this brash but subtle inner voice of evil. The Word of God became a 'still small voice' indeed in the thinking of mankind (1 Kings 19:12). Now only the applied influence of the Word of God can help this desperate situation in which we find ourselves as the heirs of Adam's disobedience. There is no other remedy. From the good influence of the Word we can develop the fruit of the Spirit, an important aspect of which is the godly voice of goodness reproving and admonishing the natural evil voice of our hearts.

Experiment

What's the inner voice in your head telling you most of the time? Is it, do you think, predominantly the voice of goodness or the voice of evil? Try the experiment of keeping track of your inner dialogue for a while. Check how much of what is going on in there can be traced directly to the influence of the Word of God, and how much of it is attributable to another source. Perhaps, even as a believer, you are still conditioned in your thinking by the influences of society, living according to its conventions more than by the Word of God. Is there any evidence in there of the voice of the Word reproving and admonishing the natural voice of your mind? Any sign of the goodness that is of the fruit of the Spirit? Or has goodness been put to silence by your own way of thinking? As I say, try the experiment.

Jesus had this goodness, without a doubt. He could always produce a "thus saith the Lord" to handle the natural promptings of his mind. He did it during the temptations in the wilderness. He so strongly committed himself to knowing the mind of God that he overcame the mind of the flesh completely—he admonished and reproved it out of existence! We won't achieve his total domination of the mind of the flesh, but if we use his method we can go a long way towards it. He is the role model for us, one who really applied himself to knowing what "saith the Lord". And that, as the saying goes, was the secret of his success. And it can be ours, too, if we're intent on making ourselves Christlike—as in Christians.

Positive and negative

Now, I said at the beginning of this chapter (rashly, you may have thought!) that goodness is one of the most dynamic forces in our lives, and a quality which, probably more than any other, helps to keep us on the right road. I even went so far as to say that goodness adds some sparkle to life! Hopefully, you can now see that some of those claims are true. Goodness is characterised by the indwelling of the Word of God in our hearts, put there and held there by our constant recourse to that Word in a spirit of delight. All of which has surely to be a major factor in keeping our feet firmly on the straight and narrow! But what about adding some sparkle to life!?

The Word of God is a totally positive force, "having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come" (1 Tim.4:8). Even the Ten Commandments are framed as double negatives (don't do the bad) which turns them into positive statements even though most of them begin, "Thou shalt not." So the incorporation of godly thinking into our minds is the way to achieve the purest form of positive thinking available anywhere! Goodness is, in fact, a form—the very best form—of positive thinking. Our own natural mode of thinking tends to be negative in its tone, and certainly in its outworking. It leads to death, and you can't get any more negative than death!

Positive thinking was always traditionally and rightly associated with religious thinking. Norman Vincent Peale, who is probably responsible for bringing the phrase 'positive thinking' into current use by his best-selling book, The Power of Positive Thinking, was a Methodist minister. He died only recently, well into his nineties, active to the last, and one of the best advertisements for his own book you'll ever find. His book leans heavily on Bible quotation and on the godly life being the positive life.

Over the years, positive thinking has lost a lot of ground (probably because it isn't as easy as many of its advocates made it sound), but it still pops up in other guises as the stuff of motivational speakers and writers. Nowadays the religious content tends to be sifted out of it and the result is generally an odd blend of humanism and mysticism. Yet it still works for people. In so far as people are employing Scriptural concepts, even though they are not aware they are Scriptural, there is bound to be some success. Of course it's better to go to the undiluted Source for our guidance on positive thinking, but other writers, like Peale, can be uplifting. A most amusing, and telling criticism I heard of Norman Vincent Peale was when someone compared him with the apostle Paul, and said, "I found Paul appealing and Peale appalling!" But, to be fair, such writers, when they are setting out helpful Scriptural principles of living in an easy-to-assimilate way, can be helpful.

True and valuable positive thinking is Bible-based. It's basically the inner goodness that constant recourse to the Scriptures will generate inside us. It is the good Word of God in our head and heart, admonishing and reproving the old negative man of the flesh.

Admonishing and reproving isn't a negative procedure, although it sounds like it. Something advising us what is right and good for us over what is wrong and bad for us can never really be negative. Our natural way of thinking will lead us away from our own highest good if we let it. It will tell us that living the Christian life is too difficult for us; that we are never going to live it well enough to make the Kingdom. It will tell us all sorts of negatives about ourselves and our hopes, and it will drain our spirit if we let it. It will try to convince us that bad things are actually good for us. But the introduction to our thinking of Bible-based positive thinking—the voice of what is truly good and right—will change us from hopeless to hopeful, from aimless to purposeful, and from fearful to confident. That's what this aspect of the fruit of the Spirit will do for us. And if you should ever doubt that positive thinking is a bona fide Christian concept then you should read what I call the Positive Thinkers' Charter which is found in Philippians 4:8:

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are TRUE, whatsoever things are HONEST, whatsoever things are JUST, whatsoever things are PURE, whatsoever things are LOVELY, whatsoever things are of GOOD REPORT; if there be any VIRTUE, and if there be any praise, THINK ON THESE THINGS." (My capitals).

This is positive thinking with a vengeance! So you see, it's a very scriptural phenomenon. It isn't, as many would say, an unrealistic and Pollyanna-like approach to life. If 90% of what we worry about never happens (which is reckoned to be the case), then which is the realistic approach? Negative thinking is the unrealistic approach to life. Being positive is far more real! How well does that charter for positive thinking represent what goes on in your head most of the time? It would certainly add some sparkle to your life if you could let your inner goodness admonish you into thinking along these lines, wouldn't it?

The Emperor Philosopher

Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor philosopher who lived AD 121-180, wrote in his Meditations: "our life is what our thoughts make it." He certainly struck a golden nugget of truth there. What a pity it didn't lead him to discover the best possible use of his own thoughts by allowing the Word of God to enter and steer them. His thoughts would then have made his life incomparably better. His thoughts would also have made the lives of many good believers a lot better, for he was unkind toward the believers of his day. History calls this Stoic Philosopher a good man in spite of his mistreatment of believers. He demonstrates how men can be when they possess a goodness which is not the fruit of the Spirit, but a ghastly parody of it. But what he said about our life being what our thoughts make it is worth bearing in mind. He stumbled on a Scriptural truth. Sadly, as Sir Winston Churchill once observed, most men who stumble upon truth will simply pick themselves up and carry on their way.

The French Philosopher

In more recent history the French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) made a memorable statement on the subject of thinking. Philosophers are, so they tell us, after the underlying truths about the nature of all things. And in a valiant attempt to come up with an absolute truth—a statement that he could say without fear of contradiction was absolutely, positively, undeniably true—he arrived at this:

"Cogito, ergo sum"

—better known to non-Latin speakers, like myself, as:

"I think, therefore I am."

Why this Frenchman should lapse into Latin to make his supposedly immortal statement, I don't know. It's rather like Shakespeare's Julius Caesar lapsing into Latin when his conspiratorial colleagues began hacking him to death: "Et tu Brute". One can only assume it was thought to add a little scholarship to a hopefully profound statement.

In my view, Descartes' statement, 'I think, therefore I am,' just stops short of being useful to a Bible believer. For us the statement needs finishing off with just one more word to make it an absolute truth about us.

There are two ways of thinking, as we've discussed. There is natural, sin-prone, negative thinking in which the majority of people engage all their lives, and by which they will attain at best a false goodness as a reaction to the demands of society. Or there is the kind of thinking that is influenced by the Spirit Word—Biblical positive thinking in which so few engage and which will lead to the genuine, life-enhancing goodness of the fruit of the Spirit.

To extend M. Descartes' pronouncement into one which will ultimately prove absolutely true for everyone, I give you either

"I think, therefore I am ... evil";

or

"I think, therefore I am ... good."

Which of these absolute truths does your thinking tell you is the most likely true of you at the moment? Do you have the mind of the flesh or the mind of the Spirit? But don't be too hard on yourself. If in doubt, make the attempt to be positive from now on. Delight and meditate in the positive Word and let it talk with you throughout the day. It will bring you true goodness.

As a P.S. to this chapter, you might consider that Descartes' ultimate truth should not have been "I think, therefore I am," but rather: "I think, therefore God is."