Former Blackout Artist

A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.“
– Luke 18:18-19

Today’s meditation is on the fruit of Goodness. And I think it’s important for us to look at this fruit from two different perspectives: man’s perception of goodness, and then what the Bible reveals to man about what goodness truly is.

In Luke’s gospel, I think that the “certain ruler” who asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life is the perfect example of man’s perception of goodness. We notice that he begins this dialogue with Jesus by identifying him as Good Teacher. So the conversation appears to begin on solid footing, as the man has at least attempted to bestow honor upon Jesus in his initial greeting. Being without sin, Jesus was certainly good, and it was also true that he was a Good Teacher. But we notice something unsettling in Jesus’ response to the man’s nicety.

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good except God alone.”

We should pause here long enough to point out that Jesus wasn’t denying his own deity. After all, Jesus has always been the second person of the Holy Trinity – God the Son. There was a time when Jesus wasn’t fully man, but there has never been a time when Jesus wasn’t fully God. The Triune rabbit-hole mystery aside, I think Jesus’ response was his way of confronting the man’s superficial belief of what “good” truly is, much in the same way that we tend to overuse the word “love” in our everyday conversations. I might say that I really love Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, but do I have such an extreme affection for it that I would be willing to lay down my life for a pint or two? Of course not. So in my overuse of the word love, I’ve taken the meaning of it completely out of context and devalued what love truly is.

This is what Jesus was pointing out to the man, that his understanding of goodness was incredibly superficial. And because of his superficial understanding of goodness, he had an even shallower understanding of God. And if we continue reading this story through to the very end we would learn that the man not only had a superficial understanding of the Commandments, but his decision to not follow this Good Teacher would reveal his shallow understanding of Jesus also.

So what is goodness?

“Agathosune,” which is Greek, helps us understand the proper context of what goodness means: “An inherent uprightness of heart and life.” In other words, goodness is a natural state of being. God isn’t good because He does good things… He does good things because He is God; He is inherently good. And couldn’t we say the exact opposite about ourselves? We aren’t sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. Sin is inherently in us, because we inherited it from Adam all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

The late theologian C.S. Lewis stated, “We have little understanding of how bad we are until we try very hard to be good.” Reading that, many of us will immediately reflect on Paul’s dilemma in Romans 7:19, where he says, “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

At times it almost seems like there’s no hope for us. And of ourselves and our own effort, there is no hope. Jesus reminds us of this in John 15:5, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” But if we take Jesus at his word, then the opposite must be true also, which Paul cited as the solution to his inherent dilemma. “I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13).

And this takes us to all that was gained for us through Jesus’ death on the cross. Not only did he pay the ransom for our sin and offer us eternal life, but in doing so he also gave us direct access to God’s power through the Holy Spirit, so that we may be transformed through the renewing of our mind. And not that we should never aim to do good things. But that the good things we do are from an inherent goodness that the Holy Spirit gives us.

When we offer up our praise and thanksgiving to God, we are exclaiming His goodness, His Agathosune. His kindness, mercy, generosity, and steadfast love for us is constant, it never ends. This is God’s goodness revealed to us.

In other words, goodness in its truest sense of the word is Godliness.