Goodness
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Galatians 5:22-26 and Colossians 3:12
In the Bible it talks about Christ being righteous and those
who practice being righteous, are of him. (1 John 2:28-29) Now goodness can’t be studied unless we look
at righteousness, for righteousness is the essence of goodness.
Righteousness: Act of
being in accordance with what is just, honorable, and free of guilt or
wrong. It is upright, virtuous, and
noble.
Goodness is described this way: bountiful, sound, whole, well-founded, commendable, having a standard,
virtuous, kind. Having character, being righteous, having humility.
Now goodness is something achieved, not given like a super
power, it has to be maintained through faithfulness and discipline
(self-control). Now goodness is not the
necessary element to being saved, on the contrary being saved is the
declaration that your old self and ways have been shed so that you can receive
God’s saving promise and grace. You
receive when you declare, believe that Christ is your savior, and “go and sin
no more.” Goodness is something we are
called to pursue after we have been
saved and see that we are a changed person. (It cannot be achieved without
Christ’s sacrifice being accepted in our hearts.)
2 Corinthians 5:21: For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin
for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Christ even says in Matthew
5:6: Blessed are those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Pursuing goodness (righteousness) is not an
easy thing, is hard to pursue goodness in a world that is no longer good, it is
filled with very evil things which pull at us more than the good things. However, in that God states that even then
when he sees the hunger for righteousness He will not let us down, but rather
be faithful and fill us.
This promise is also in Psalm 37:23-24: The steps of a good man are ordered by the
Lord, and He delights in his way. Though
he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; For the Lord upholds him with His
hand.
We have to remember too that we cannot achieve goodness on
our own, in Psalm 16:2 it reminds us that our goodness is not of ourselves, but
of God in us.
Psalm 16:2: O my soul, you have said to the Lord, “You
are my Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from you.”
Goodness (righteousness) is something we cannot achieve
without God, goodness wouldn’t even exist unless God existed because he IS
goodness. That’s why God couldn’t look
at Christ as he hung on the cross, because Christ had taken on the evil sin of
the world and God is pure goodness, and because evil and goodness can’t be together
God had to look away. Now here is a kind
of an interesting thing (in my opinion) take the extra ‘o’ out of goodness and
you get godness, so as we pursuing God’s character, which we are called to do
as we are called to pursue “Christ-likeness).
In Romans, it talks about how those who pursue goodness will
continue in his goodness (and as we’ve seen in the previous verses will be
upheld and blessed by God), but those who fall away and don’t return will be
cut off.
Romans 11:22-23: Therefore consider the goodness and severity
of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue
in His goodness. Otherwise you will be
cut off. And they also, if they do not
continue in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in
again.
If you have a slight advanced knowledge about plants and
such you will know that when you graft a plant you are taking a plant shoot and
putting it with another plant so that they join and grow together, they create
a ‘union.’ (Interesting picture, huh?)
Many times growing up I have heart people many times say
that they couldn't serve a God who is so harsh or so quick to burn people, well
I got news for you, if you are a parent (or if you work with children like
myself) you realize that God is not condemning God, but rather a fatherly
God. Parents give children many chances
(in order to let them have the opportunity to do what is right, for they have
been taught what is right and
therefore know what is right),
however, when the child doesn’t seem to get it or seems to start taking
advantage of the grace of the parent, the parent then has to punish the child
in a way that will make them get the message to “shape up.” Think about it this way too, if someone keeps
abusing us in any way, shape, or form we tend to drop them, “hey if they are
going to just abuse our friendship, take advantage of me, or keep being
devious, I’m not going to deal with them anymore.” (Does that sound familiar?) It’s funny how
that’s how we react as people and then we expect God to be different!?! It’s
kind of selfish to act like God should except people no matter what, but come
on why would God want to dwell with people who have declare pure hatred of him?
Do we dwell with people who hate us? Do we dwell with people who we hate? No.
(No remember back to kindness and gentleness we are not supposed to hate
people, but some of us deal with hatred which is the same as hate, instead we
need to kindly dislike the behavior and love the person.) Also you have to really pay attention too,
because as you read the scriptures Christ always has way out and a way for us
to still except him and to get another chance.
It clearly states that in the second half of our Romans verse. So, I think that if people claim that God is
a ruthless hateful God who just destroys, you have to ask them, ‘well how well
do you know God’, because my God, the God in the scriptures is a God of
justice and of second chances. (Every
time I say that statement ‘A God of second chances’ I always think of
the ‘Veggie Tale’ song from Jonah sung by the veggie angels, “Our God is a God
of second chances.”)
Now that we know what goodness/righteousness is let’s take a
look at what it does:
Philippians 2:14-16: Do all things without complaining or disputing,
that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in
the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights
in the world, holding fast the word of the life, so that I may rejoice in the
day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.
Psalm 15: Lord, who may abide in your tabernacle? Who
may dwell in your holy hill? He who
walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart; He who
does not backbite with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor does he
take up a reproach against his friend; In whose eyes eyes vile person is
despised, but he honors those who fear the Lord; He who swears to his own hurt
and does not change; He who does not put out his money at usury, nor does he
take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be
moved.
One who bathes in righteousness is conscious of his sin and
understands that it is sin, and in response then turns, asks for forgiveness,
then goes and sins no more. For the
righteous see with truth glasses and they act with humility and Christ wisdom.
Ezekiel 20:43: And there you shall remember your ways and
all your doings with which you were defiled; and you shall loathe yourselves in
your own sight because of all the evils that you have committed.
Later on in our study we will be talking about love, peace
and joy. We will discover that the
scriptures talk about how when we follow Christ and his example we are reward
with Christ’s peace and joy. In Proverbs
it talks about following the word will find good and trusting in the Lord will
bring happiness! We just finished studying faithfulness and looking at God’s
faithfulness and I think that because we see that God has always stayed true
his promises we must then remember and be faithful in our end of the relationship
so that we can take part in the peace and joy He has to offer us!
Proverbs 16:19-20: Better to be of a humble spirit with the
lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.
He who heeds the word wisely will find good, and whoever trusts in the
Lord, happy is he.
On your own I would encourage you to look at the beatitudes
in Matthew 5:1-11 and remember in
the beginning of this study we saw that it takes self-control and humility to
enable us to be successful in living the Fruit of the Spirit. It takes humility and self-control to develop
righteousness, for righteousness is (as we saw at the top) being free of wrong
and just, well we have been told that we are free of wrong when we seek
forgiveness of the Lord, and when we seek we fill find. (But it takes humility to get there!)
So in conclusion, remember that Jesus loves you; he wants
you to be successful and to lead a deeper and full life that honors him and
brings you closer to him!
2 Corinthians 5:17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a
new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new
