A Sermon On:
PREPARED BY
KEN GEHRELS
PASTOR
CALVIN CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH
NEPEAN, ONTARIO
Sandra came home from the ball game, jubilant with the victory and her contribution of a two-run base hit. "Good play," her coach had said.
The foreman slides over to the service bay and inspects the job of his new mechanic. "Good work, Bruce. You handled that difficult transmission job
nicely."
David receives a warm hug from his wife. "That was such a good meal. Thanks for cooking it."
GOOD - doing things in the right way, the appropriate way, the way they were meant to be. Sandra hit the ball in a way that it was meant to be
smacked. Bruce put the transmission together in the right way. David cared for his wife in a most appropriate fashion. They carried out GOOD.
Today we study that particular virtue of life under the banner of Galatians 5.22, "The fruit of the Spirit is... GOODNESS."
Being - and doing - Good.
At one point Jesus said, "No one is good - except God alone" (Mk 10.17-18).
When it comes right down to it - doing things in the right way, living in an appropriate fashion, and THINKING about life in the proper manner - the
pure doing of good, the exhibiting of goodness, is a virtue exhibited by none except our perfectly pure Creator God.
So it is that we speak of God as holy - a word that means "special, unique, set apart, perfect, pure, sacred."
And compared to that perfection of God, the absolutely flawless manner in which he deals with the world and humanity, compared to that there is not
a single human being who ever has lived that can be considered good in any holistic sense. No one.
Says the scriptures, "There is no one who does good, no not one" (Rom 3.12).
So if we were to look at goodness from a legal standpoint first - living life according to the right commands of God, doing things and thinking of
things in a way that he meant us to do and think of things - if we look at goodness from a legal standpoint, every human being stands condemned.
"For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Rom 3.23).
Which, of course, is where the unspeakably wonderful and GOOD saving work of Jesus Christ comes in. In the words of the form for Holy
Communion, "He was condemned to die that we might be pardoned, he endured the suffering and death of the cross that we might live through Him,
He was once forsaken by God that we might forever be accepted by Him" [Form #3].
We are legally declared good through the gift of salvation as earned for us by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ - and by that alone!
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast"
(Eph 2.8,9).
And yet, the bible speaks in some respect of goodness actually showing itself. "The fruit of the Spirit is... goodness." As we mentioned quite some
time ago, fruit is that which becomes evident in life.
As we are declared legally good through faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit enters our hearts and begins to carry out his renovation work on us. He
empowers us to live in ACTIVE goodness.
Ephesians chapter 2 does NOT end after v.9. It carries right on to verse 10:
"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
It is speaking here of the goodness that comes AFTER salvation, as a result of God's work in our hearts. The Holy Spirit begins in our minds, helping
to begin to think about that which is pure, holy, right, and true.
He helps us to think good - shaping our hearts and minds to think the thoughts of God, to desire His desires, to want what He wants, to delight in
what pleases Him.
Of course if that is where goodness stops it is crippled. The fruit of the Spirit would be unmarketable. The bible is very blunt on such matters:
Jas 2:26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith
without deeds is dead.
In fact, just about every letter to the Christian church which we find in the New Testament contains a call for believers to put their faith into action, to
practice good: Rom 12.1; Gal 6.9; Eph 2.10; Col 1.10.
The Goodness which is implanted in our souls by the Holy Spirit upon our conversion has arms and legs - it goes and does. To say that we believe
and then to be no different in our lifestyles from any of the thousands of unbelievers in Ottawa-Carleton, is to have a corpse of a faith, an empty shell.
The Bible looks at faith as a remarkably practical thing. It is good FOR something, just like a pen is GOOD FOR writing and a car is GOOD FOR
transportation. A pen that lays in the drawer and the car that gathers dust in the garage are wasted.
The goodness that develops in our minds through the working of the Holy Spirit by faith is crippled, dare I say WASTED, if not used for its intended
purpose.
And that, of course, as Eph 2.10 said, was to do good works for God. In other words, the goodness that grows in our mind and that we are called to
show is GOOD FOR furthering the cause of Jesus Christ in this world:
-by making it more of the sort of place he intended it to be in the first place
-by behaving in a way that makes people sit up and take notice and ask questions about why we do what we do; in other words becoming walking
advertisements for Christ
We all have heard the cynical phrase, "Do as I say and not as I do." People who live life by that motto lose respect quickly.
How are people going to find out what our faith is all about? By sitting back and pouring over the carefully prepared doctrinal statements? Not a
chance! The first thing most do is watch and wait:
-they speak about love... how do they treat each other?
-they speak of forgiveness... do they hold grudges?
-they speak of acceptance... will they take me in?
-they speak of God... does he make a real difference in
their lives?
-they speak of caring - how do they treat the weak and the
disadvantaged of society?
"Often we can say more to a person in trouble by putting our arm around his shoulder than by a ten-minute talk. And when we visit the poor, our
words of comfort are empty unless we also pull out our wallet....
"The door of the Church stands open toward the world, and through it must flow a steady stream of good works, so that the world - our neighbors -
may see the peace and joy and love that God has give us, and so be led to find Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour...."
[Spykman Never On Your Own, on Q/A 86]
And that is a noble task, a beautiful purpose for which to be used. On that note we should notice how the Old Testament often speaks of good. The
Hebrew word for good, TOB, is a word that also is often translated "Beauty."
Good is attractive. This is what the apostle Paul referred to when he said, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good" (Rom 12.26) -
making God's way of living more attractive than evil. In other words living TOB, beautiful goodness.
Unfortunately, though that is the easiest thing to say, that is ALSO the most difficult part of goodness for the believer to practice. For it is so that
ever since the Fall into sin, humanity seems to have this inborn tendency to be attracted to evil; we are skewed AWAY from good.
Evil seems to be almost frighteningly attractive. That's what we refer to in Reformed Doctrine as "total depravity." No matter where we go or what
we do, it seems maddeningly true that we tend to be attracted to the twisted and the skewed and the decrepit.
And so it is that we require a strong inner working of the Holy Spirit to tip the balance back in favor of good; to move us from valuing the ugly to
valuing the good; from having lives that are embarrassing in some respects, sour in others, and downright putrid in a few areas to lives that begin to
show beauty.
We need a supernatural, miracle-working outpouring of the Holy Spirit onto our hearts to cause us to bear fruits of goodness.
"Holy Spirit, you know that strange tendency I seem to have with feeling attracted to activities that are explicitly AGAINST what the bible teaches.
Help me to tear down those desires and to erect in their place desires to do good, to value morals and ethics that are in keeping with your Word."
And having breathed that prayer we are called to put it into action. Which is where the sweating begins. For bringing our minds to think good, and
lifting our hands to do good is a tremendously difficult task.
Paul speaks about this in 1 Cor 9.24-27 when he compares the life of the believer to that of an athlete. He talks literally about pummeling his body,
stretching and stressing it, as the aerobics instructor would say while leading the workout -"Make it burrrnnnn!", until it came into shape.
Goodness is, quite simply, HARD WORK!
It doesn't come to the lazy.
It won't be obtained by the listless.
The Holy Spirit is our coach. He provides the training schedule, the needed equipment and the encouragement, but WE have to be prepared to do the
sweating. As one person at the Y put it, "No gain without groan." That's as true of developing spiritual fruit as it is of developing bulging biceps.
So day by day, inch by inch, moment by moment, turning to the Lord again and again, serving and loving and obeying, we begin to develop goodness
both in thinking and in doing.
The bible calls that process, "Sanctification." And if you want to do some follow-up study on that, let me direct you to the Heidelberg Catechism, Q/A
86 and following where it asks "Why must we still do good?", gives the answer, and then goes on to a study of the 10 commandments.
CONCLUSION
"The fruit of the Spirit is... goodness." Living life God's way, and slowly but surely, in little ways at first, but then in larger and more regular ways,
beginning to succeed at it.
Oh, its true. On this side of Paradise we will never totally arrive. Our thoughts and actions will never be totally good. The final cleansing and polishing
will be done by Jesus when he gathers us into glory.
But until that time we keep our eyes on the goal, with these words of Paul, written to the believers at Philippi, in mind:
"...that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil 1.6).