But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance Gal 5:22-23
The underlying Greek word here is agathosune defined as virtue or beneficence
If we really run with the metaphor of the fruit, we might consider goodness to be the skin or the rind. Goodness isn’t something that gets done, Goodness contains all the things we do. Look at Ephesians 5:9 KJV –
For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth
It is difficult to get a gasp of what a “good” person is. The world looks at it as someone that does things that are socially applauded, but that isn’t a very good benchmark. They might even consider a person that does more good things than bad to be ultimately a “good” person.
The reality though, is that God is the only standard of good offered in the Bible. James 1:17 says that everything good is from above. Even Jesus told the rich young man that the only one good is the Father. (Mark 10:18)
This sheds a lot of light on what David sang about in the 23rd Psalm. When the Lord is our shepherd we know that
… goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…
July 11, 2013
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