Living it (Salvation) Out VII 

The Fruit of the Spirit for today is… (drumroll, please! This one is awesome!) 

GOODNESS!!! 

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,  

peace, longsuffering, gentleness,  

goodness, faith, meekness, temperance:  

against such there is no law.  

Galatians 5:22–23 

Now I said earlier that GOODNESS was awesome, right? Well, it is. But also, it is very hard to understand. 

When I first saw this one on the list, I thought Oh no. How do I talk about this one? What about the verse that says there is no one good? How… 

It took some studying, I’ll say that much! Let’s dive in! 

First off, yes. There are three verses with pretty much the exact same wording (Ps 14:3, Ps 53:3 and Rom 3:12) that all say: There is none that doeth good, no not one. 

So how is this a Fruit of the Spirit? These are things we can do, right? 

Well, yes and no. We do them, but we can’t actually do them. It’s a Fruit of the Spirit, after all! Anything good we do can’t come from us, in reality. It comes from Christ who is in us. The good works we do are either born out of selfishness (and therfore aren’t actually good) or from Christ through the Holy Spirit. 

Some selfish motives might be to catch someone’s eye and gain attention, or maybe to get to heaven. Someone might act good, but we don’t know what their heart is. If they are doing good for a selfish reason, IT ISN’T GOOD. 

There is nothing good except through God, as seen in Mark 10:18: 

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? 

there is none good but one, that is, God. 

Only God is good, truly. So how is it that we can have goodness in our hearts? 

Through God. 

If there is true goodness in us, it can’t be from us. It has to come from God! 

Speaking of which… 

I ran a search for the word goodness in the Bible, and in the Old Testament 99% of the results were talking about goodness from God toward the Israelites. There was one verse that stood out to me in Psalms 16:1-3, where Michtam of David writes: 

Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust. 

O my soul, thou hast said unto the LORD, Thou art my Lord:  

my goodness extendeth not to thee; 

But to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent,  

in whom is all my delight. 

Of course, in my search I only saw verse 2 where is says that the person’s goodness does not extend to God. 

I thought what does this mean? So I read the context… and verse three explains it. Michtam is saying that his goodness isn’t toward God, but toward the saints. That goodness he’s talking about is coming from God, and he’s using it to bless the others that follow God. 

Some other verses to help explain are in Psalms, Hosea, Romans and Ephesains, as follows: 

(Ps 107:9) For he satisfieth the longing soul, 

and filleth the hungry soul with goodness. 

I think this is talking about a soul that hungers for Christ and for God. If we really are searching out God and following him, he fills our souls with goodness. 

(Ps 144:2) My goodness, and my fortress; my high tower,  

and my deliverer; my shield, and he in whom I trust;  

who subdueth my people under me. 

God is our goodness!!! So cool. 😀 

(Hos 6:4) O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee?  

O Judah, what shall I do unto thee?  

for your goodness is as a morning cloud,  

and as the early dew it goeth away. 

This is talking about human goodness… and how fickle it is. Our own goodness doesn’t last! We must have God’s goodness in order to make a real difference. 

(Rom 2:4) Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness  

and forbearance and longsuffering;  

not knowing that the goodness of God  

leadeth thee to repentance? 

This is saying that the goodness of God (again, the only REAL goodness in this world) leads us to repentance! Repentance is that state when we fully recognize that we have been going against God and accept Jesus into our hearts. What brings this about? 

The GOODNESS of GOD. He says in 1^st Timothy 2:2-3: 

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; 

Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. 

God wants all of us to believe in him! He loves us so much that he doesn’t want any of us to be separated from him! So therefore, in that love and goodness, he made a way for us to be saved… so we can now say that his goodness leads us to repentance! 

Here’s another verse for you: 

(Rom 15:4) And I myself also am persuaded of you,  

my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness,  

filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another. 

This is Paul writing to other followers of Christ. He is persuaded, he says, that they are full goodness. When we are in Christ, he is in us… as well as all his wonderful goodness! 

And one last one that relates directly to the Fruits of the Spirit: 

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

That being that the Fruits of the Spirit are shown in goodness, righteousness and truth. 

… 

So, what have we learned?  

1. We’ve learned that none of us are good in and of ourselves. 

2. We know that only GOD is really good. 

3. We know that God gives us his goodness to bless others and to show our salvation. 

4. We know that we are only saved through God’s goodness. 

5. We know that when we are saved, we have God’s goodness in our hearts. 

I sure have learned a lot from studying this, and I sincerely hope you have, too. 😀 

God bless, 

Janet! ❤️