The fruit of the Spirit is…goodness.
What do we mean by the Spirit’s fruit of goodness? If you saw goodness in action what would it look like? Here’s my attempt at a definition: Goodness refers to someone who is characterized by personal integrity and open-handed generosity.
In that definition you can see two separate but related parts.
First, goodness is marked by a personal integrity. To have personal integrity means that you are an authentic person not phony or hypocritical or manipulative.
Second, goodness is marked by an open-handed generosity. Open-handed generosity means that you hold all of your resources with an open-hand so that you can do good to all as need and opportunity arises. Someone who is marked by open-handed generosity is constantly on the lookout for opportunities to meet needs with the resources God has entrusted to them.
As Christians it should be our desire to be known for having personal integrity and open-handed generosity.
Yet, how often have you been struck with your own phoniness and hypocrisy. We may look one way in public but remove the crowds and outside spectators and we’re a different person.
And rather than look for need and opportunity to do good, we hoard our resources because “they’re mine, my own, my precious.”
Or, at times, if we do seek to do good to others, we can detect a subtle hint of reluctance, perhaps even resentfulness, lurking in dark corners of our heart. “Why did I waste my time helping them, now my Saturday is wasted?!” “I really wish I wouldn’t have offered to let them stay at my house, now I have to clean up after them.”
It is utterly humbling to realize that even the good we do so easily becomes contaminated by impure motives, which is why we need to regularly go to our Good God and confess our lack of goodness to Him. Here is a prayer to help you do that:
Our Heavenly Father,
You are good and do good, teach us your ways.
We lack the purity and depth of goodness that you call us to.
Forgive us for the ways we lack personal integrity and instead are marked by hypocrisy.
Cleanse us from the reluctance and resentfulness that still resides in our hearts and keeps us from being generous.
Help us to pursue needs and opportunities to do good to others and to share what we have, so that we may offer You the pleasing sacrifice of obedience.
In the Name of Christ we pray, Amen.
Now turn from thinking of your lack of goodness to thinking of the overflowing abundant goodness of Christ:
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9)
Jesus’s whole life was lived in open-handed generosity. He came not to be served (although He had every right to demand to be) but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many. And in the greatest act of generosity known to man, He not only expressed open-handed generosity but arm-stretching generosity as He stretched out His arms to be nailed to a cross. This is the most radiant display of goodness.
