Exploring Goodness and Faith as Fruits of the Spirit

Certainly one of the most radical statements that we find in the New Testament from the pen of the Apostle Paul is actually a quotation from the Psalms when he writes in the third chapter of Romans of the extent of the fallenness of man and the extent of our corruption with that passage I'm sure you're familiar with, that, "There is none righteous, no not one. There is none who doeth" -- what? "Good." I mean, think of that for a minute! The statement -- it sounds on the surface that it's outrageous -- that no one does good. [00:01:21]

Paul was describing fallen man. We are baffled at times by the fact that from all outward appearances, it seems, in many cases, that people who aren't Christians at all, make no claims of a Christian profession, in many ways outstrip professing Christians with respect to external acts, at least, of goodness -- great, heroic acts of sacrifice, of honesty, of diligence, and so on -- the practice of virtue that shames many of us, and we say, "How can the Bible say, 'No one does good?'" Isn't that hyperbole? [00:02:37]

Well, of course, part of the problem we're working with is that 'goodness' as a word is a relative term -- not that ethics are relative ultimately, but the term 'goodness' or 'good' has to be determined according to a standard; and we also understand from a biblical perspective that when God evaluates virtue, when God evaluates performance, He's concerned not only with conformity to external demands of the law, but also is concerned very much with the internal motivation. [00:03:24]

And so theologically we define a good deed as a deed, which externally, outwardly conforms to the demands of the law of God but inwardly is motivated by a genuine desire to please God. Now, the fallen man, the unbelieving person who is estranged from God, may do acts that Calvin called "civic virtue, civil righteousness, external conformity to the law," but he's doing it out of his own self-interest or his own humanitarian values without any particular desire to please his Creator; and so the lack of the internal motivation, the lack of the disposition of the heart is what vitiates the final verdict of goodness. [00:03:57]

Some theologians point to this, that as a result of our regeneration, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, because of God's power working in us and changing the disposition of the heart, that one of the most dramatic changes that comes about through conversion is that now we have a radically new possibility for goodness -- for doing the good, because now we do have the possibility of desiring to please God. [00:05:33]

And so in the first instance, our understanding of goodness as a fruit is the understanding of this new ability to perform acts of righteousness and obedience out of a new disposition of our heart. Now, we could go on and explore that more finely and talk about the degree to which even in redeemed man our best deeds are tainted by that pound of flesh that is carried over from the old life; but I'll leave that aside for now and just remind you that now, as a fruit of the Spirit, we have a growing capacity for goodness, which we lacked in terms of moral power before we possessed the Spirit of God. [00:06:14]

Edwards, for example, points out that the fruit of goodness carries with it a new ability to appreciate excellence -- that that's contained in the broad concept of goodness in the Bible. Now, of course, there are few terms in the Bible that are more abstract than the word 'agathos,' or 'goodness' because goodness covers so many, many things, and we're left with the same problem with this fruit as we've had with some of the others and that is trying to see if there's any specified dimension of goodness that is in view here with respect to the fruit of the Spirit, or must we canvas the whole general meaning of 'goodness'? [00:07:21]

But one of the dimensions in biblical terms is, as I say, an ability to appreciate excellence. In the opening prayer, I mentioned in that prayer that we have been born again to an ability to appreciate the good, the true, and the beautiful. I mentioned that because I think part of our growth in sanctification is an ability to appreciate excellence wherever it manifests itself -- that we have an ability to appreciate beauty for what it means to us as it, in a sense, mirrors and reflects the order and the harmony of the character of God Himself. [00:08:09]

I think that one of the things that is sadly lacking in the Christian community today is a deep and profound appreciation for aesthetics. If you go back, for example, and think of how God ordered the building of His tabernacle and how men and women were craftsmen who were endowed charismatically by the Holy Spirit for the artwork that was a part of the building and the construction of the tabernacle and later the temple -- that the temple, even though this was -- or the tabernacle -- even though it was an edifice built from the meager possessions of a pilgrim people who had just come from slavery, was a majestically, beautiful edifice whose architect was God Himself who set down in Holy Scripture exact, precise, detailed instructions for its construction; and of course, part of what the tabernacle's construction was about was to communicate symbolically and graphically truth, but there was also a dimension of the beautiful. [00:09:08]

I think in terms of our own church history that there was a time in the past where the church really put a premium on using beautiful forms to communicate the excellence of God. I don't know -- the church degenerated at a time to a cold, dead formalism, an empty liturgy that provoked a revolt and, indeed, a reformation, and the Reformation involved architectural and liturgical reform as well, in order to get away from getting caught up in liturgy -- so much so that Protestantism today tends to be very bland from an aesthetic perspective -- liturgically, architecturally. [00:10:53]

Here again, faith is determined both as a gift and as a fruit, and here we're faced again with one of those words that is voluminous in scope. There is that faith by which we are justified and by which we are brought into a salvific relationship with Christ, but the basic meaning of faith, biblically -- basic meaning of the Greek verb 'to believe' means 'to trust,' and I think that one of the fruits of the Spirit has to do, again, with our relationship to God, that we have a growing trust for God. [00:15:58]

Now, I've often made this distinction: It is one thing to believe in God. It is another thing to believe God. It can be all the difference in the world, and you realize that in our struggle with sin, there is a very certain -- a very real sense in which one of our deepest problems is that we fundamentally don't believe God. Let me say it again. We fundamentally, in our basic, root nature, do not believe God. We may believe in God but we don't believe God because if we believed God -- really believed God -- why would we ever sin? [00:16:45]

What is it about sin that entices us to risk the displeasure of God, to act against God by choosing it? Well, you say, "Well, we desire it, and we have such a desire for sin that we get caught up in that desire, and so we choose sin." But why do we desire it? Why does sin have such an appeal to us? Because we believe that if we commit the sin we will be more happy than if we don't commit this sin. It's that simple, isn't it, when it gets right down to the rock bottom? We sin because we want to, we want to because we're looking for an increase in our happiness, and we figure, "If I do it the way God says, I am going to be somehow cheated or deprived out of personal happiness." [00:17:48]