Lesson Seven: The Fruit of Goodness

SUMMARY: In this lesson we will talk about the nature of goodness as it is seen in the actions of God, and the life of the Christian. We will consider goodness as a character trait that is imparted to us by the Holy Spirit, and consider whether it is possible for us, as Christians, to be truly good people.

DISCUSS

How can we answer the questions that arise about God’s goodness? What do these questions say about our faith – are we sinning by asking them? What can I do to help me through periods of questioning and doubt?

LEAD-IN QUESTIONS:

1. If “evil” or “bad” is the opposite of good, what really makes a person good? Are there certain qualities that must characterize a person before they can be considered good? 2. Is goodness something inside of you; or, is it something that we do outwardly? 3. Can a person have goodness and still sin? 4. Can two people both be good even if they disagree on controversial issues? 5. Name one person that you have known (beside

Jesus) whom you would say is truly good. What made them good? How could you tell?

What Does It Mean to Be Good?

In modern use we define the concept of good in many ways, especially in English. Three uses for “good” predominate: • A quality of behavior: “she is so good to her grandparents” (defining her behavior to her grandparents) • A quality of nature: “he is a good person” (defining the quality of his character) • A quality of measurement or skill: “The scientist is good at math” (defining a quality of measurement or skill needed to do the work) The word “goodness,” on the other hand, is almost always focused on the qualities of a person. To have goodness is to have qualities that are good throughout the whole person so that the person seems to be a living example of the good. In the Old Testament there are two words that are most frequently translated as “goodness.” The one most often used is the general word, “tob” (also pronounced tov). It refers to anything that is good, pleasant, agreeable, of benefit, producing prosperity. The other word that is occasionally translated as “goodness” is “hesed” (with a guttural sound, like “khesed”). This word refers to God’s goodness from the perspective of the everlasting nature of God’s love. It is translated often as God’s “steadfast love” or “loving kindness,” and it reflects a zealous commitment to someone else’s good. When it is used to speak about God’s relationship to humans, it often reflects the idea that God shows unmerited favor and undeserved kindness because of His Goodness, and not our own. He shows His goodness by delivering us from our enemies; by preserving our life from death; by quickening (energizing) our spiritual life; by redeeming us from sin; and by keeping His covenants. In the church we often use the words, ‘good’ and ‘goodness,’ to express our understanding of God’s relationship to us. In some churches the minister says, “God is good,” and the group responds: “all the time;” then, the minister repeats, “all the time;” and the group responds: “God is good.” A popular worship chorus simply states, “God is so good; God is so good; God is so good, He’s so good to me.” In the contemporary worship song, “King of My Heart” (Sarah McMillan, 2015), the chorus is: “You are good, you are good, oh; you are good, you are good, oh.” Later, an additional refrain is added: “You’re never gonna let, you’re never gonna let me down – oh, you’re never gonna let; you’re never gonna let me down!” These songs remind us that we not only acknowledge Jesus as King in our hearts because of his position and power, but also because of his essential goodness and never-ending faithfulness. When God acts, or refrains from acting, it is based on His goodness, which guides His love for us. At times it is easy to affirm God’s goodness, but if we are honest, at other times it is tempting to waver in our faith in His goodness. We say out loud that “God is so good,” but then one of our friends dies from COVID, and suddenly, we have our doubts about God’s goodness. We say that “God is good all the time,” but we struggle with the fact that people still lose their jobs, women have miscarriages, widows lose their pensions, the innocent are treated unjustly, and the young die in accidents. Questions rise to the surface: Is the goodness of God true? Is He still being good to me when bad things happen in my life? I suspect that most of us have asked them at some point in our lives, and God does not mind us bringing our honest questions to Him.

God’s Goodness and our Free Will

To have a framework for understanding God’s goodness in the midst of suffering, we need to step back and look at our broader understanding of God’s Will and human free will. In the late 1500s, the theologian Jacobus Arminius took a stand against the concept of predestination, the belief that God decides ahead of time who will be saved and who will go to Hell. Those who believe in predestination teach that human beings have no say in their own salvation since God is All-Powerful. Arminians (those who followed the teaching of Arminius, including John Wesley) argued that, while it is true that God is All-Powerful, the love

of God is such that He empowers humans to have free will, so that they can choose for themselves whether to receive God’s gracious gift of salvation. Because they reject predestination, Arminian/Wesleyans also reject determinism. Determinism is the belief that everything that happens to me is determined by God. Instead, we believe that some things are determined by God, but other things are allowed by God and are the result of human free will. Wesleyans believe that we have a real choice when it comes to morals and law. For example, if a person drinks until they are impaired in then kills a baby in an auto accident, a Wesleyan would not say that God caused or determined for that to happen. However, belief in free will does not remove the possibility that God may choose to intervene in human affairs through a miracle. But, as C.S. Lewis explained, if it is commonplace, it is not a miracle; by definition it should not happen often.19 Certainly, God can step into the politics and affairs of the human condition. What God did in bringing Israel up from slavery in Egypt, allowing them to take over whole portions of the Holy Land, and then allowing them to be taken into Exile, are all signs of God’s miraculous intervention into human affairs. Yet God’s own words show that those cases were unusual, and that He normally does not intervene so clearly in the governments of nations. In Acts 17:26-27 Paul explained, “From one man he [God] made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him.” Notice how God has overall control of history (setting “appointed times” and “boundaries” but within this He gives freedom to the nations to “seek him” and “reach out for him”). Paul goes on to say that those who chose instead to worship idols demonstrated human free will, which God allowed: “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” (Acts 17:30) There is a balance of truth here. Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We are to expect and even ask for God’s intervention; nevertheless, if God’s Will is automatically going to be done in every case, there would be no need to pray. The critical point to understand is that just because we ask for a miracle, does not mean that God will give it. To repeat, it would not be a miracle if it happened all the time. If God were constantly overriding and undoing human free will, then our freedom would be a sham. If human decisions have no real consequences because God is always miraculously changing them, then our ability to responsibly choose to love God would also become meaningless. With this in mind, we can move forward with exploring what identifies God as “good;” and what characterizes “goodness” in a Christian. Let’s begin with the question of how we can make the claim that God is good. Scripture simply assumes the Goodness of God. The writers of Scripture do not try to prove God’s goodness; they proclaim that He is good and tell us that we ought to honor Him for His goodness. Though this point of view is found throughout Scripture, it is stated most clearly in the Psalms. The psalmists mention either that God is good, or talk about the goodness of God, over and over. Let’s look at just a few examples. In Psalm 34, we have a psalm written after David has been hiding in the camp of the Philistines while King Saul hunts for him. Saul perceives David as a threat to his throne, and is hunting him in order to put him to death. David escapes, goes to the Philistine camp, and pretends to have lost his mind so that they will look on him as a novelty rather than as dangerous. While living amid his enemies to avoid another enemy, David maintains his faith in God, and speaks of Him this way: “O taste and see that the Lord is good (tob); happy are those who take refuge in him.” (Psalm 34:8) For most of us, we would have real questions about God’s goodness under such anxiety and pressure, but David is confident of God’s goodness, and declares it even while on the run. We see a similar storyline in Psalm 27. This psalm is full of statements of confidence in the middle of great threat to David’s well-being. The threats appear to be all around, but his confidence that God will deliver him is unshaken. “When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh—my adversaries and foes — they shall stumble and fall.” (2) He continues: “Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies. Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and they are breathing out violence.” (11-12) With all this chaos going on around him, David, nonetheless describes God in this psalm as his light, salvation, stronghold, shelter, and tent of covering. He ends the psalm with these words of hope and encouragement: “I believe that I shall see the goodness (tob) of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (13) David’s life is full of tension and threats that could easily take him out, and yet, David tells himself (and, by extension, us as well) to wait on the Lord, because his goodness will one day be revealed. Hundreds of years later, the prophet Nahum echoes this sense of God’s protective concern for those who trust him. During the Exile, while God’s people are under the oppression of their enemies, he writes: “The Lord is good (tob), a stronghold in a day of trouble; he protects those who take refuge in him.” (Nahum 1:7) Once again, it is notable that when things seem to be their worst, these writers talk about how good God is, and how he will eventually reveal that goodness to us if we can be

DISCUSS

Have you had an experience when you had to “wait on the Lord” but after that period of waiting you saw the goodness of the Lord in a fresh way?

10 | SUSTAIN patient and have trust. They are not speaking about God from a place of calm or peace, they are talking about God’s goodness right in the thick of difficult times. God is good; His goodness is everlasting, even if I don’t see it yet in my life or circumstances. Let’s move from these stressful situations to calmer circumstances. Psalm 145 speaks of the general nature of God, and the way that His goodness is revealed throughout his creation. The psalmist tells us that “the Lord is good (tob) to all, and his compassion (mercy) is over all that he has made.” (145:9) In this case, what defines His goodness is His compassion (mercy) as evident in all that He has brought into existence. In Psalm 119, a psalm noted for the way that it expresses the joy of living under the laws and statutes of God, the writer says confidently, “You are good (tob) and do good (tob); teach me your statutes.” (Psalm 119:68) The Psalmist clearly believes that God’s laws (“statutes”) are not a burden but rather reveal His goodness. Thus, the writers of Scripture see the goodness God when He creates, when He rules over His creation, when He protects us from harm, and when He restores us. However, their point is not that we label God as good because He does what we want Him to do for us, but DISCUSS rather that God has inherent goodness that comes out in all His actions. God is good and what He does for us

In what ways do simply reflects the Person that He already is. we tend to take the goodness of God in Creation Understanding this truth should have a dramatic impact on the way we evaluate life experiences. If something for granted? bad happens to us, it is not because God is not good; it

How could more is because the world is in a fallen state, and bad things gratitude make come out of that condition. When God does something us more aware of good for us, it is not because He is somehow trying to

God’s goodness? earn our good opinion of Him by helping us. He acts out of His own eternal love and the good purposes of His will. So, whether something good or bad happens to us, we should be clear that God’s goodness will be expressed towards us, either by giving some blessing to us, or by overcoming something that has harmed us. In the book of Revelation, Jesus speaks of those who are “overcomers.” Repeatedly, he refers to those who “overcome” during trials and troubles. One of the most important spiritual truths we can learn is that being an overcomer does not mean that my difficult circumstances are miraculously removed, but rather that with God’s help, the circumstances have no power to defeat my walk with Christ or destroy my faith. If we believe, in our heart of hearts, that God’s very nature is good, and that His goodness will be expressed in our lives–if not now, at some point in the future – then we can ride the turbulent waves of life’s circumstances without being overwhelmed or destroyed. If, on the other hand, our belief in God’s goodness is based on temporary circumstances and feelings, then we will never find peace for our souls. Life will not allow it. Now that we have considered the goodness of God, what does that look like in the life of the common believer? How is it manifested through us to the world around us?

Goodness Comes from Being Good

When true goodness emanates from (comes out of) a person, it is because the interior of that person is good. The person is simply expressing what they actually are — it is not an act or a performance. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus made it quite clear that outward, physical sin begins within the human heart (more specifically, our mind). Thus, sin manifests itself outwardly only after it is conceived within us. As a result, our guilt for sin comes from how we think and reason. Thus, most of us would agree that a person is not to blame for wrongful actions if they have no idea what they are doing, or if they are forced to do something against their will. Because there was no ability to reason out truth, or because they were not allowed to work from their own free will, they will not be assigned blame for their actions. So, even though their actions may be abhorred, and may have evil results, they are absolved from guilt for the reasons we just mentioned. In the Old Testament sacrifice system, one set of sacrifices were for unintentional sins. If someone did things that caused damage to others, but their actions were not done intentionally (they happened by mistake or from lack of knowledge), then God required a sacrifice to be made because another person or animal was harmed, but it did not have the gravity of an intentional sin. In another part of the Old Testament Law, God spoke to Moses about designating “Cities of Refuge” within the territory of each of the tribes. If someone accidentally killed a person, the victim’s family members had the right to demand “eye for eye” justice and would likely come after me to get their retributive justice (“pay back”). God provided cities where individuals who were unintentional “man-slayers,” could find haven. As long as they remained in that city, the victim’s family was prohibited from coming in to take vengeance. Once again, killing demands justice, but because the heart of the transgressor was not evil, God’s mercy provided relief. So, as Jesus explains it in his Sermon, sin begins with a sinful heart and mind, and then results in an evil action. If this is true about sin and evil, then it stands to reason that goodness is rooted within us as well. What makes an action good is the source from which the action arose – the good heart (or good intention). To see how this works in practice, let’s do two quick Case Studies of how Jesus defines “good” by analyzing these stories found in the Gospels.

Case Study #1

In Matthew 12 (also Mark 6 and Luke 9), Jesus and his Disciples walk through a field on the Sabbath, and his Disciples begin breaking off pods from the grain and eating them, thereby breaking the Pharisaic Law that defined plucking grain as work (a form of harvesting),

which was prohibited on the Sabbath. When Jesus is criticized for not chastising his Disciples, he responds that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” and notes that “the Son of Man” (a title he uses for himself) is “Lord of the Sabbath.” Appropriating this title to himself would have infuriated the Jewish scholars since God created the Law of the Sabbath in the first place (Matthew 12:8). Later that same day, Jesus enters the Synagogue and actually seems to pick a fight by deliberately healing on the Sabbath. In the synagogue he encounters a man with a withered hand, and Jesus turns to the Pharisees and asks them whether it would be against the Law to heal him on a Sabbath day, the day of mandated rest. The Pharisees don’t bother to answer him, but the unspoken answer was that he should be healed on any other day than that one. The Pharisees would rather let a man continue to suffer with a withered hand, rather than have him healed in a way that broke their concept of Sabbath rest. Jesus calls them all hypocrites because he knows that if any one of them had a donkey stuck (threatened with death) in the mud of a pit, they would pull the animal out of the pit, Sabbath or not. And yet, they had no mercy on a man standing right in front of them who was suffering from a defect that prevented him from earning a living or taking care of his loved ones. So, having asked the question, and received no answer, Jesus heals the man anyway. Immediately following this act of healing, the people bring to him a man who has a demon, and he heals his affliction as well. The Pharisees pronounce that Jesus is the Prince of Demons and thus has the power to command them to leave the man. Jesus defeats this fallacy by arguing that “every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.” (Matthew 12:25) He then adds a second argument which is that you don’t see good actions (casting out demons) coming out of a depraved nature (evil heart). He uses a metaphor of trees and fruit to make his case that goodness is expressed in the actions coming from a person with a good heart (and mind). He explains to his listeners that you can’t get good fruit from a bad tree, nor can bad fruit come from a good tree. What he wants them to understand is that what makes our actions and choices, good or evil, is what is inside of us. If we are good inside, the evidence will be proven by our actions. Likewise, if we are evil inside, then what comes out in our behavior and actions will be evil. As he puts it: “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” (Luke 6:45) Thus, we will not be judged by how we act on the Sabbath day, but on what is inside of us that caused the act to take place. Likewise, healing a man with a withered hand, or casting out demons is, by definition, a good work that comes from a good heart regardless of what day it is on. In fact, the common people who saw the miracle got it right rather than the Pharisees (who ought to have known better). When the demon was cast out, the commoners wondered out loud that this must be the Son of David (the Messiah) that they had been looking for. Take Away: the person’s interior (heart and mind) determines the value of their actions. Actions arising out of an evil heart are not praiseworthy to God, regardless of what the world thinks. On the other hand, actions arising from a heart in proper relationship to the Lord are always pleasing to God, and more importantly, will always bring glory to God (not us). The Pharisees tried to manage morality through strictly enforced legality, but coerced actions can never have true worth in God’s eyes.

Case Study #2

A similar scenario is related in John 9. Jesus and the Twelve Disciples encounter a blind man who is begging at the Temple on a Sabbath. This man has been blind from birth, and the Disciples immediately assume that his affliction was a judgment from God (a form of determinism, the belief that everything that happens to us is directly caused by God, as discussed above). They ask Jesus whether it was the man or his parents who had sinned to bring this blindness upon him. Jesus said that it was unrelated to the man or his parents, but that actually this tragedy would end up bringing God great glory. Jesus then heals the man’s eyes. When the people who know about his blindness see the man, they are astonished, and ask him who did this for him. He tells them that “some man came by, spit and made mud, and then applied the mud to my eyes. When I washed my eyes out, I could see for the first time.” (John 9:14-15) When asked where the man was, he replied honestly that he didn’t have a clue. So, they take him to meet the Pharisees – the leading scholars of the Bible in this day. As could be expected, some of the Pharisees immediately condemned the healing because Jesus worked on the Sabbath. Others said that he couldn’t have done the healing were he not from God. The Pharisees speak to the parents of the formerly blind man to make sure that he was born blind (a genetic effect, not an accident). They ask about his condition and ask them how he got his sight back. The parents affirm that he was born blind, but they don’t know how healing took place. The Pharisees go back to the formerly blind man, and question him once again, telling him that he needs to glorify God for healing him, because the man he credits for the miracle is just a sinner, and should not get credit for the miracle. The formerly blind man answers, “I don’t know if he is a sinner or not – I just know that I couldn’t see before, and now I can.” (9:25) The Pharisees ask him a second time to tell them how the man did the healing, and the man becomes frustrated. “I’ve already told you how it happened,” he says, and then puts in a jab: “Do you also want to become his disciples?” (9:27) This angers the Pharisees, so they accuse him of being a follower of Jesus. In contrast, they

DISCUSS

What do you think motivated the Pharisees to be so committed to their own ideas of what it meant to keep the Sabbath that they would judge Jesus even for a miraculous act of healing? Do you see any similar motivations in your own heart?

12 | SUSTAIN claim that they are disciples of Moses. They know that God spoke to Moses, but they do not know who Jesus is. The healed man declares, “This is amazing – you don’t know where he comes from and yet he could open my eyes. We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners but to those who are close to him and worship him and do his will. And there has never been a case, in the history of the world, of a man being healed who was born blind. He could not have done what he did if he wasn’t from God.” The Jewish leadership respond by expelling the man from the synagogue because of his insolence. To close out the story, we read that Jesus comes looking for the man, and asks him if he believes in the Christ. The man asks who this person is. Jesus then plainly tells him that he is that One. At this point the man does the unthinkable: He worships Jesus (clearly, he thinks that Jesus is God; no Jew would worship a mere human). Take Away: The Pharisees are stuck in a deterministic view that everything which happens must be God’s will, so they assume the blind man is a sinner. Jesus instead sees that continuing the man’s blindness is not God’s will, and so he takes action to heal the man, thereby revealing the good purposes of the heart of DISCUSS God. Jesus sees that God is good, so he does good to Martin Luther others. The Pharisees think that God is only concerned was not the only about keeping Sabbath rules, so they wrongly condemn great saint who Jesus as a sinner, when in fact they are the ones sinning experienced an by opposing God’s goodness. increased fear of God before breaking through Can we be good?to an understanding of salvation by faith. What do you Having looked at these two case studies in goodness think is meant by expressed by Jesus, we must turn to the question of the line in the old how you and I can experience God’s goodness. In hymn, “Amazing Matthew 19 (as well as Mark 10 and Luke 18), a man Grace,” that reads comes to Jesus with a question: “‘Twas grace that taught my heart to “Good Teacher, what must I do to receive eternal life?” fear, and grace my The response from Jesus is notable: “Why do you fear relieved”? call me good? No one is good but God alone (only).” Jesus is alerting the man by implication, “Be aware, if you are calling me good, you are calling me God.” Many might interpret this passage to mean that it is impossible for humans to be good, since only God is good. Yet elsewhere, Jesus clearly calls other human beings “good” (for example, Matthew 5:45, 12:45). So, what does Jesus mean here? In Galatians 5:22, our primary Scripture for this series, we are told that one of the nine fruit of the Spirit is that of “goodness.” Each of the fruits are manifested by us because the Spirit of God lives within us. Thus, to have goodness, we have to have the Spirit, and without the Spirit there can be no true goodness. As we saw earlier, our actions cannot be defined as good if they originate in a heart that is not good. Consider a hypothetical example: Let’s say that two individuals each give $500,000 dollars to a hospital for children. One of the individuals is a long-time employee of a bank, and she has saved up this money by investing wisely. The other individual is a bank robber, who has taken money from the victims whom he murdered. The hospital has no idea where the money came from, but is thankful to have a million dollars to help take care of people. In both cases, good results come from the donations, but the robber’s action was clearly not holy. We might even go so far as to say that if the hospital knew how the money was acquired to give them, they should refuse to receive it. The money is the same, the outcome is the same, but the source is different, and ultimately the heart of the giver is radically different.

Luther and Wesley on Righteousness by Faith

One of the real heroes of the Christian faith was Martin Luther (1483-1546). He began life as a devout Catholic, and when under threat of death vowed to become a monk. Luther believed at that time that eternal salvation was earned by living a life that was good enough to be acceptable by God. The Roman Catholic church offered many ways to add merit through spiritual acts of service and means of grace, and these, he felt, would help him acquire the necessary purity and goodness to be acceptable to God. But Luther had a tremendous fear of God’s righteousness and had no confidence in his ability to please God. He spent hours in the Confession Booth trying to dredge up every sin and sinful thought, lest one keep him from attaining his goal of Heaven. He knew that God the Judge would find fault with him, and he would face God’s wrath, and all his hopes would be dashed. One day, while teaching Psalm 22, he ran across this verse: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me?” He suddenly realized that those words, spoken by Christ on the cross, reflected a Savior who had suddenly taken upon himself the weight of all of our sins. “He who knew no sin became sin,” as Paul put it. (II Corinthians 5:21) Luther was saved because he realized that everything needed for his salvation was done by Christ – his only responsibility was to have faith in those actions. He came to realize that we are saved not by being perfect, but by faith in the Perfect One who paid for our imperfection. Luther began to teach that none of our actions can ever be considered good apart from faith, because even our best acts of service were motivated by self-love and self-preservation so that the heart was not truly right. Thus, as we have said repeatedly, the heart’s condition is the determining factor in our goodness. So – we are brought back to our original question – how can we be good, if only God is good? How can we be good if goodness depends on the heart, and our hearts are not pure? The real truth is, you cannot be something that you are not. Even if you pretend to be that thing, the cost will be too great, and eventually you will be perceived to be a fraud. So, we need to have no pretensions about the subject matter. The only way we can be good is to have more God in us! I will become good as I allow the

Lord to work in my life to such an extent that I become more and more like Him. Let’s return to Martin Luther. Luther believed that we are saved by faith, and at that moment in time, God sees Christ as our replacement. We are named as righteous or holy or pure because Christ stands in our place, and he is all of those things. This was a great first step: Understanding that the goodness of Jesus can become ours in the eyes of God. However, Luther thought that after we came to faith we would be simultaneously just and sinful — good in the eyes of God, but still bad on earth. John Wesley took faith one step farther. Wesley saw in the Scriptures, “be holy for I am holy says the Lord,” and, “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” and “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” and concluded that God would never tell us to do something that we can’t actually do. So, he came to understand and preach the doctrine of Entire Sanctification (Christian Perfection) to explain how we can become truly good. “Sanctification” simply means the process of being made holy. “Entire sanctification” is what happens when the whole heart is made holy, so that every part of a person’s life is filled with the love of God (remember, goodness comes from the heart). Luther believed in Imputed Righteousness (we are declared righteous for Christ’s sake while remaining sinners), whereas Wesley defined the Christian experience as Infused Righteousness (we are literally becoming righteous through the work of the Holy Spirit in us). What this means is that I should be becoming more and more righteous every year that I live as a Christian. I cannot make some excuse like, “I will always be a sinner.” This kind of thinking would underestimate the creative, healing, restoring power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us. God does not expect us to fail at being holy – He expects us to succeed in becoming holy, because He Himself has come to dwell within us to carry it out. This is the opposite of demonic possession, in which an evil spirit seeks to control us by coercion and domination. In contrast, the Holy Spirit invites us to willingly surrender to His love and then fills us with the power to do what is right. This is not to say that sanctification will be easy or painless. When we ask the Lord to make us truly good, to be holy, it requires our allowing Christ to apply his cross to every aspect of our lives. Like the little booklet My Heart Christ’s Home20 illustrates, Jesus will need to clean every portion of the house, not just the public areas. Sometimes it will cost us something – there are areas that we secretly cherish that may have to go. One of the best metaphors for Sanctification that I have seen is found in the book The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis21. In one chapter we come across a man who has a small lizard on his shoulder that keeps whispering to him. An angel comes to the man and offers to kill the lizard, but the man makes various excuses, and just can’t bring himself to get rid of the lizard. The angel tells him that he can never get to heaven while staying in his present condition, but the man can’t bring himself to let the angel kill his companion. Eventually, after more conversation, the man tells the angel to do whatever he wants. The angel responds that he can only kill the lizard if the man gives him permission to do so. Finally, the man gives him permission, and the angel kills the lizard and throws it to the ground. Immediately the man begins to change and grow, and becomes this huge, heroic looking man. And, to the observer’s amazement, the lizard changes into a mighty stallion as well. The man jumps on the horse and rides off towards the mountains of heaven. The narrator explains that the lizard had been lust that had always dominated the man. Lust, you see, is a poor imitation of love. The angel killed the lust, and the man became the person God made him to be, and his lust was exchanged for love. The point Lewis is making is that much of what we struggle with is defective versions of the true nature that God wishes us to have. It is the cross of Christ that is the instrument to free us from the defect so that we can have the original God intended for us. Paul understood this, and explained it this way: “I have been crucified with Christand I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20) When we learn to live the crucified life, we will become those heroic individuals we were always meant to be.

DISCUSS

Do you think it is an example of humility or of unbelief when people say, “I will always be a sinner”? Explain your answer in light of God’s promise to make us holy.

APPLICATION IDEA: This next week, take time to think about how you see your own goodness. How much are you allowing God to do through his Spirit in your life? Are there areas that need to be touched with the burning hand of God so that they become pure? Where is your goodness (in Christ) most visible to the world around you? Finally, is there anything that hinders people from seeing your goodness in Christ? If so, ask Christ Jesus to pour himself more fully into your life – this very day!