What does the Bible say about goodness?

• Exodus 33:19, God exhibits goodness (I will make my goodness pass before you and will proclaim my name before you)
• Nehemiah 9:35, God bestows goodness  (despite the great goodness you bestowed on them, they did not serve you)
• Psalm 23:6, we receive God's goodness (goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life)
• Mark 10:17-18, God alone is good (Jesus says that only God is good)
• Galatians 5:22-23, goodness is a fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness…)
• Titus 3:3-5, goodness of God (God's goodness and loving kindness saved us)

In the Bible God is goodness personified, even as the blessings that come from this God constitute material and moral goodness. (God's goodness in Canaan was seen in concrete blessings like milk, honey, clean water, good wine.) The universe is like a multi-tiered fountain with the goodness of God overflowing down to God's people on earth and from them onto still others.

Furthermore, in the New Testament this blessed goodness of God is frequently equated with God's whole reason for launching salvation in Christ in the first place. Goodness is sometimes synecdoche for the constellation of God's grace/mercy/compassion/lovingkindness that allowed God to love us and so save us even "while we were yet sinners." (Romans 5:8).
 

Sermon ideas about goodness

God, the font of good
Christian ethicists sometimes distinguish four senses of the word good:

• Aesthetic good (something is well made, beautiful, attractive)
• Moral good (doing an act generally perceived as the right thing to do)
• Saving good (the work of Christ that forgives sins and renews hearts)
• Christian good (the good works Christians do as a result of union with Christ)

A sermon on goodness can point out that goodness as a Christian concept traces all good things back to God alone as the cosmic font of good. God's goodness in this sense is closely linked to God's holiness. Unlike philosophers such as Plato, who located "the good" in immaterial forms that exist outside this earthly realm, Christians use God as the standard by which to measure earthly good and moral goodness in its various forms. Goodness shows up in generosity, in kindness, in deeds of mercy, and in helping those who are in distress because these are all traits of God first of all.

Fruit of the Spirit
As a fruit of the Spirit, goodness is never the achievement of the individual believer. The Greek world attached huge value to arête (excellence), and this excellence clung to the great Greek heroes like a badge of honor. Arête was something a person earned through personal valor and courage. But although arête occurs all over the place in secular Greek literature (cf. Homer), the word crops up almost not at all in the New Testament (the Greek agathosune is more common for goodness). Where arête is broached, it is connected singularly to Christ.

This Christian form of goodness/arête is clearly not a human achievement but a divine gift through participation in Christ. As 2 Peter 1:3-5 says, Christ has given us everything we need to live a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his glory and goodness (arête). He has given us great and precious promises so that through them we may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the world's corruption. "For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness" (arête).

Our sermons can highlight that goodness for the Christian, then, is God's grace and mercy flowing through us to others. A good person is a godly person; the goodness of such a person's actions do not stand apart from God but are of a piece with God. Even our ability to assess something as good (or someone as being full of goodness) depends on our being in touch with God as the standard against which all else is measured.
Good apart from God?
Philosophically, preachers and others in the church may be aware of the debate — which has raged since the Enlightenment and has been taken up in more recent times by thinkers like Nicholas Wolterstorff and Charles Taylor — about whether we can be good without God. Can humans build a concept of goodness — and come to a consensus on what counts as moral goodness — without reference to God?

Some Christian thinkers conclude that we cannot be good without God and that if any moral system does succeed at targeting what constitutes goodness and good behavior, that system relies on a residue of knowledge of God whether the architects of the system wish to acknowledge that indebtedness or not. Some even conclude that to remove God from the picture means there is no bottom line, no sure way to ensure human dignity once and for all.

Preachers do well to keep the solid connection between goodness (as a fruit of the Spirit) and the Triune God, because otherwise sermons on goodness are liable to slip into moralism — making it sound as though goodness is of human manufacture and that it is a Christian's success in generating lots of good behavior that garners the favor of God in the first place. But this reduces God to Santa Claus (it's all about who's naughty or nice, "so be good for goodness sake"). Instead, we recall the words of C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity: The Christian "does not think God will love us because we are good but that God will make us good because he loves us."

Excerpts about goodness

Following are sample excerpts from Zeteosearch.org sermon resources about goodness:

• "Even in the words of the saints, what is true must be found within the same heart that spoke them. There are no short-cuts to knowledge, to truth, to beauty or goodness. They only come in true union with Christ." Article about Theology by Stephen Freeman from Ancient Faith Ministries
• "Generous God, our guide on the journey: as we continue in worship by offering our gifts in response to your goodness, we can't imagine where we would be without you guiding our path – sometimes before us; sometimes besides us; sometimes behind us, nudging us in the direction of the work you have for us. As you have watched over and cared for your creation, so we acknowledge in our giving that you are calling us to do the same. We surrender our treasure, knowing our hearts will follow. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen." Offertory Prayer from Discipleship Ministries, United Methodist Church