What does "good" mean?

BQ: What is good or goodness? Various lexicons, both theological and not, use the following descriptors to define them: uprightness of heart and life, kindness, useful, pleasant, excellent; honorable. The Bible defines goodness also by using comparison and contrast. Can you guess what it compares goodness with? 

A: Strangely, the contrast used to define goodness is between it and righteousness! For example, in Romans 5:7, God says, "For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though for a good person one would dare even to die." 

What? We're so used to striving to be righteous (in our own minds) that we get terms somewhat muddled. Goodness is set about righteousness here, because righteousness is equated with pure justice.   A just man is one who gives to men what is their due. Goodness, however, is the quality which is out to do far more than that, and which desires to give a man all that is to his benefit and his help; it is the generosity which gives a man what he never could have earned. 

I am very blessed to know people who are so good that one would dare even to die for them. What about you? 



BQ: Yesterday we learned about what "good" is, so today I'm just looking at people who were described as being "good." Can you name a woman who was called good? 

A: (Acts 9:36-39) "Now there was in Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of good works and acts of charity. In those days she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in an upper room...All the widows stood beside him weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them."

Tabitha was described as being a person who did good things, and those things notably included acts of charity, such as making clothes. Sometimes we forget that we each need to be engaged in such endeavors if we really want to be good people. It's the reason that James 1:27 says, "Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world."