In 2017, ABC launched a new medical drama series on television called “The Good Doctor.” The widely popular show is about the life of a young autistic surgeon named Shaun Murphy, who also has a unique condition called savant syndrome. While extremely bright and talented, he has virtually no interpersonal skills, which complicates everything in his life. Each episode highlights his ongoing struggle to use his brilliant mind to physically help the very people whom he cannot seem to connect with relationally.
In a world where division is rampant and the cult of “me” is rapidly gaining steam, perhaps we all need a refresher course on the subject of “good.” Because, if you have noticed, the word “good” is thrown around these days like a slippery football that is very difficult to catch. For instance, since the launch of “The Good Doctor,” there have been several other similarly named shows with “good” in the title. Shows like “Good Girls,” “The Good Fight,” “The Good Place,” and “Good Behavior.” If we have been paying attention, that’s a whole lot of “good.” Thankfully, we have the Word of God to help us unravel what I’m calling, “The Doctrine of Good.”
God is Good
Perhaps the best place to start in our exploration of “good” is with the Bible’s description of God Himself, which confirms that goodness is a vital part of His nature. Psalm 100:5 unequivocally states that “The Lord is good, and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations.”
Jesus echoed the Psalmist’s declaration when He was approached by the rich young ruler, who asked Him, “’Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone’” (Luke 18:18-19). Now we are getting somewhere.
What sets God apart from sinful man is that He is inherently “good” which means that He always acts with good and righteous intent, never doing anything that is in any way unrighteous or unholy (Genesis 50:20; Romans 8:28).
His Creation was Good
So, it follows, that because God is good, everything that He does is good (Psalm 119:68). As the Creator and Sustainer of all things (Genesis 1:1; Colossians 1:16-17), everything that God made was originally good until it was tainted by the sin of Adam and Eve (Genesis 1:31, 3:1-6; Romans 5:12; I Timothy 4:4).
Because God is good, He abhors that which is evil, which is appropriately defined as “the absence of goodness” (Habakkuk 1:13). Because God is good, He must rightly punish all that is evil (Romans 2:5). And, because God is good, “[He] cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone” (James 1:13).
Man is Not Good
As the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome, he painted a very bleak picture of the goodness of mankind when he said, “There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one” (Romans 3:10-12).
The short of it is this. God is good because His nature is holy, but man is not good because his nature is sinful. In essence, sin has corrupted man’s entire being. All three of the God given components of personhood (intellect, emotions, and will) are infected with sin from conception (Psalm 51:5; Romans 5:12; Ephesians 2:1). Because of this, God views man’s attempt to please Him by doing good as “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).
But because God is good and loving, there is hope for sinners.
His Gospel is Good
The prophet Isaiah pronounced a series of six woes on the apathetic people of Israel. In one of them He said, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20). If that isn’t a spot-on description of the current world we live in, I don’t know what is. “But God…” (Ephesians 2:4-6).
While unrepentant sin has its consequences, God has offered a plan of salvation to sinners (Romans 6:23). Some of the sweetest words ever communicated are these; “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
You see, God’s goodness is seen in His substitutionary plan of redemption (2 Corinthians 5:21). God loved sinners so much that He sent His only begotten Son to come to the earth as a babe in a manger, to live a perfect life, and to sacrificially die in the place of all who would place their faith and trust in Him (John 3:16; Acts 16:31). God’s gospel is “good news,” and it is powerful to save all who believe it (Romans 1:16-17).
The apostle Paul enumerated the heart of God’s gospel in I Corinthians 15:1-4 when he said, “Now I make known to you, brothers and sisters, the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you also stand, by which you also are saved, if you hold firmly to the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”
You see, while mankind can seemingly do various acts of goodness, there is only One who is inherently good. And this good God invites all His creation to “Taste and see that [He] is good; how blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him” (Psalm 34:8).
But there is more. James reminds us that “Every good and perfect gift is from above” (James 1:17). And it is the recognition of the goodness of God that should evoke a heart of thanksgiving from those who are His. As the Psalmist said, “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever” (Psalm 107:1).