The Fruit Of The Spirit- Goodness

“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” Galatians 5:22-23 (NLT)

Goodness in the original Greek means being virtuous. We could say it describes a person of integrity.

Goodness means that we know what is the right thing to do in any situation, regardless of our perception of cost. Goodness means that we are the same person in private that we are when people are watching us.

We might expect that goodness is a natural result of walking with God, even if we had not read Galatians. The gospels depict Jesus as someone who was not impressed by the crowds nor by the importance of the political and religious leaders. Jesus just did what was right, always. This flowed from His intimate relationship with the Father.

Goodness saves us from the stress of worrying about what will happen if somebody finds out what we have done, because we seek to do what is right regardless of public opinion.

Of course, we don’t always get it right. Sin is still with us. But as we learn to listen to the Holy Spirit, we become more like Jesus.