the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Good (2)
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or GOOD (ἀγαθός, καλός).—It is not easy to define Christ’s idea of what is good. His expressions vary from a conception of the Good as one with the infinitely and inimitably Perfect to the most commonplace uses of the word. He speaks of old wine as ‘good’ (Luke 5:39), of the wedding-guests as ‘both bad and good’ (Matthew 22:10), of salt as ‘good’ (Mark 9:50 || Luke 14:34), of certain ground as being ‘good’ (Mark 4:8 || Luke 8:8), of God making ‘his sun to rise on the evil and on the good’ (Matthew 5:45), and He says of Judas, ‘Good (καλόν) were it for that man if he had not been born’ (Matthew 26:24 || Mark 14:21). Yet when the young ruler comes to Him with the same conventional usage of the word, ‘Good Master (διδάσκαλε ἀγαθέ), what good thing shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ (Mark 10:17 || Luke 18:18; cf. Matthew 19:16 f. and WH [Note: H Westcott and Hort’s text.] ’s ‘Notes on Select Readings’ ad loc.), Jesus rejects the title as applied to Himself, and asserts that ‘none is good save one, even God.’ Whether this be read as ‘not denying that He is good, but insisting that none should call Him so who did not believe Him to be God’ (Liddon, Bampt. Lect. i. 23), or as ‘the self-judgment which felt hurt by the epithet good’ (Martineau, Seat of Authority, 651), there can be little doubt that Jesus purposely made use of the young man’s phrase to point him to the ideal Good. Behind the things to be done, which were in the questioner’s mind,—greater than matters of law or ritual, or even charity,—was the necessity that he should recognize the Supreme Good, the Eternal Spirit of all goodness. This did not imply that man should be hopeless of attaining a certain measure of the good, that it was something beyond the reach of the race, but that the fundamental idea of the good is God, and that to define or limit it is as impossible as to define or limit the Eternal Himself. Only on this occasion does Jesus so suddenly soar beyond the intention of any questioner who approaches Him. Elsewhere He tells a parable, and puts into the mouth of the master of the vineyard (a most human representative of the Heavenly Master) the question, ‘Is thine eye evil because I am good?’ (Matthew 20:15); and He speaks of ‘the good man’ who ‘out of his good treasure bringeth forth good things’ (Matthew 12:35 || Luke 6:45). So we may look upon the story of the Rich Young Man as a unique expression of Christ’s highest thought of the Good, but not as thereby ruling out all lesser conceptions. A man may begin to do good or to live a good life before he learns that the foundation of all the good he accomplishes or attains to is God Himself; that no ethical aims are good which lack a Divine sanction. It is better for a man when this inward recognition of the Eternal Goodness precedes the active goodness of his life, for then he finds the peculiar secret of St. Paul’s dogma (Romans 8:28), ‘All things work together for good to them that love God.’ But the doing of good for its own sake may be a man’s first step towards the Kingdom of God, and later he will be prepared for any self-denial or self-sacrifice that may bring him nearer the heavenly perfection (Matthew 18:8 || Mark 9:43; Mark 9:45; Mark 9:47), when he has learned that it is God’s Kingdom he approaches and not the invention of his own sympathetic impulses alone.
In line with this thought of Christ’s is the liberty in the modes of doing good which He frequently asserted. With Him the present was always the fitting opportunity of the good, though He might occasionally ask the opinion of the Pharisees and scribes as to whether it was ‘lawful to do good on the Sabbath’ (Matthew 12:12 | Mark 3:4, Luke 6:9).
Some element of altruism enters into all His conceptions of good. The Greek masters (especially Plato and Aristotle) assert the good of a man to lie in his ‘well-being’ (Sidgwick’s constant rendering of εὐδαιμονία), a condition which depends on certain visible ‘goods’ that are his own personal possession, and in no way bring him into contact with less fortunate men, such ‘good things’ as wealth, health, beauty, and intellect. But Christ regards that alone as good which lessens the distance between man and man, and man and God. The good a man should seek is that of each and all men, even ‘them that hate you’ (Luke 6:27), for the doing of good to others is the final test of the practical value of religion, and became the distinctive note of the character of Christ in the Apostolic days when He was described as one who ‘went about doing good and healing’ (Acts 10:38). This is indicative of all the visible elements of the good in His teachings. Love, His supreme dogma, finds its essence in self-surrender. The parables of conduct, such as the Good Samaritan, are insistent upon the actual doing of some good. When Jesus sends the Baptist His own record, the good things that will bear witness to Him, it is a tale of deeds of brotherly kindness, of help for the blind, lame, lepers, deaf, the poor, and even the dead (Matthew 11:5). Zacchaeus is assured of his salvation when he has learned to share with his poorer brethren (Luke 19:8-9). The fact of giving is accepted by Christ as the evidence of a desire to do good (Mark 14:7). The good man is not only devout; his personal piety may be the surest basis for the true spirit of goodness in him; but the good must take form in some actual warring with the world’s evils, some earnest attempt to remedy the miseries, sufferings, diseases, afflictions, sorrows, or poverty of men. This is the vital test applied in the great parable of the Judgment (Matthew 25:31 ff.). The Son of Man there asks no question as to spiritual apprehension, or intellectual convictions, or ecclesiastical obedience. ‘The kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world—from the moment of the birth of mankind—is for those who saw and served the King in brethren who were hungry, thirsty, outcasts, naked, sick, or in prison. Christ sanctions the popular judgment of what constitutes a good man,—that effectiveness in well-doing which moves steadily and lovingly towards the ultimate conquest of the world, that social message of the gospel which is the enthusiasm of true goodness, and is able to ‘overcome evil with good’ (Romans 12:21). But all such doing rests on being. It is intimately connected with each man’s own spiritual vision and condition, for it is the rudimentary realization of the Kingdom of heaven; it issues from that Kingdom which is ‘within’ (Luke 17:21), where ‘glory, honour, and peace’ are the blessings which come ‘to every one that worketh good’ (Romans 2:10)—a Kingdom which a man may never have explored, but which is the ground from which grows all the practical good he does (Matthew 12:35). If the tree is good, the fruit is good (Matthew 12:33), and when the whole being of a man is awake to the inflowing of the Divine Goodness, he becomes the more keenly sensitive to Righteousness, Truth, Love, and the Brotherhood, and finds increasingly St. Peter’s utterance at the Transfiguration to be his own: ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here’ (Matthew 17:4, Mark 9:5, Luke 9:33). The Good enters imperceptibly; it is not born of the law, nor of any ethical analysis; and in the unexpectedness of its joy the disciple is conscious of having reached the highest heaven, of having found that delight in whatever is good which helps him to understand the true end of life, ‘to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.”
Edgar Daplyn.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Good (2)'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/g/good-2.html. 1906-1918.
