What does the Bible teach about goodness?

from the old testament

• God is intrinsically good (Psalm 100:5), and He alone is good. He thus defines what good is and how we are to live (Psalm 119:68).
• All of creation was originally “very good” (Genesis 1:31), which included humans who were created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–27). Being in His image means that we are supposed to have the same characteristics as Him, visibly displaying His goodness to the rest of creation.
• However, when we rebelled (Genesis 3:1–7), we became corrupted (Genesis 3:16–19). Being corrupted means that none of us does good: “[the children of man] have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one” (Psalm 14:3).
• Our image-bearing status was not completely lost when we rebelled, but because of sin, we are twisted images. We thus often are “those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20). In that passage, God is pronouncing woes on such a person, as they face God’s eternal wrath for their perversion of His goodness.
• Though God is angry with those who pervert goodness, in the Old Testament He promised to send someone who would provide forgiveness for sin (Isaiah 53:5–6) and cleanse their hearts (Ezekiel 36:26–27), both of which would restore people to Him and help them begin to express true goodness.

from the new testament

• Jesus is fully divine (John 1:1), meaning He is inherently good. Because we are not good, He added a human nature (Philippians 2:6–7), being made exactly like us except without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Thus, in His life, He was perfectly good, and everything He did was perfectly good. When He died, He provided the only way to be saved (John 14:6), through which God applies Jesus’ righteousness to us (Romans 4:5).
• Believers, then, are saved and created to be good like God is good. “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Salvation restores our ability to do true goodness, and the Holy Spirit causes us to grow in it (Galatians 5:22).
• Though believers are not perfect (1 John 1:8–10), they are being transformed into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18). Just as He is perfectly good, believers can display greater goodness as they mature.
• Such goodness practically works itself out in how they treat others. Because they are saved to be like Christ, Paul could say, “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10). Believers are, therefore, to “not grow weary of doing good” (Galatians 6:9) since that is evidence of their salvation and Christlikeness.
• Note that being good does not just mean being good to those who reciprocate. Rather, believers are to demonstrate goodness even to those who persecute them (Romans 12:14–21). Such radical goodness demonstrates to the world that the believers' hope is not in this world (Hebrews 11:13–16).

implications for today

“God is good; all the time.” This is more than a saying. It’s a statement about God’s nature. He is good. He doesn’t just act good but is the definition of “good.” Since He is good, all of His commands are good, extensions of His nature. In other words, God doesn’t arbitrarily decide what’s good and then hold us to that made-up standard. Rather, He is the standard, and everything that deviates from it is not good.

As His creation, we were created perfectly good (Genesis 1:31), a visible extension of His goodness displayed to the rest of creation. However, we quickly deviated from His command by rebelling (Genesis 3:1–7). That one step away from His goodness meant we became evil.

Today, saying that people are inherently “evil” sounds unloving, but that’s Scripture’s definition for us. We are called corrupted (Genesis 6:12), unrighteous (Romans 3:10), depraved (Jeremiah 17:9), and sinful (Romans 3:23). This is because God is the standard of goodness, and we have deviated from that. We are, therefore, born as anti-God images and His enemies (Romans 5:10).

However, not only is God the definition of good, but He’s also the definition of mercy and love. Despite our wickedness, God showed His mercy and love to the world by sending His Son Jesus (John 3:16) to die as a sacrifice for our sin (1 Peter 3:18).

Jesus is the only perfectly good human, having never sinned (Hebrews 4:15). When we repent of our sin and trust in Him, God counts us as good as well (Romans 4:5). Not because we are good but because He credits Jesus’ goodness to us. Because Jesus is good, we can live for what is good and bring good into this world!