This is a word not found in secular Greek. Graeco-Roman philosophers sometimes commended selfless generosity, but it was not a highly significant virtue for them.

Christian goodness is embodied in Jesus Christ. The best of the saints, says Sangster, have a peculiar kind of goodness. ‘It unconsciously proclaims itself. One feels it as an aura around its possessor. It is incandescent (which is why artists have painted halos around saints). It is essential goodness: goodness ‘in the inward parts’. Its radiations are so powerful that it may be doubted whether anyone could be near it and quite unaware of it… The saint is unconscious of it himself. Blissfully unaware of the impression he makes, he moves on his way reminding people of Jesus Christ.’

How do you get to be like this? When you live closely with another you tend to be greatly influenced by that one. Good Christians are Christ-centred. George Muller, to whom God gave thousands of orphans and more than a million pounds, was asked his spiritual secret. ‘There was a day when I died, utterly died, died to George Muller, his opinions, preferences, tastes and will; died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends and, since then, I have studied only to show myself approved unto God.’

So goodness is much more than ‘doing good things’, obeying the law, or helping others now and then. You can keep a rigid moral code and be a Pharisee. The person who says ‘I’m as good as the next person’ isn’t good. The saints don’t compare themselves with the next person but with Christ. Their goodness is not defensive or self-serving. The first thought of the saint is never him- or herself. The centre of the saint’s life is the Lord. Their goodness is a gift from God, nurtured by love, not something they’ve done themselves by hard effort.

Good people are guileless. They live simply. They tend to have a naive indifference to what others hold dearly – money or reputation, for example. Life is complex for those who want more money or a better position: they have to constantly bother about ‘playing their cards right’, and so the interior life suffers. For the saint, says Sangster, the centre of life has shifted from self to Christ. Being assured of God’s will the saint simply accepts it. Suffering, set-back, misunderstanding… the saint takes them all: they are God’s agents to shape and purge one’s soul. Each new day is greeted with childlike wonder, because of the deep knowledge that we are surrounded by Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Love. ‘Hence, the saint is without guile and does not aim to ‘use’ you, as so many use their friends. The saint loves you – and for yourself alone. The saint is not mentally fitting you into his or her scheme – they have none. Loving you with a God-like love, the saint has but one thought – how to help you. The saint’s luminous eyes rest on your face and you know he or she is your servant. The love God gives the saint is ‘always slow to expose, always eager to believe the best, always hopeful, always patient’ (1 Corinthians 13:7 Moffat).’

This great virtue is forged in the personal, private disciplines of devotion, and is also corporate: each of us is helped by others in our quest for holiness and goodness, and we are meant to spread this virtue around (Romans 15:14; Ephesians 5:9; 2 Thessalonians 1:11).

If there is any mark of ‘life’ in a church, surely it is goodness!

Further reading: ‘Goodness’, by H.P.Owen, in John Macquarrie, ed., A Dictionary of Christian Ethics, London: SCM, 1967, 137-9. W E Sangster, The Pure in Heart, London: Epworth, 1954.

~~~

Good People are Encouragers

Barnabas’ name was Joseph, but was changed to ‘son of encouragement’. He must have been the sort of person who left a trail of encouraged people behind him wherever he went. The various episodes in the New Testament where he appears from time to time bear this out. (By the way, if your friends gave you a nickname, would you be likely to get one like ‘Encourager’?). When he arrived at the young church in Antioch he certainly ‘barnabized’ them (Acts 11:23).

Gene Getz has a good book on the ‘one another’ passages of the New Testament. In the final chapter – ‘Encourage One Another’ – he points out that the Greek word parakaleo has several related meanings: to exhort, admonish, teach, beg, entreat, beseech, console, encourage, comfort. ‘But the basic word is always used for one primary purpose – to describe functions that will help Christians to be built up in Christ, or to help them to build up one another in Christ… Evaluate your church structure in view of this New Testament exhortation. Many traditional churches are designed not for ‘body function’ but for ‘preacher function’. Only the pastor or minister or some other teacher is delegated to share the Word of God with others in the church… The Bible teaches that every Christian must be involved in this process (1 Thessalonians 5:11, Hebrews 10:24-25)… One thing stands out as being very important in this ministry – the ‘body of Christ’. Every member contributes to its success’.

Like Jesus, you must always be gentle with the wounded, and – only if you have earned the right – occasionally be tough with the lazy or those whose potential may be realized more by rebuke than a soft word. Helpful criticism should always – or nearly always – leave the person feeling he\she has been helped. Goethe said: ‘If you treat people as they are they will stay as they are. But if you treat them as they ought to be they will become bigger and better persons.’ There are more ‘win-win’ conflict resolutions around than we realize!

Churches are often inept at encouraging their leaders. John Claypool in a sermon said, ‘What often happens in life [is that] a person is given a difficult job by a group of people and then, instead of struggling with him and helping him find his way, the group sits back and lets him struggle alone until at last he “hangs himself”.’ James Stewart quotes this legend: God decided to reduce the weapons in the devil’s armoury to one. Satan could choose which ‘fiery dart’ he would keep. He chose the power of discouragement. ‘If only I can persuade Christians to be thoroughly discouraged’, he reasoned, ‘they will make no further effort and I shall be enthroned in their lives.’

Let me share a personal story about encouragement. I came to the Blackburn Baptist Church in Victoria, Australia, when it had about 300 members. The staff was one and one third: I was the ‘one’ and my part-time secretary was the ‘third’. Within five years the salaried staff had grown to 25 (including seven pastors), and the membership to over 700, the largest Baptist church in the country. How? Why? If I were to name one key factor it would be that the ‘BBC’ was a church of encouragers. No Sunday would ever pass in the last few years of my leadership there without my pockets bulging with affirming notes from people. Sometimes we’d incorporate an ‘encouragement segment’ into a service, and write encouraging messages to others.

If we appreciated someone or their ministry, we’d give ourselves permission to tell them! People are healed by encouragement; they grow to like themselves in a healthy way if they’re encouraged; they reduce their ‘self-despising’ through encouragement. Beware of a church of encouragers: you’re going to have space problems after a while! May Barnabas’ tribe increase in our churches: God knows we desperately need more church-members like him.

An eighty-year-old saint wrote me a note: ‘If he earns your praise bestow it; If you like him let him know it; Let words of true encouragement be said. Do not wait till life is over, And he’s underneath the clover; For he cannot read his tomb-stone when he’s dead!’ Suspect theology, but wise psychology!

However, all that said, let me add a note of caution. My desk calendar today reads ‘People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.’ We can depend so much on positive feedback that such praise becomes addictive: we cannot function without it. A young monk, one of the ‘Desert Fathers’ looked after his elder, who was gravely ill, for twelve years without interruption. Never once in that period did his elder thank him or so much as speak one word of kindness to him. Only on his death-bed did the Old Man remark to the assembled brethren, ‘He is an angel and not a man’. The story illustrates the need for ‘detachment’ although it could be argued the old man took his side of things a bit far!

Bible Study: Using a concordance, Bible dictionary and commentaries, prepare a group Bible study on ‘Barnabas: The Ministry of Encouragement’.

A Prayer: Lord, Give me a ministry –

not of pulling down, but of building up.

Help me to encourage, to uphold and to understand.

Give me a ministry –

not so much of confrontation, as of reconciliation.

Not so much of criticism as of intercession.

That life might be a prayer and a benediction for those You love.

~~

Another sermon about Barnabas, the good man is here .

Thesis:

The essence of grace, on the other hand, is acceptance – by God of us, and of others and of ourselves. Grace is love-before-worth. It creates worth in another rather than responding to worth in the other.

So grace abounds where sin abounds. And as the church is a society of people on the receiving end of God’s grace, it’s the community par excellence where we accept others fully on the same basis as God has accepted us (Rom. 15:7):  solely on the basis of grace - not law, not doctrine, not sacramental observance, but grace alone!

If only Ananias and Sapphira had understood this! By their behaviour they were denying the most fundamental truth in the Christian faith: we cannot earn significance. We can’t achieve wholeness, salvation, through our own efforts. Greatness in Christ’s kingdom is a given, a gift, that we gratefully receive in spite of our failures and our sin.

~~

John Piper:  Acts 11:24 has two assertions:

1. Barnabas was a good man, that’s one assertion;
2. and Barnabas was full of the Holy Spirit and faith, that’s the other assertion. So if you asked Luke what made Barnabas tick, what was the key to his life as a Christian leader, I think Luke could have said two things.

   * If he wanted to focus on the divine enabling of Barnabas’s life, he could have said, “The key to his life was that he was full of the Holy Spirit.”

   * Or if Luke wanted to focus on the human side, he could have said, “The key to his life was that he was full of faith.”

How do they relate to each other? Probably fullness of the Holy Spirit and faith is the root or source of Barnabas’ goodness. Paul unpacks this relationship in Galatians. He says in Galatians 5:22 that goodness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. You don’t get the Holy Spirit because you are good. The Holy Spirit takes over your life and starts to make you good.

• Barnabas felt empathy for outsiders, because faith still feels the wonder of once having been an outsider but now accepted by God.
• Barnabas yielded to the call of God, because faith rests in the missionary promise, “I will be with you to the end of the age.”
• Barnabas saw the grace of God in an imperfect church, because faith has a homing device for grace.
• Barnabas rejoiced over the grace of God in the lives of others, because faith not only sees but savors grace; it is not only alert for it, it is addicted to it through long dependence on it.
• Barnabas exerted himself for the perseverance of the saints, because genuine saving faith knows the necessity of vigilance for itself and therefore for others.
• Finally, Barnabas was utterly trustworthy with other people’s money, because the power of greed had been broken by his faith in the love of a never-failing God.

More…