Who Is a Good Person?

Scripture: Luke 13.1-9; 1 Corinthians 10.1-13

Bad things happen to bad people. That was the thinking among many in Jesus day. Certainly that’s how some of Jesus’ disciples were thinking. Jesus quickly disabused them of that notion. Jesus pointed out that accidents happen. The victims of such accidents are no worse sinners than anyone else in town. To think that only the really bad people have bad things happen to them is a childish, ridiculous notion.

Jesus, you’re right. We can all agree with that. We would be more than a little offended if someone suggested that those who died in the Towers on September 11, 2001 somehow deserved their deaths because of sin in their lives. Well, there are those who did suggest that, but most of the nation rightly rejected that thinking.

We all agree that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. But does this mean that it doesn’t matter if you are good or bad? What makes a good person? Do we know what one looks like?

Remember, in the Beatitudes Jesus told a rough and rag-tag crowd that they were the blessed. Not because of how good (or bad) they were, but because of who God is.

This goes against the grain of certain assumptions. In our day, to be fat, bald, stupid, poor or ugly is the worst sort of thing to be. You’re a loser. You’re hopeless. The sad truth is that for many people, this is all they know. They have heard nothing else.

Jesus took the time to point out to people how beautiful they are in God’s eyes.

“Consider the lilies, how even in Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. . .Will not God much more clothe you? Matthew 6.28-30


Blessed are the physically repulsive,
Blessed are those who smell bad,
The twisted, misshapen, deformed,
The too big, too little, too loud,
The bald, the fat and the old –

For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus. No one is beyond beatitude.

Dallas Willard reminds us that “any spiritually healthy congregation of believers in Jesus will more or less look like these “brands plucked from the burning.” If the group is totally nice and competent, that is a sure sign something has gone wrong. For here are the foolish, weak, lowly, and despised of the world, whom God has chosen to cancel out the humanly great.”

In the new humanity, “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.” Colossians 3.11

That mention of a Scythian is important. A Scythian was the very lowest form of humanity – a barbarian’s barbarian, if you will. The Scythian was thought of as utterly brutal, because he was. Yes, “Blessed are the Scythians.”

So I should be bad to be good? No. To be in Christ is to open the door to true goodness. Jesus uses the image of a fruit tree.

“ No good tree produces bad fruit, nor any bad tree good fruit. . .The good person, from the good treasured up in his heart, produces what is good.” Luke 6.43-45

The preaching of the Kingdom is Jesus saying, “Now it is really possible for you to live a good life, and for you to be a good person. In fact, I mean to make it so.”

What Jesus says is to be a good person you must start with the heart. What’s inside always will produce what comes out. Jesus deals primarily with the sources of wrongdoing and does not focus on the actions themselves. That will be important in the next couple weeks when we discuss what Jesus says about anger, adultery, divorce, and wealth.

That’s what the Pharisees had all wrong. They focused on the actions without addressing the root of the problem. So they fashioned a law of God for themselves that wasn’t really the Law of God. Their version of the law was distorted. It was simultaneously self-righteous and morally diluted. It was ungracious and ineffective at once.

Jesus would have none of it. The true Law of God was blindingly pure and good and graciously life-giving.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. . .For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5.17, 20

To be a good person the Jesus’ Way is to put your faith in his power and life in you to transform you into a truly good person, one who keeps the law of God in both letter and spirit.

To be sure, law is not the source of rightness, but it is forever the course of rightness.

If you start first with the law, make it your source of inspiration and rightness, you will fail.

I thought Jason made this point well last week. “I look at the rules and I realize I’m in trouble. . .ahh crap” is, I believe, how he put it.

To succeed in keeping the law you must aim at something more. One must aim at becoming the kind of person from whom the deeds of the law naturally flow.

The only kind of person that fits this description is the kind that is becoming like Jesus; having the same nature and life in themselves that is in Jesus. When you become like this, then the goodness flows. This is the blessing of God!

There’s a scene in the movie White Men Can’t Jump in which the main character, Billy Hoyle comes back to his girlfriend and has to explain her that he has gambled away their savings in a basketball game for like the umpteenth time. His lamely begins his explanation with,

“It happened again.”

“It? It?” his girlfriend angrily questions. “It didn’t happen. You happened, Billy. You happened.”

There are very few accidents in our lives, when we think about it. Much of the stuff that happens to us, good or bad, is simply the fruit of who we are.

Apple trees produce apples. Fence posts don’t produce apples. Our actions will be determined by the kind of thing we are. It is the inner life we must aim to transform, and then behavior will naturally follow. But not the reverse. Actions do not emerge from nothing. They faithfully reveal what is in the heart. A good person may have bad things happen to them, but their lives will consistently produce good things because of who they are within.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis says, “The command ‘Be ye perfect’ is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command.”