Matthew 19:17, New International Version

“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”

One of the things that the world wants us to believe is that people are essentially good at heart but just make mistakes and get blinded by their desires. The reality is that people are not good at heart. Yes, we were each created by God and created in His image yet, He gave us something that He did not give to any other creature, He gave us a choice. We failed at making that choice and as a result we disobeyed Him and the heart of man was tainted for all generations to come. It does not matter how clean a glass of water is, if only one drop of contamination is allowed in the water will no longer be clean and bacteria will grow and grow and grow until the once clean water is nothing but filth. We can see the full extent of this only five chapters after God had created man in the book of Genesis.

This is the result of a world in which we have chosen to ignore God and His laws. No one, not a single human being is good because we have each sinned. If the world we live in was left only to human hands and to be ruled by human wisdom, then I will tell you that it would literally be hell on earth. The statement we see about the condition of the world here in Genesis 6 would be completely true for our world today. People will say “how can there be a God who loves us if there are so many bad things in the world today and He lets so many evil things happen?” However, this is the incorrect perspective and as a result it is the wrong question to ask. If we view our condition from the correct perspective then the question we should ask should be this, “why is it that, given the fallen state of creation, the sinful heart of man, and the evil plans of the adversary, there is any good in the world at all?” Do you see the change in perspective here? If it were not for God and His presence in this world there would be no good at all. The good that is present is not a result of humans, but the presence of the Lord! He is the only source of goodness and apart from Him, nothing and no one is good.

Another question we should consider on this topic is this, what does it mean to be good? We use the word “good” to describe so many different things and so many different situations and experiences. But what does it mean when we say that God is good? The word “good” may become clearer when we add its opposite into the conversation, evil. In almost every book we read, movie we watch, or story we hear, there is some element of good versus evil. The right way versus the wrong way. Evil is the opposite of good just as we know that satan is the opposite, or the adversary of God. The things that God does and the way that He behaves will be the opposite to the things that Satan does and the way he behaves. When we think of it in this light, we can start to see that God is not good because He matches our definition of what good means, rather goodness is defined by God and His very character and nature. If we want to understand what is good, then we must simply look to who God is.