“Now the works of the flesh are evident” and are all against the law. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law” (Gal. 5:19-23).
“The choice of
fruit here instead of
works” is due to the new and divine life whereby the Holy Spirit will produce His own fruit in the life of the saint who cooperates with Him in His work of sanctification.
[i]Agathosune is the Greek word for goodness.
[ii] Goodness as defined by the 1888 dynamic is every virtue - every particle of character fully equipped, matured and powered at every level in active seeking and saving of this world. It is God’s character in total; it is the power of creation and the cross. Nothing can withstand it; and nothing stands with it. It is God’s glory; it is Christ in you, the hope of glory; it is the new life implanted in us by the Holy Spirit; it makes us a new creation by the power of the cross. It is our “rod and staff”, our discipline as well as our peace.
We talk of the goodness of God because man has no goodness in himself. “There is none who does good, no, not one” (Rom. 3:12). “For I know that in me (that is in my flesh) nothing good dwells” (Rom. 7:18). “All flesh is grass” and “All nations before Him are as nothing” (Isa. 40:6, 17). All our religious efforts are an attempt to divert the gaze of the Creator from our own nakedness. All of man’s best thinking; all of his highest education; and all of his best efforts - everything combined - only brings him to the point of needing to be saved by Another. It is God who takes the initiative in man’s salvation – all that this entails is the goodness of God.
In Ex. 33:18, 19; 34:6-9, we have a most instructive history. Moses asks God, “
Please, show me Your glory.”
God answers Him by saying, “
I will make all My goodness pass before you” and then it ends with a prayer by Moses
, “O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.”
Here Scripture declares that the glory of God and the goodness of God are the same thing. The goodness of God has always dealt with stiff-necked sinners. The Jews did not recognize the Messiah; and the Latter Rain went unrecognized when brought to us in the 1888 General Conference. The Prophet of the Lord declared concerning this, that this message, direct from God, was disregarded by nearly all. The Jews are still looking forward to the coming of the Messiah, while we continue to look for the outpouring of the Latter Rain, which began in 1888. “It is hardly possible for men to offer greater insult to God than to despise and reject the instrumentalities He would use for their salvation. . . .”
[iii] The prayer of Moses applies to all, “O LORD, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.”
“Do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” (Rom. 2:4). “I told them plainly [that] the position and work God gave me at