Doing Good

What is “doing good?” Paul gives us the Fruit of the Spirit at the end of the previous chapter: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. When we listen to that inner voice of the Holy Spirit and follow through with forgiveness when our pride is yelling, “NO! They don’t deserve grace!”— that is doing good. When we don’t throw out the best possible zinger to put someone in their place but instead choose self-control or gentleness—that is doing good. Every time we reflect our Savior to the world, every time we seek to glorify God and not ourselves—that is doing good.

The last part of this verse reminds me that this should be most evident in how we treat those closest to us. Still, conversely, we often give our families, whether it is our biological family or our spiritual family, the leftovers. I remember being very convicted about this during a season in our family when snarkiness was ruling, and patience was short. We had a family meeting and recognized that we were the most important people to each other on this planet, so we needed to treat each other better than we treated the check-out lady or the random person on the street. I think that is what Paul means. Our household of faith should be where we are nourished and where we nourish each other to be sent out into the world to do good!