We've been thinking about Paul's words in Galatians 5, verses 22 and 23.

But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Against such things, there is no law.

Today we are at the end of the second triad, patience, kindness, goodness.

Many of the questions philosophers have asked over the centuries have been about the true, the good and the beautiful, what we call epistemology, how do we know things, aesthetics, how do we assess things, and ethics. What is the good life? And what, after all, do we mean when we say good?

If you studied moral philosophy at college, that question will probably conjure up some of the different answers

philosophers have given to the question, what is good, and what is the good life?

And what principles therefore should guide our decisions and our actions?

Is goodness objective?

Or is it, as people sometimes say about beauty, only in the eye of the beholder?

That certainly seems to be a common enough view today, isn't it?

Good is what I like, what I think is good for me, what I think will make me happy.

But that's not an option for a Christian, is it?

So where do we begin untangling this twisted ball of philosophical will?

Now the answer is where we always should begin,

with God. Psalm 34 is instructive here. It urges us in verse 8, O taste and see that the Lord is good.

But what does that mean?

It isn't easy to answer in just a few words, is it?

In fact, the Bible uses the word good in a variety of ways.

It means that something is attractive, that it's free from defects, that it's morally upright, that it's, well, simply, just right,

as it should be. Ultimately, of course, it means that something expresses and reflects God's

character and will, because he is good. Everything he created was good. When he spoke it into being, the whole

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