[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 29/August/2021]
One of the subjects that I most enjoy teaching at Spurgeon’s College is Christian Ethics. It’s always interesting to ask the students about what they think it means to live a ‘good life’. In today’s world we often feel under pressure to live ‘the good life’. Before I became a Christian, I thought that living a good life was just a matter of indulging myself with lots of material comforts and superficial pleasures. My aim was to live ‘a good life’, buying a nice house, a flashy car and possessing all the other ‘good’ things that life has to offer. I thought that if I had all these things, then I would be ‘successful’ and able to live ‘the good life’.
But for the Apostle Paul and the other New Testament writers, goodness has nothing to do with wealth, fame, glamour, power or material well-being. Goodness, from a biblical perspective, is about living according to the righteousness, purity and love of Jesus Christ. Since “only God is truly good” (Mark 10:18), it follows that it is impossible to live a good life without God, regardless of how many material comforts we might have.
As disciples of Christ at HBC our aim should always be to live a good life in the eyes of God. Essentially, what this means is to live according to the goodness and purity of Christ. Rather than indulging the flesh (Rom 13:14), we live according to the Spirit of God, who leads us into truth and righteousness.
In other words, the Holy Spirit leads us to Jesus, who lived not just a ‘good life’, but the ‘perfect life’ (2 Pet 2:2). We know that although “he faced all of the same testings we do” (Heb. 4:15), still he was entirely without sin.
Over the years I’ve realised that I don’t need a grand house or a flashy car in order to live “the good life”. That’s probably just as well for me, since I drive a Nissan Micra and I live in a small terraced house!!! But far more important when it comes to living a good life is following Jesus, dying to self and letting the Holy Spirit do His good work of transformation of my character.
So being a good person and living a ‘good life’ isn’t a matter of owning lots of stuff. Neither is it about conforming to other people’s expectations about how we should behave or what the world thinks we should spend our money on or devote our time to. Rather, living ‘the good life’ means submitting our whole lives to Jesus. When the watching world sees His goodness shining out of our lives, Jesus says that the people will praise our heavenly Father (Matt 5:16).
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Contributed by Joshua Searle; © the Author
