That's a Good Question

Scripture Reading: Proverbs 12:2

A good man obtains favor from the LORD, but a man of evil devices he condemns.

Can I call another person good? That’s a good question…

I had been tasked with giving the eulogy for a young man who had tragically died in a car accident. He had grown up in the church where I served but had since moved and was attending a different church, so his pastor delivered the sermon. I had spoken of the young man’s life, how he was a good father and husband, a faithful church member. “He had grown up,” I remarked, “to be a good man.”

His pastor took exception to my eulogizing and made his offense known in his sermon when he made it clear that Jesus said, “Why do you call me good? There is none good but God,” and he added that Paul wrote, “There is none good, no not one.” Point made. Rebuke received. Kind of…

It is true that when compared to the righteousness of God we all fall short. When we stand up next to Jesus, we are all moral midgets. In the bright light of the holiness of God, we all are covered in spiritual soot. That is all true. But that does not mean that we are forever forbidden from tagging another fellow human as good. Especially when we see that the word of God does exactly that in places like Proverbs 12:2.

But we can use the word “good,” and others like it, with the clear-eyed understanding that we aren’t claiming perfection or absolute holiness. We are talking in relative terms. We are comparing men among men, not men and God. It is certainly true that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and that “there is none righteous, not even one.” No one will be saved by their good works because sin condemns us all in the sight of God. Only the sinless One, Jesus, can save us.  

We can hold fast to justification by faith and still speak in relative terms about where men are among men on the scale of good and evil. There is such a thing as a “good man” when you are talking about a person in comparison to other people. The young man I was eulogizing was one of them. I don’t apologize for saying so. Compared to Jesus he wasn’t good, but compared to his fellow man, he stood out. And in that sense he was good. That goodness didn’t save him. I never claimed it did. Neither did he. Christ saved him. He said that during his life and I did after his death.

We can say both things (that there is none good but God and some men are good) and both of them can be true. You don’t have to apologize for calling someone a “good man,” because you, and just about everyone else around you, understands the scale on which you are weighing their life when you say such things.