Acts 11:24 For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith: and many people were added unto the Lord.
Yesterday, I touched on the concept of being nice versus being good. Granted, the two are not always at odds, but it’s really important that we know the difference. We have just come through a phase in society when being nice has been exalted as the most righteous of all virtues; when making another person uncomfortable was the most serious of all sins. Of course, Jesus has been portrayed as the model of this ethos of sweetness. But wait a minute, Jesus was publicly executed by people who were offended by him. Jesus didn’t get crucified for being nice. Jesus was killed because people were ticked at him.
Paul Coughlin said “If we can’t bring ourselves to face the possibility of offending someone, we’ll never be able to consistently speak the truth.”
In yesterday’s message I said, “Jesus was nice, but he was also a disrupter.” At 12 years old, he sounds dismissive to his own mom and dad when he responds to their worry over his disappearance and says, “I must be about my father’s business.” In Mark, Jesus exposed a man who had sneaked into the temple with a withered hand and proceeded to heal him, much to the disapproval of the Pharisees. He called the Pharisees snakes in the grass and white-washed tombs. He announced he was tearing the temple down and rebuilding it in 3 days, and he left everybody to just figure out what he meant. Of course, there’s the famous scene of Jesus running the lying, cheating money changers who were exploiting the poor out of the temple with a whip.
Dr. Robert Glover said, “Nice people operate out of a worldview that says, ‘If I can hide my flaws and become what I think others want me to be, then I will be loved, get my needs met, and have a problem-free life.'”
Jesus wasn’t JUST a nice guy. Jesus wasn’t JUST a disrupter. Jesus was JUST good. The alternative to just being a nice person is to become a good person. I don’t mean good in terms of sinless perfection or being someone who never makes a mistake; compared to Jesus, none of us are good. By good, I simply mean being someone who adds value and makes a positive difference wherever they go. By good, I mean someone who has good virtues and values. By good, I mean someone who genuinely wishes others well. Good people make their church better, their friends better, their family better, their neighborhood better. You can’t hang out with a good person and not be bettered.
There are good people who sometimes struggle to be as nice and likable as they could be. I don’t commend them for that, and sometimes I chide them for their approach, but you know what?… I trust them and I keep them close because they are good people; they are good for our church, they are good for their families, they are good for anyone who stays close to them. We are blessed to have them in our lives. I would much rather have a person in my inner circle who has work to do in the niceness department, but is knocking it out of the park in the goodness department. The Bible says, “A flatterer spreads a net for your feet.” There’s no one on earth who is nicer than a flatterer, but are they good? No, they’re just nice. Good people are the ones who show up when the nice people flake out.
Niceness is about your personality. Goodness is about your character. So be nice most of the time, but be good all the time.
