Genesis 1:31. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
Sometimes, when we call something good we mean that it was just alright, or OK. Maybe that pizza was good, but not great. Or if I asked you, “How was the movie?” and you said, “It was good,” I would assume it was just Ok, but not amazing.
But when God creates everything and then calls it very good, he is giving it one of the highest compliments you can give. In the Bible, the word “good” is the little Hebrew word tov (pronounced tobe). Something that is tov does exactly what it was made to do. It fulfills its purpose. Imagine you are sitting at a piano and you just start banging around on the keys. That would not be good, it would not be tov. Why not? Because you are not using the piano or the musical notes to fulfill their true purpose. But if you sit at a piano and play a song as it was written, no matter how easy or difficult it is to play, that would be good. It would be tov. Why? Because you are using the piano and the music to do what it was made to do. This is why everything that God made can be good, not matter how big or how small. For example, here’s Genesis 1:11-12 describing how good plants are.
Genesis 1:11-12. 11And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
What makes the plants good? It’s not that they are better than other things God made. There is no good, better, and best in Genesis 1. There’s just good. The plants do what they are supposed to do – make seeds – so they are good. Any time something God created does what it was created to do, it is good. When the sun shines, that’s good. When the wind blows, that’s good. When the cow gives us milk, that’s good. When an apple seed becomes an apple tree, that’s good. When birds fly and fish swim, that’s good. When dogs sniff and cats purr, that’s good. When musical notes become a song, that’s good. When letters become words, that’s good.
So what makes people good? What do we have to do in order to be tov? What did God make us to do? The answer to this question came in the verses right before today’s verse – Let us make man in our image. We are good when we image God. When we worship him and live and love like him. That’s what the whole Bible is about – teaching us to be good, to be what we were made to be.
In Genesis 2, we will be introduced to the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil. Sadly, even though Adam and Eve already knew what it was to be good, they decided they needed to be able to decide good and evil on their own, so they ate the fruit from this forbidden tree. And that was NOT GOOD. Rather than do what they were made to do love God and then live like God in their garden, they decided to do what they wanted to do. And we have all been living this way ever since.
Praise God that Jesus was good for us. Jesus always did what he was sent to do, even all the way to dying on the cross for us. Now, with Jesus, we can have his goodness in us. Jesus plants the seeds of goodness in our hearts so that we can do what we were created to do before we sinned. We can love God and love others too. We can image God in the way that we live every time we live like Jesus.
Questions: What makes a person good? Are you good? Why or why not? How does Jesus make us good even though we don’t always do the right thing?
Prayer: Father, because Jesus is good now I can be good too. Help me to do what you made me to do – love you and love others.
TLICfamily 