to do good: to behave well and act for the good of others, the opposite of doing harm
Greek could fuse two words into one verb, and that is what this word is: the ordinary adjective for good (ἀγαθός) joined to the plain verb for doing (ποιέω). English has no single word to match it, so translations use a phrase: "do good," "do what is right," or in older versions "do well." This was not special religious vocabulary. It was everyday Greek, and the Greek Old Testament had already used it both for the good God does for people and the good people do for one another.
Its constant partner is the matching verb for doing harm (κακοποιέω), and the New Testament nearly always keeps the two in view together. Jesus puts the Sabbath question in exactly that shape: is it lawful to do good, or to do harm? Peter separates suffering for doing right from suffering for doing wrong. John makes the pair a test of who belongs to God. In these verses there is no neutral third option; a person is doing one or the other.
The verb works two ways, and Luke 6:33 has both in one line: "if you do good to those who do good to you." It can stand on its own, meaning simply that someone behaves well, and it can name the person who receives the good. The two uses stay close together because in this word good conduct is never private. Behaving well and benefiting somebody are the same act described from two sides.
Four of its nine appearances are in 1 Peter, always with hostility in the background:
- household servants beaten for work honestly done
- wives in homes where the husband does not share their faith
- believers slandered as troublemakers by their neighbors
Peter's answer to that pressure is not to withdraw but to keep doing visible good, so that the accusation has nothing to hold on to. Some scholars hear in this the language of the public benefactor, the useful citizen whose service a Greek city was expected to praise in return.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether ἀγαθοποιέω in 1 Peter draws on the Greco-Roman vocabulary of public benefaction, so that the ἀγαθοποιοί of 2:14-15 are benefactors whose civic service the authorities were expected to commend, or whether it keeps the broad ethical sense of the Septuagint, naming right conduct generally.
- majorityThe letter keeps the broad ethical sense inherited from the Greek Old Testament and Jewish good-works teaching: doing good is upright conduct as a whole, socially visible but not a formal benefactor role.; W. C. van Unnik, "The Teaching of Good Works in I Peter," New Testament Studies 1 (1954-1955): 92-110; P. J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996); J. H. Elliott, 1 Peter, Anchor Bible 37B (New York: Doubleday, 2000)
- minorityIn 2:14-15 the verb and its related noun belong to the technical language of benefaction attested in honorific inscriptions, so Peter is telling believers to earn public commendation as benefactors of their cities.; B. W. Winter, Seek the Welfare of the City: Christians as Benefactors and Citizens (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994)