goodness: an upright moral character that shows itself in actively doing good to others
This is a rare word for goodness. It was almost unknown in ordinary Greek and seems to have been minted by the Jewish translators of the Greek Old Testament, who needed a noun to name the quality of being good. In the New Testament only Paul uses it, and only four times. Behind it lies a picture the Old Testament had built up over two centuries: goodness as the generous good that God does for his people, and the good they are in turn to do for one another. So this is not goodness as a private feeling but goodness that acts, kindness with its sleeves rolled up.
Its most famous appearance is in the list of the fruit of the Spirit, where it stands right after kindness (χρηστότης). An old and once-popular idea, associated with R. C. Trench, held that goodness here has a stern edge, a goodness able to rebuke, while kindness is only gentle. Most scholars today reject that sharp split. The better and milder distinction is this: kindness names the warm disposition, and goodness names that same benevolence put into action. In a list of overlapping virtues the two words should be held loosely, not pried apart.
The word is the abstract noun of the very common adjective for good (ἀγαθός), narrowed to name the moral quality of a genuinely good person. In one letter Paul sets it beside righteousness (δικαιοσύνη): if righteousness is the firmer side of an upright life, doing what is right and owed, goodness is the warmer side, freely doing good beyond what is required.
Disputed
Whether goodness carries a note of righteous severity that sets it apart from kindness (χρηστότης), or whether the two are largely overlapping virtues in Paul's lists.
- minorityGoodness includes a capacity for righteous severity or rebuke that kindness lacks; the classic illustration contrasts Christ's gentle reception of the penitent with his cleansing of the temple.; R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, 9th ed., §63
- minorityA milder distinction: kindness names the benevolent disposition and goodness names that same disposition put into action (character versus its exercise).; J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, on 5:22
- majorityThe two are largely synonymous benevolent virtues in a rhetorical catalog, and the sharp severity distinction is not sustained by the wider evidence; pressing it risks importing meaning the list does not carry.; J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed., Domain 88; M. Silva (ed.), NIDNTTE, 2nd ed., s.v. ἀγαθός; T. R. Schreiner, Galatians (ZECNT), on 5:22