Jamin Bradley

One of Jesus’ stranger statements came after a man called him a good teacher: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18).

Would not any good Trinitarian respond, “But you are God! If there is any human we could pin that label on, would it not be you?”

There are many proposals as to why Jesus said this, one of my favorites being John Peter Lange’s old idea of Jesus more or less winking at the man: “If thou wouldst call Me good, thou must apprehend My unity with God, and My divine nature.” 😉

But as I think of Jesus’ words today, they strike me as protective. We’ll assign the term good to just about anything. That movie was good. That pizza was good. We had a good time. That was a good decision. They’re such a good person. In our daily lingo, we are the qualifier of whether something is good or bad. Our bias is the ultimate judgment of the things we experience. Something cannot be good if we say it is not.

But when Jesus hears the word “good,” his ears perk up. This word comes with a whole system of judgment, bias, and character. There is something otherworldly about that term. No—not otherworldly, for it is a term that does not even belong with the angels. It’s even higher than that. Only God is good. All other frameworks of goodness come from lesser beings who err. But we are made in the image of our good God, and therefore we are built for goodness, for creation is good.

If God-in-flesh can be protective of a word that he probably didn’t have to be protective of, maybe we can too. Theology gets messy and confusing, especially when the storm hits. But if we can remember this one fact, we’ll be on the right path even in the whirlwind: God is good.