Goodness

Joseph's brothers sold him into Egypt. Years later, with their father dead, they feared that he would repay them for all the wrong they had done. He told them, “As for you, what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good” (Genesis 50:20). Then he promised, “I will provide for you and your little ones,” and he spoke kindly to them (Genesis 50:21).

King Saul took three thousand chosen men to hunt his rival and went into a cave where David and his men were hiding. David “crept up secretly and cut off a corner of Saul’s robe” (1 Samuel 24:4) and let the king go. The king wept aloud and said, “You are more righteous than I, for you have rewarded me with good, though I have rewarded you with evil” (1 Samuel 24:17).

The king of Aram sent an army to Dothan to capture Elisha. The LORD struck the raiders with blindness at Elisha's prayer, and Elisha led them into Samaria (2 Kings 6:13 to 20). When the king of Israel asked whether to kill them, Elisha answered, “Set food and water before them, that they may eat and drink and then return to their master” (2 Kings 6:22). “And the Aramean raiders did not come into the land of Israel again” (2 Kings 6:23).

Barnabas, a Levite from Cyprus, sold a field and laid the money at the apostles' feet (Acts 4:36 to 37). When the disciples in Jerusalem would not believe that the man who had threatened them was now a disciple, he brought him to the apostles (Acts 9:26 to 27). Sent to Antioch, he encouraged the new believers, and Luke gives the reason in his character: “Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith” (Acts 11:24).

Aristides described the Christians to the emperor in his Apology (chapter 15, translated by D. M. Kay, 1896). He wrote that “they do good to their enemies”, and that when they had no food to spare, “they fast two or three days in order to supply to the needy their lack of food”. The Lord had told His disciples, “do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27). The Apology is one Christian's account of his own people.

Sulpicius Severus tells in his Life of Saint Martin (chapter 3, translated by Alexander Roberts, 1894) that Martin, still a soldier, met “at the gate of the city of Amiens a poor man destitute of clothing” in a hard winter. Martin “divided his cloak into two equal parts, and gave one part to the poor man”. Sulpicius adds that Christ appeared to Martin that night wearing that half, and the vision is the biographer's report.

In his Confessions (book 2, chapter 4, translated by J. G. Pilkington, 1887) Augustine told how at sixteen he and his friends stripped a pear tree near the family vineyard, “not to eat ourselves, but to fling to the very swine”. He wrote of it, “It was foul, and I loved it.” Paul had confessed, “nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh” (Romans 7:18).

The Martyrs Mirror (1660, translated by Joseph F. Sohm, 1886, page 741) tells how Dirk Willems fled arrest at Asperen across the ice. The ice broke under the thief-catcher behind him, and Willems “quickly returned and aided him in getting out, and thus saved his life.” The burgomaster held the man to his oath, and Willems was taken again and burned. The account is the martyrology's, compiled about ninety years after the event.