Doesn’t Everybody Do Good?

Good deeds aren't simply behaviors that have good effects. Unless our actions are driven by a genuine desire to please God, they are not ultimately good in His sight. Today, R.C. Sproul explains what it takes for anyone to do good deeds.

When God evaluates virtue. When God evaluates performance, He’s concerned not only with conformity to external demands of the law, but also is concerned very much with the internal motivation. Sociologically, we define a good deed as a deed, which externally outwardly conforms to the demands of the law of God, but inwardly is motivated by a genuine desire to please God. Now the fallen man, the unbelieving person who is estranged from God may do acts that Calvin called civic virtue, civil righteousness, external conformity to the law, but he’s doing it out of his own self-interest or his own humanitarian values without any particular desire to please his Creator. And so the lack of the internal motivation, the lack of the disposition of the heart is what vitiates the final verdict of goodness. And so we can understand, if we define the good as that which is good as God defines it, why Paul would say, “No one does good.” And if we follow that to its logical conclusion, we would have to say that no fallen person ever does a single genuine good deed, all things being considered. We are morally incapable of goodness in this ultimate sense. But isn’t it amazing that now as a fruit of the Spirit, goodness is in the list. That as a result of our regeneration, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, because of God’s power working in us and changing the disposition of the heart, that one of the most dramatic changes that comes about through conversion is that now we have a radically new possibility for goodness. For doing the good, because now we do have the possibility of desiring to please God.