Formed in His ImageSample

The Good Life

Politicians, philosophers, advertisers, and talk show hosts all promote different versions of the Good Life. The desire for the Good Life is implicit within us because it is something woven into our hearts since creation.

We are never fully satisfied apart from life in Christ aimed at the beauty of God, to be realized eternally in the vision of God. With the idea of the Good Life in Christ, we can begin to build beautiful lives in the church and in our everyday lives. Only when we pursue what is good, true, and beautiful will our spiritual formation take shape and flourish in all the ways God intends for us.

Jesus, too, spoke to aspirations of the Good Life.

The idea of the Good Life and human flourishing was central to Jesus’s message of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom, however, is drastically different from any other vision of the Good Life.

In The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing, Jonathan Pennington shows how the most famous teaching of Jesus should be interpreted with the lens of the Good Life in mind.

Regarding the question of human happiness in Scripture Pennington observes, “The Sermon [on the Mount] is not the only place in the New Testament or whole Bible that addresses this fundamental question. I would suggest that this question is at the core of the entire message of Scripture. But the Sermon is at the epicenter and, simultaneously, the forefront of Holy Scripture’s answer.” The Kingdom of God is where we will find true happiness, but the way we get there is through the unique practices of humble and sacrificial living and finding our identity in Christ.

Jesus speaks similar “happiness” language with his disciples prior to his passion: “Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me” (John 15:4–5).

Harkening back to Psalm 1, Jesus is clear that fruitful living is only possible in him. Flourishing takes place in union with Christ. Language of “abide” or “remain” and “joy” in the New Testament speak to this idea as well. We must remember that the Bible, indeed our Savior himself, is concerned with true human happiness.

For spiritual formation to take root and thrive, we need to remember that God does care about our happiness, and only an abiding life in him will bring about the flourishing we all desire.