Do Good. Everywhere. Always.

It started on a t-shirt.

I want that on the record before anybody dresses it up. Three words on cotton, a boomerang shadow behind them, and a line underneath that said because good comes back. I was building something that could fund ministry without begging for it, and the thing needed a phrase, and that’s the phrase that came.

Then the phrase started preaching to me, and I found out it was never mine.

Do Good. Everywhere. Always.

That’s the replacement chapter two promised. Not be good. Do good. And once you see where it comes from, you’ll understand why I can’t put it down.

Peter is standing in a Roman officer’s house, which is the last place a Jewish fisherman expected to be standing, and he has to explain Jesus to a room full of people who never met Him. Three years of ministry. Every sermon, every healing, every argument with the religious, every night on a hillside. Peter has to get all of it into a sentence.

Here’s the sentence.

“How G-d anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for G-d was with him.”

ACTS 10:38

Who went about doing good.

That’s the biography. Peter was there for the whole thing, and when he had one shot to say what the Man was like, he did not say He was good. He was, and Peter knew it better than anybody, and he still reached for a verb.

The Greek makes it sharper. The phrase “doing good” is EUERGETŌN, a present active participle, which is a technical way of saying it never stops. It isn’t a record of things He did. It’s a motion He was in. If you had asked anyone who watched Him what Jesus was doing right now, at any hour of any day, the answer would have been the same answer. He’s out there doing good.

Now watch the order in that verse, because the order is the whole doctrine.

G-d anointed Him. Then He went.

The anointing came first, and the anointing is not the destination. We have built an entire church culture around getting anointed, seeking the anointing, breaking through into the anointing, as if the oil were the finish line. Acts 10:38 says the oil was the starting gun. He was anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power, and what the power produced was a man walking around doing good to people who could not do anything for Him.

If your anointing has not moved your feet, it may not be anointing. It may be atmosphere.

So take the three words one at a time, because each one is carrying something.

Do.

A verb. Not a state, not a disposition, not a reputation. Something with a body attached to it and a time stamp on it. You can lie about being good for forty years and never be caught. You cannot lie about doing good, because doing good happens where somebody else is standing, and they either felt it or they didn’t.

Paul says the same thing in a way that ought to end the argument. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which G-d hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10) The New Living Translation puts it plainly: “so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”

The word for workmanship is POIEMA. It’s where we get the word poem. You are a made thing, and you were made for something, and Paul names the something. Good works. But look at what he tells you to do with them. Walk in them.

That’s the part we miss. Good works are not evidence you produce to prove you’re the right kind of person. They are a road that was laid before you got here. Walking is not how you earn the road. Walking is what a road is for.

And notice what Paul is not saying, because verse 10 sits directly after verse 9, and verse 9 exists to slam a door. “Not of works, lest any man should boast.” He closes the door on works as the entry, and then in the very next breath he opens the door on works as the path. Not the way in. The way you walk once you’re in.

Everywhere.

Peter’s word was “went about.” The Greek is DIĒLTHEN, from the verb for traveling through. He moved. The good did not happen at a location; it happened along a route. Nearly everything Jesus did that we remember happened somewhere other than a sanctuary. A well at noon. A roadside. A tax office. A wedding that ran out of wine. A borrowed boat. A graveside. A dinner table, over and over again, with the exact people the religious crowd had already written off.

He had a place to preach and He used it. But the doing happened out in the country, in traffic, at work, at lunch, in the places where you already are and would rather not be spiritual.

That’s why everywhere is in the middle of the phrase instead of at the end. It’s the hinge. Do good at church and you’re a church member. Do good everywhere and you’re something else entirely. We’ll spend a whole chapter on this later, because there’s a fight over the word everywhere that I need to walk you through carefully.

Always.

Back to that participle. Continuous. Not seasonal, not scheduled, not when it’s convenient or when the person deserves it or when you’re in a good place spiritually.

Solomon already said it in the same chapter we started this book in. “In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.” (Ecclesiastes 11:6) Morning and evening. Two sowings, one day, and no way to know which one takes.

Always is the hardest of the three words, and it’s the last chapter of this book for a reason. Doing good once is a nice day. Doing good when it stopped being rewarding is a life.

And then there’s the line I put under the three words on that shirt. Because good comes back.

I’m going to be honest with you about that line, and I’d rather do it now than let you carry a wrong idea through six more chapters. That line is not a mechanism. It is not karma, it is not the universe balancing a ledger, and a boomerang is a better logo than it is a theology. The return is not the reason you do this. I’ll deal with what it actually is at the end, because the end is where it belongs and because some of you have done good and bled for it and you deserve more than a slogan.

But I left the line on the shirt, and I’m keeping it in the title of this book, because scripture will not stop saying it. Something comes back. Solomon says after many days. Paul says due season. Neither of them says next week.

So that’s the name. Do Good. Everywhere. Always. It fits on a shirt, it fits in a sentence, and it fits over a whole life, which is the only real test a motto ever has to pass.

Now, before I take one more step, I have to stop and deal with a verse that could tear all of this down.

Because there is a crowd standing in front of Jesus at the end of everything, and they have works. Real ones. Good ones. Done in His name, in public, with power. And He tells them He never knew them.

If I walk past that verse, this whole book is a very well-made mistake. So the next chapter is where I stop and face it.