The Practice of Godliness: Godliness has value for all things (15 page)

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Authors: Jerry Bridges

BOOK: The Practice of Godliness: Godliness has value for all things
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THE FRUITS OF JOY
One of the results of experiencing this joy is that God is pleased (Romans 14:17-18). If Christ came that we might have joy (life to the full), if the Holy Spirit is at work in us to produce joy, then it is a contradiction of God’s purpose for us when we are not joyful. Certainly, some people are more joyful by nature than others, but every Christian is to exhibit a balanced display of all the virtues of Christian character, regardless of his temperament. We must look to God and apply all the means He has given us until we can rejoice in the Lord always.
A second result of joy is that we are strengthened physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Nehemiah said to the returned exiles, “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (8:10). Sanderson asks, “How much of our physical weakness, apathy and illness is probably due to a heavy spirit?”
4
I have experienced the direct relationship of physical strength to joy in my personal exercise program. When I am rejoicing in the Lord the strength is there, and the jogging and other exercise go much easier. If I am discouraged I seem to have no energy at all.
What is true in the physical or emotional realm is also true in the spiritual. I recall one morning going into our living room to begin my quiet time. Just prior to that I had been sinning by entertaining resentful thoughts toward a Christian brother. As I started to kneel to pray, the thought came to me, “You cannot enter the presence of God with the thoughts you have been thinking.” Thinking of Hebrews 10:19-22, I said, “Lord, I acknowledge my sin, and it is true, I cannot come into Your presence in my own merit. I come in the only way I can come. I come through the blood of Jesus.” As I uttered (and believed) those words I thought, “What a wonderful thing that I, a sinner, having just indulged in the sin of resentment, can through the blood of Jesus come into the very presence of a Holy God.” Then I thought, “That’s not all! Not only can I come into His presence, but I can call him Father.”
That little episode changed my whole day. It changed me from a discouraged, resentful person to a joyous and forgiven person. And the joy of God’s gracious forgiveness enabled me to deal with the root of that resentment. Joy does give spiritual strength. The joy of discovering the sufficiency of God’s grace enabled Paul to delight in weaknesses, in insults, in difficulties (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
So the choice is ours. We can be joyless Christians, or we can be joyful Christians. We can go through life bored, glum and complaining, or we can rejoice in the Lord, in our names being written in heaven, in the hope of an eternal inheritance. It is both our privilege and our duty to be joyful. To be joyless is to dishonor God and to deny His love and His control over our lives. It is practical atheism. To be joyful is to experience the power of the Holy Spirit within us, and to say to a watching world, “Our God reigns.”
Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. It is a result of His work, but it is also something we must do. We must, by His power, rejoice. This is a part of the practice of godliness.
NOTES
1
John W Sanderson,
The Fruit of The Spirit
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1972), page 72.

 

2
Sanderson, pages 65-66.
3
Sanderson, page 71.

 

4
Sanderson, page 73.
10
Holiness
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
1 John 1:5

 

The outward evidence of godliness is Godlike character. Although it is this character that is usually thought of as godliness, as we have seen in earlier chapters, Godlikeness in character is built upon the foundation of God-centeredness—devotion to God.
If we want to develop godly character, we must learn what the Bible says about the character of God Himself. The apostle John gives us two statements about God that together sum up the biblical revelation of God’s character: “God is light” (1 John 1:5), and “God is love” (1 John 4:8). The Christian who wants to train himself to be godly must understand the meaning of these statements about the character of God and must appropriate their teachings in his life.
What was John telling us about the character of God when he made the statement, “God is light”? Professor Howard Marshall explains, “Two notions became associated with God as light. One was that of revelation and salvation ... the other is that of holiness; light symbolizes the flawless perfection of God.”
1
In 1 John 1:5, it is the idea of God’s holiness that is in view. God is absolutely holy; in Him there is not the slightest hint of any moral flaw. A well-known soap has been advertised as being “99.44 percent pure.” While that may be quite an achievement for soap, it would be blasphemous as a statement about God. God is infinitely perfect in His holiness. Not the slightest degree of sin taints His character.
To be Godlike in our character, then, is first of all to be holy. The practice of godliness involves the pursuit of holiness because God has said, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). Paul tells us that we have been called to a holy life; we have been redeemed for that purpose. Any Christian who is not earnestly pursuing holiness in every aspect of his life is flying in the face of God’s purpose in saving him.
What is holiness? The best practical definition that I have heard is simply “without sin.” That is the statement that was made of the Lord Jesus’ life on earth (Hebrews 4:15), and that should be the goal of every person who desires to be godly. Granted, we will never reach that goal in this life; nevertheless it is to be our supreme objective and the object of our most earnest efforts and prayers.
John said he wrote his first letter so that his readers would not sin (1 John 2:1). Most Christians seem content not to sin very much, but John’s goal was that we not sin at all. Every sin, no matter how small it may seem to us, is an affront to God’s authority, a disregard for His law, a spurning of His love. Because of this, sin cannot be tolerated in any form, to any degree. That “inconsequential” lie, that “just a little bit” of dishonesty, that fleeting lustful look, offends our holy God and wages war against our own souls (1 Peter 2:11).
When Paul was instructing Timothy about his relationship with younger women, he said to treat them “as sisters, with absolute purity” (1 Timothy 5:2). His every thought, look, and act toward them was to be conditioned by a perfect standard of holiness—absolute purity When Paul was instructing the Ephesian Christians about the importance of holiness he said, “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do” (4:17). He
insisted
on holiness, and he did so with the Lord’s authority. Holiness is not an option but a must for every Christian.
Even for the most godly Christian, there will be failure in the pursuit of holiness. The apostle John says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves” (1 John 1:8). We still have a sinful nature within us, and we still live in a wicked world ruled by a wicked devil. Temptation is on every hand, and our old nature responds to it. But what is the desire of our hearts? What is the object of our most earnest prayers? What is the major bent of our lives? If we want to train ourselves to be godly, it must be holiness in every area of our lives.
But let’s get specific. When Paul exhorted the Ephesian Christians to a life of holiness, to stop living as the Gentiles did, he dealt with three general areas of morality: honesty (a refusal to lie, steal, or deceive in any way); peaceableness (freedom from bitterness, anger, or strife of any kind); and purity (not even a hint of sexual immorality in word, look, thought, or act).
We all acknowledge the need for Christians to walk circumspectly in each of these areas. At the same time, we recognize how increasingly difficult it is to do so. Honesty and purity are no longer essential elements of our culture. Lying, cheating, and stealing have become commonplace in business, education, and sports. Sexual immorality is no longer an issue; it is an accepted practice in almost every area of society. And our soaring divorce rate and litigious (a tendency toward lawsuits) society are symptoms of our desperate need for peaceableness.
The Christians of Paul’s day lived in the same kind of society; quite possibly it was even worse. Paul said of the nonChristians of Ephesus, “Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more” (4:19). Things couldn’t have gotten much worse in the culture those first-century Christians lived in. Yet in the midst of such gross ungodliness, the Christians were expected to put off the traits of their sinful natures and to put on the traits of righteousness and holiness.
God expects no less of us today. Our responsibility to pursue holiness, even in the midst of a wicked society, is just as great as was the first century Christians’. Yes, it gets more difficult each year; the temptations seem more numerous, the ridicule of the ungodly toward those who seek to live a godly life grows more abusive. But we are still called to be holy as He is holy. We cannot and must not evade God’s standard for us.
How do we pursue holiness? Some time ago I heard a seminary professor tell of a friend who would frequently write the letters “YBH” in the margins of books he was reading. When asked what they stood for, he replied, “I agree with the author’s challenge to a more consistent Christian life, but my heart says, ‘Yes, but how?”’ I suspect some of you are asking the same question about holiness—“Yes, but how?”
I have previously mentioned that several years ago God gave me the privilege of writing a book on the subject of holiness. Since its publication, I have had many opportunities to speak on the subject of holiness, often in only a single forty-five-minute message. Because of the necessity of covering such a vast subject in a limited time, I have given much thought to what I think are the most essential elements of holiness. They can be summed up in five words: conviction, commitment, discipline, dependence, and desire.
2
CONVICTIONS: KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUTH
In the passage in Ephesians 4 that we have been considering, Paul says, “be made new in the attitude of your minds.” To the Christians at Rome he wrote, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (12:2). This process of renewing our minds involves establishing convictions. As we prayerfully expose ourselves to the Scriptures, we begin to understand what God’s will is regarding our conduct and character. And then as the Holy Spirit applies His word to specific areas of our lives, and as we are obedient to His promptings, we begin to develop Bible-based convictions. Our values begin to change so that God’s standard becomes our delight and our desire.
One has only to prayerfully meditate over Ephesians 4:25-5:7, for example, to realize that God has set down very clear standards regarding honesty, peaceableness, and purity. As we progress in our Christian life, however, we begin to realize more and more the extent of these standards. At first we may be convicted of gross lying; later on we realize that speaking truthfully to our neighbor covers any intent to deceive directly or indirectly; then the Holy Spirit convicts us about “white” lies or social lies that are told to save face or avoid embarrassing someone else.
Each year that we practice godliness the Holy Spirit continues to renew our minds, giving increased understanding of His word and enabling us to develop convictions in greater conformity to His will. Without such Bible-based, Spirit-developed convictions, we easily fall prey to manmade convictions which tend toward one of two extremes. At one extreme is a strict code of legalistic “don’ts” that often miss the more weighty issues of Christian character; at the other is a loose permissiveness that too often conforms to the world’s values and customs.
The only safe path is to allow the Holy Spirit to establish convictions through His word. Even on this path, however, we need to be careful not to build convictions upon a misunderstanding of some isolated text of Scripture. Here is where the insight of other Christians can help us. One of the values of Bible study discussion groups is the opportunity to test our understanding and application of the Scriptures against the thinking of other believers. Godly pastors and teachers who have a gifted insight into the Scriptures can also help us to correctly understand them. Paul himself stated that a part of his calling was to help God’s people grow in the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.
This is where holiness begins: with the knowledge of the truth that renews our minds and enables us to understand how God wants us to live.
A COMMITMENT TO OBEDIENCE
Someone has said, “A belief is what you hold; a conviction is what holds you.” A conviction is not truly a conviction unless it includes a commitment to live by what we claim to believe. A commitment is not a vow but a resolution—a determined purpose to live by God’s word as He applies it to our lives. First, we need a commitment to holiness as a total way of life. We must decide that holiness is so important to God that it deserves priority attention in our lives. We must commit ourselves to obeying God in all of His commands. We cannot pick and choose according to our own values. A little bit of fudging on one’s income tax return is sin just as much as outright theft; an unforgiving spirit toward someone else is sin just as much as murder. I am not suggesting that all sin is equally offensive to God; I am saying that
all
sin is offensive to God. The measure of sin is not just in its effect upon our neighbor, but in its affront to the majesty and holiness of a sovereign God.
Sin is serious business to God, and it becomes serious business to us when we reflect upon the fact that every sin, regardless of how seemingly insignificant it appears to us, is an expression of contempt toward the sovereign authority of God. There is nothing that so motivates me toward a genuine heartfelt confession of sin and a serious resolve to turn from it, as a reflection upon the fact that sin of any degree is an affront to His dignity and a contempt for His law.
The psalmist recognized the seriousness of any and all sin when he said, “You have laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed” (Psalm 119:4). He recognized that partial obedience—for example, refraining from outright theft of our neighbor’s property while allowing our heart to covet it—is actually disobedience. God’s precepts are to be
fully
obeyed. And Jesus clearly taught us in the Sermon on the Mount that obedience in our thought life is as necessary as obedience in our actions.
The psalmist’s response to his recognition of the seriousness of all sin was a commitment to obedience. He longs that his ways will be steadfast in obeying God’s decrees (verse 5). He even takes an oath that he will follow God’s righteous laws (verse 106). Clearly, he solidified his convictions about God’s will with a determined commitment to obey it.
We need not only a commitment to holiness as a total way of life, but frequently a commitment regarding specific areas of temptation. Job made a personal covenant not to look lustfully at young women (31:1). Daniel resolved not to defile himself with forbidden food, even though from the king’s table (1:8). These two Old Testament saints are commended by God Himself as among the most righteous who ever lived (Ezekiel 14:14); yet both found it necessary to make a commitment regarding some specific area of temptation. Job found his temptation in his own breast; Daniel found his in his particular circumstances. Both responded with a commitment to obey God. They lived up to their convictions.

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