Ungodliness

This morning as I was reading Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate by Jerry Bridges, what he said about the sin of "ungodliness" was so good that I thought I'd share it with you. It is a bit long, but I hope you will read it anyway.

"For the godly person, God is the center and focal point of his or her life. Every circumstance and every activity of life, whether in the temporal or spiritual realms, is viewed through the lens of this God-centeredness. However, such a God-centeredness can be developed only in the context of an ever-growing intimate relationship with God. No one can genuinely desire to please God or glorify Him apart from such a relationship.

If you have followed my reasoning this far, you can see that no Christian is totally godly, and to the extent we are not, there is still some degree of ungodliness in us. The question we should honestly and humbly ask is, How ungodly am I? How much of my life do I live without any regard for God? How much of my daily activities do I go through without any reference to God?

Total godliness and utter ungodliness are the opposite ends of a continuum. All of us are somewhere between those two extremes. The only person who ever lived a totally godly life was Jesus. And probably no true believer lives a totally ungodly life. But where are we on the spectrum? As you think about your own life, remember that we are not talking about righteous versus wicked behavior. We are talking about living all of life as if God is relevant or irrelevant. Survey after survey continues to inform us that there is little difference between the values and behavior patterns of Christians and non-Christians. Why is this true? Surely it reflects the fact that we live so much of our ordinary lives with little or no thought of God, or of how we might please and glorify Him. It's not that we consciously or deliberately put God out of our minds. We just ignore Him. He is seldom in our thoughts.

I stated at the beginning of this chapter that I believe ungodliness is our most basic sin, even more basic than pride. Think how it would curb our pride for example, if we consciously lived every day in the awareness that all we are, all we have, and all we accomplish is by the grace of God. My wife and I were lamenting over two otherwise nice, decent people who are living openly immoral lives and relishing it. And then I reminded my wife and myself that "there but for the grace of God go we." Self-righteous pride, one of the more common of our acceptable sins, is a direct product of our ungodly thinking.

Sins of the tongue, such as gossip, sarcasm, and other unkind words to or about another person, cannot thrive in an awareness that God hears every word we speak. The reason we do sin with our tongues is due to the fact that we are to some degree ungodly. We don't think of living every moment of our lives in the presence of an all-seeing, all-hearing God.

I believe that all our other acceptable sins can ultimately be traced to this root sin of ungodliness. To use a tree as an illustration, we can think of all our sins, big and small, growing out of the trunk of pride. But that which sustains the life of the tree is the root system, in this case the root of ungodliness. It is ungodliness that ultimately gives life to our more visible sins.

If ungodly habits of thinking, then, are so commonplace with us, how can we deal with this sin? How can we become more godly in our daily lives? Paul wrote to Timothy, "Train yourself for godliness" (1 Timothy 4:7). The word train comes from the athletic culture of that day and refers to the practice athletes went through daily to prepare themselves to compete in their athletic contests. It implies, among other things, commitment, consistency, and discipline in training.

Paul wanted Timothy, and all believers of every age, to be just as committed to growth in godliness, and just as intentional in pursuing it, as the athletes of that day who were competing for a temporal prize. But I suspect that most Christians seldom, if ever, think about how they can grow in godliness.

I could not help but contrast our anemic desire for godliness with the attitude of young men in our city who recently camped out all night in snow and cold at the entrance to a local electronics store. They wanted to be sure they would be able to buy one of a limited supply of a new video game system. One young man arrived at 9:30 Saturday morning to wait for the doors to open at 8 a.m. Sunday. Would any of us have that kind of zeal for godliness?

Our goal in the pursuit of godliness should be to grow more in our conscious awareness that every moment of our lives is lived in the presence of God; that we are responsible to Him and dependent on Him. This goal would include a growing desire to please Him and glorify Him in the most ordinary activities of life.

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Because ungodliness is so all-encompassing, it will help to identify specific areas of life where you tend to live without regard to God. Theses might include your work, your hobbies, your playing or watching sports, or even your driving. Scripture texts that might be helpful to memorize and pray over include 1 Timothy 4:7-8; 1 Corinthians 10:31; Colossians 1:9-10 and 2:23; as well as Psalm 42:1-2; 63:1; and 27:4.

Above all, pray that God will make you more conscious of the fact that you live every moment of every day under His all-seeing eye. While you may not be mindful of Him. He is certainly aware of you and sees every deed you do, hears every word you say, and knows every thought you think (see Psalm 139:1-4). Beyond that, He even searches out your motives. Let us then seek to be as mindful of Him as He is of us."