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by on 2.26.10 4 Comments

the meaning of godliness

I recently preached a message on the subject of ‘Godliness and Dignity’ based on the two terms found in 1 Tim 2.2. The more I consider the subject, the more important I think it is. The concept seems to be disappearing in the collective mind of the modern church.

What is godliness?

Godliness is a manner of life dominated by reverence for God that is displayed in a respect for other men that is visible to outside observers.

The word translated ‘godliness’ in the New Testament is eusebeia. According to Kittel, the root ‘seb-’ has the idea of ‘shrinking back’ or ‘falling back from’. With the prefix ‘eu-’ we could call it the ‘good shrinking back’. It is good because the term eusebeia speaks often of a proper attitude to the gods – piety – which is reflected in one’s conduct to men. Perjury, for example, is not godly. Caring for a dying father is godly. This conduct reflects an attitude of reverence towards deity and respect towards men.

In the New Testament, the term is occurs mostly in the pastoral epistles where its meaning is very parallel to Greek usage. It refers to conduct in relation to God, conduct that is no ascetic constraint but is positive expression of faith in the new life that now is and the life that is yet to come (1 Tim 4.7-8). This conduct is displayed by care of widowed mothers because such conduct pleases God (1 Tim 5.4). It is a life that is motivated by the Lord’s return, a life lived with ‘eternity in view’, since the things of this life are to be destroyed (2 Pt 3.10-11).

Godliness isn’t just private piety – it is visible piety. The gospel of grace teaches us that we are to live it out in this present world, before witnesses (Titus 2.11-12). It is to mark out the man of God, who, in contrast to the deceivers who trouble the church, is to pursue godliness rather than riches, content with his reward in heaven rather than profit on earth (1 Tim 6.1-12). It is that life to which God has provided the things pertaining to its essence and its conduct through the full knowledge of who called us by his own glory and excellence (2 Pt 1.3). God is excellent, the believer is called to excellence in this life.

In 1 Tim 2.2, the term is connected with the term ‘dignity’ (translated ‘honour’ in the KJV). Godliness speaks to the conduct of one’s life before God; dignity speaks to the quality of that life by virtue of a transformed inner man.

Godliness is given lip service today. For many people, if considered at all, it seems to simply mean, “having the right theology.” In the ancient world, some thought godliness merely meant keeping the rituals of religion, whether it be the Law of the Jews or the cultic practices of the Greeks. I am afraid many Christians today are quite satisfied with that kind of godliness today. “Get the form right, and I am all right.”

What we are after is a heart religion that reverences God and accordingly respects men. A heart religion that is no friend of the world, but a friend of God. Can it be that Christians who embrace the world and its ways are also friends of God? Are they godly?

It may be that godly Christians will come to differing applications on some specific matters of conduct, but the life of every godly Christian will be headed in the same direction: with fear toward God and respect towards men that outside observers can see – and will not confuse with worldliness.

Godliness is a manner of life dominated by reverence for God that is displayed in a respect for other men that is visible to outside observers.

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Filed Under: Christian Living, Spiritual Life, Worldliness
by on 11.5.09 1 Comment

a man of the book

I’d like to recommend an excellent article by one of my old professors, Dr. Stewart Custer. In “Biblical Balance," he writes advocating that we become less shallow in our Scriptural understanding and really get to know our Bibles. I am afraid that most of us are ‘sound bite’ Christians. We treat the Bible like the media treats newsmakers – we take a slice of words that we think represents all of truth on a subject and think we know what the Author meant.

Dr. Custer starts his article this way:

Many people use Scripture for their own purposes. I am referring to sincere Christians who use the Scriptures to reinforce their own private interpretations of the Bible and of life. Many of these people are very godly individuals. I know of preachers whose personal dedication to the Lord is unquestioned, but who have certain doctrines for which they are notorious. They plug these things as though they were the great truths of revelation, when they happen to be of private interpretation.

Most fundamentalists would say they have a handle on the idea of holiness. Dr. Custer points out there are approximately 600 references to the word ‘holiness’ in the Bible (leaving aside passages that don’t specifically use that word). How many of those passages would you say you have thoroughly studied? What kind of grasp do you have on holiness, according to the Scriptures?

Our culture is filled with media, as Dr. Custer points out. All kinds of noise blares at us, demanding our attention. We live fast paced lives. We are ‘Martha’ Christians. We need to learn to be ‘Mary’ Christians, and sit at the feet of Jesus.

Turn off our televisions and our computers. Turn off our ipods and iphones. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” (Mt 11.29)

I can tell you that I was mightily convicted by this little article this evening

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Filed Under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Counseling, Devotions, Pastoral Theology, Spiritual Life
by on 9.27.09 Leave a Comment

Christmas sermons

Many pastors find Special Occasions like Christmas a difficult time for preaching. The reason is that we are so familiar with the Christmas story that it can seem a chore to find something fresh each year.

I think one reason for this is we think of preaching only one sermon for Christmas. We fail to make much of the incarnation, a vital part of our redemption, by only taking one sermon in December and telling the same story year after year.

Since at least 1994 I have almost always made the month of December a month to emphasize the incarnation by a whole series of messages from all over the Scripture highlighting various threads or themes connected with the Christmas story.

We have done many different themes: the “Los Angeles” Christmas – all about angels; the Barren Woman theme from Isaiah 54, tying in with the barren woman theme in the Bible and culminating with Mary; the “Roots” Christmas, where I preached from the genealogies and taught the descent of Christ from Adam; and last year “The Bright and Morning Star” where we looked at Balaam’s prophecy and traced the theme of the star through the Scriptures (and taught some church history of the Moravian missions movement, using their Moravian star ornament as a tie-in). There have been many other themes as well.

Well, a friend was bemoaning the common problem recently and I took a look at my summary file of our past Christmas series. I found I hadn’t updated it for a few years. Tonight I took the time to catch it up and send it to him. This has an added benefit: it is getting me fired up for this coming December!

Our theme this year will be “The Word became Flesh” with messages from Psalm 19 as a prelude on the Word’s value to men, culminating with the Jn 1 passage and concluding with a New Years message on the ‘engrafted word’ from Jas 1.21.

You can find a copy of my updated file here. Perhaps this file might be an inspiration to some other preacher. Feel free to use as you see fit!

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Filed Under: Preaching
by on 8.16.09 1 Comment

an outline worth stealing

My morning sermon this Sunday (8/14) was based on an outline I found in a footnote to William R. Newell’s commentary on Romans 4.14. The footnote was so profound that I thought it shouldn’t lie dormant in the commentary but be fleshed out in a whole sermon.

I thought I’d share the entire footnote with you as well. I’d encourage the preachers in the audience to steal it too. It is well worth preaching.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Preaching, Quotables, Spiritual Life
by on 7.1.09 Leave a Comment

Canada Day

Today we had an inter-church picnic. Besides our church, there are two other independent Baptist churches in our city. They are both small mission works like us. Another church from an hour and a bit north of us also joined us. I didn’t count, but we had well over 50 people, maybe into the 60s.

To my state-side friends that might not seem like much. To us it seems a great blessing to be able to gather together, to fellowship, to hear the Word, to play games, to sing our anthem, to know that the gospel message that calls men OUT from the world and all the taints of worldliness is not something we hold to quiet and alone in our little, struggling churches, wondering if we are the only ones. No, it is the great God and Saviour of our souls that unites us, our Lord Jesus Christ. It is his church and we are grateful to be a part of it.

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Filed Under: Canada, Christian Living, Church, Victoria
by on 6.21.09 1 Comment

a good post on holiness

I’d like to call your attention to a blog by Marty Colborn, ‘What About Holiness?’ Marty writes very thoughtful pieces on the Christian life, but this one is particularly timely. I think he gets it exactly right. You don’t produce holiness by works, but you holiness will produce works in keeping with itself.

Many who accuse fundamentalists of an over-emphasis on externals assume that fundamentalists believe that conformity to outward standards will produce holiness. I haven’t found that to be the case in my experience in numerous fundamentalist churches. What I have heard taught is essentially what Marty highlights in his post.

Here’s a sample:

In thinking about my own life, I can say that I need to be more holy, and that there are many things that distract me from that pursuit of holiness. I am sure that some of these things show up externally, in behaviours, and not simply in my innermost being where no one else can see.

I encourage you to read the whole thing.

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Filed Under: Christian Living, Legalism
by on 5.27.09 Leave a Comment

the pleasure of anger

I just completed the first volume of The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, a set I picked up a few weeks ago. The set is the first two volumes of three, the third just came out recently in hardback and isn’t yet included in the paperback version. The books are about 1000 pages each, so it is quite a task to read, but I found the reading so fascinating, I couldn’t put it down. Even the early letters,when Lewis was still a boy, reveal keen intellect and interesting insight (and breadth of reading).

The first volume also reveals the mind of a totally lost man. His conversion comes at the end of the first set of letters, but one has to say that he exhibits the pride and malice of a lost man in all his educated sophistication through the years prior to his conversion.

I’ll not debate the quality of his conversion, certainly he uses terms unfamiliar to us. It is quite clear that a real change took place in his life and he left us with many valuable works as a result.

In one of his letters, he makes an interesting observation about the pleasure of anger.

The pleasure of anger — the gnawing attraction which makes one return again and again to its theme — lies, I believe, in the fact that one feels entirely righteous oneself only when one is angry.

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Filed Under: Christian Living, Fundamentalism, Quotables, Spiritual Life
by on 4.6.09 6 Comments

the desire accomplished…

… is sweet to the soul.

So says Pr 13.19a. I wonder if we take that out of context, considering the parallel phrase in Pr 13.19b, but…

But I just finished a massive amount of re-coding our Thru the Bible html index project.

Between August of 2005 and April of 2007 we took our church through a marathon chronological Bible reading and preaching project. We read the same passages together, worked through study guides, and preached messages covering the material we were reading each week.

I created Thru the Bible 1.0 with just the Old Testament index. It was kind of clunky looking, basically really really old-fashioned HTML, back eons ago when the web was young (and ugly). This index contained only our written material.

Tonight I finally finished the re-write of the whole project, OT, Intertestamental period, and NT. It looks much better than the earlier effort, although I am not sure it reaches the level of what the geeks call “Web 2.0”. Anyway, it looks a lot better than the first version.

And it contains all the audio files.

I plan to burn these on DVDs, and will make them available to anyone who asks for the cost of postage. (These will be on basic cheap DVDs, if you want a “100 year” DVD, it will cost $5 plus postage.)

I still have to double check all my links, but praise the Lord, all the coding is done.

Now its time to go to bed. How many late nights has this been?

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UPDATE: DVDs now available!

Filed Under: Bible Study, Computer, General Interest, Personal, Preaching
by on 4.3.09 8 Comments

does mt 4.4 teach perfect preservation?

This is in response to the ongoing conversation in reply to my last post. Kent has given his reasons for teaching that Matthew 4.4 teaches perfect preservation and continual availability of the word of God in every generation. My thesis is that the text teaches no such thing.

First let’s look at the text itself:

Matthew 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

This is a quotation from Dt 8.3:

Deuteronomy 8:3 And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.

What is the point of the passage? It is possible for a NT quotation to be an application of an OT passage, not giving a new meaning exactly, but instead taking the general principle and applying it to a new situation. This doesn’t appear to be the case in this passage.

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Filed Under: Christian Living, Issues, Spiritual Life, Versions
by on 3.22.09 3 Comments

a question regarding a hymn

I have been thinking a little lately about the popular hymn by Aaron Wolfe, Complete in Thee. The tune is lovely and the thoughts of the hymn are generally appreciated.

I am wondering, however, about the second verse:

Complete in Thee! No more shall sin,
Thy grace hath conquered, reign within;
Thy voice shall bid the tempter flee,
And I shall stand complete in Thee.

Is this verse teaching some kind of perfectionism? It seems odd that it should, the author being a Presbyterian and the year being 1858, but it is the "no more shall sin" line that makes me wonder.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Spiritual Life, Worship
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