Chapter 7: Ungodly
CHAPTER 7
UNGODLY
How often do you think about God in the course of your everyday life — when you’re not at church or at youth group or having your quiet time and family devotions?
If your answer is “not very often,” you’re like a lot of Christians I know, including myself at times. You participate in the respectable sin of ungodliness.
What do you mean, ungodliness? I’m a Christian, not some kind of pagan or atheist. I go to church. I’ve been saved. And yes, I know I sin, but I’m working on that. I’m not that bad a person.
My point exactly.
You see, most of us get ungodliness and wickedness mixed up. They’re not the same thing at all. A person may be a nice person or a good citizen and still be ungodly.
The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:18, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.” Note that he distinguished ungodliness from unrighteousness. Unrighteousness refers to sinful thoughts, words, or deeds, but ungodliness describes an attitude toward God. An atheist or avowed secularist is obviously an ungodly person, but so are a lot of morally decent people, even if they believe in God.
Ungodliness basically means living your everyday life with little or no thought of God. God is essentially irrelevant in an ungodly person’s life. He just doesn’t come up.
We rub shoulders with ungodly people every day during our ordinary activities. They may be friendly, courteous, and helpful to other people, but God is not at all in their thoughts. They may even attend church for an hour or so each week but then live the remainder of the week as if God doesn’t exist. They are not wicked people, but they are ungodly.
The sad fact is that many of us who are believers live that way too. Survey after survey continues to inform us that there is little difference between the values and behavior patterns of Christians and non-Christians. Surely this reflects the fact that we live much of our ordinary lives with little or no thought of God. It’s not that we consciously or deliberately put God out of our minds. We may even read our Bibles and pray for a few minutes at the beginning of each day, but then we go out and basically live as though God doesn’t exist. We might go for hours without thinking of Him at all. In that sense, we are hardly different from our nice, decent, but unbelieving neighbors.
Consider these words from James: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (4:13-15).
James did not condemn these people for making plans or even planning to set up a business and make a profit. What he condemned was that they didn’t acknowledge their dependence on God in their planning. And we do that too. We make our plans without recognizing our utter dependence on God to carry them out. That is one expression of ungodliness.
In the same way, we seldom think of our accountability to God and our responsibility to live according to what He has shown us in Scripture. It’s not that we are living obviously sinful lives. It’s just that we seldom consider what God wants and, for the most part, are content to avoid obvious sins. Yet Paul wrote to the Colossian believers, “We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (1:9-10).
Notice how God-centered that prayer is. Paul wanted his hearers to know how God wants us to live. He desired that their lives would be worthy of God and fully pleasing to Him, and he prayed to that end. In short, he wanted the Colossians to be godly people.
How does Paul’s prayer for the Colossians compare with our prayers for ourselves, our families, and our friends? Do our prayers reflect a concern for God’s will and God’s glory and a desire that our lives will be pleasing to Him? Or are they more like to-do lists we present to God, asking Him to take care of our needs and those of our family and friends?
Now, it is not wrong to bring these daily concerns to God. In fact, that’s one way we can acknowledge our daily dependence on Him. But if that’s all we pray about, we are merely treating God as a personal assistant or a genie without a lamp. Our prayers are usually human-centered, not God-centered, and in that sense we are ungodly.
For Paul, all of life is to be lived out in the presence of God with an eye to pleasing Him. Consider what he wrote to those messed-up Corinthians: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). The all of that sentence includes every activity of our days. We are not only to eat to the glory of God, we are to drive to the glory of God … and shop to the glory of God … and study to the glory of God … and text and tweet and hang out to the glory of God. Everything we do is to be done to the glory of God. That is the mark of a godly person.
Doing all to God’s glory means that I live every day with a twofold goal.
First, I want God to be pleased with the way I go about the ordinary activities of my day and, obviously, not displeased with anything I think or say or do. So I pray prospectively over the day before me, asking that the Holy Spirit will direct my thoughts, words, and actions to be pleasing to Him.
Second, I desire that all my daily activities will honor God before other people. Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). By contrast, Paul wrote to the self-righteous Jews in Rome, “You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you’” (Romans 2:23-24).
Think of it this way: If everyone you interact with in the course of an ordinary day knows that you trust in Christ as Savior and Lord and represent Him in the world, would they get a good impression of Him by interacting with you? Or would you perhaps be like the father whose child said, “If God is like my father, I want nothing to do with God”?
Hopefully not many of us would be like that father. But how far do we go in a positive direction to improve His reputation? Do we consciously and prayerfully seek His glory in all we say and do in our most ordinary activities of the day? Or do we actually go about those activities with little or no thought of God?
An even more telling indicator of our tendency toward ungodliness is our meager desire to develop an intimate relationship with God. Biblical writers clearly yearned for such a relationship:
As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God? (Psalm 42:1-2)
One thing have I asked of the LORD …
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD. (Psalm 27:4)
Yet how many of us claim those desires? A person may be moral and upright, or even busy in Christian service, yet have little or no desire to draw close to God. This is a mark of ungodliness.
If you have followed me this far, you can see that there is still some degree of ungodliness in all of us. The question is: How much? How much of my life do I live without any regard for God? What percentage of my daily activities have no reference to Him?
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 you on the spectrum? As you consider this, remember that we are not talking about righteous versus wicked behavior. We are talking about living as if God is relevant or irrelevant.
Many people believe that the sin of pride underlies most other sins. But I have decided that ungodliness is even more basic than pride. In fact, I believe that all our other acceptable sins can ultimately be traced to this root sin of ungodliness. If we change our ungodly patterns of living, then, it can have a positive effect on our other sins.
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. How could we possibly look down on others? Or think of how much more careful our speech would be if we spoke in awareness that God hears every word. Talking sins such as gossip or lying simply could not thrive.
So how do we deal with our sin of ungodliness and become more godly in our daily lives? Paul suggested an answer in his words to Timothy: “Train yourself for godliness” (1 Timothy 4:7). The athletic metaphor implies commitment, consistency, discipline, and focus. 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 an athlete training for a championship. But how many of us actually think that way?
I can’t 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 an electronics store to buy one of a limited supply of the newest gaming system. Some arrived at 9:30 on a Saturday morning to wait for the doors to open at 8 a.m. Sunday. What would our lives be like if we had that kind of zeal for godliness?
Our goal in the pursuit of godliness should be to grow 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.
Because ungodliness is so all-encompassing, it might be helpful to identify specific areas of life where you tend to live without regard to God. These might include school, computer time, hanging out with your friends, playing or watching sports, even your driving. Scripture texts that might be helpful to memorize, ponder, and pray over include 1 Timothy 4:7-8; 1 Corinthians 10:31; Colossians 1:9-10; 3:23; Psalm 42:1-2; 63:1; 27:4.
Above all, pray that God will help you remember that you live every moment of every day under His all-seeing eye. This is a good word for all of us. For while He might not be on our minds, we are certainly on His. He sees every deed we do, hears every word we say, and knows every thought we think (see Psalm 139:1-4). He even searches out our motives.
Let us then seek to be as mindful of Him as He is of us.
YOUR TURN
“The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness.” (Titus 2:11-12)
ENGAGE
1. How is the definition of ungodliness at the beginning of this chapter different from what you thought ungodliness meant? What does Romans 1:18 reveal about this common sneaky sin?
2. Reread 1 Corinthians 10:31 and Matthew 5:16. To what extent are you mindful of doing “all” to the glory of God? How has ungodliness crept (or marched) into your social relationships … ordinary activities … prayers … daily planning?
3. What practical things can we do each day to “train” ourselves “for godliness” (1 Timothy 4:7) so that we please and glorify God during even ordinary activities?
BRING IT TO GOD
Ask God to kindle within you an even stronger desire to live a lifestyle of godliness and thankfulness.