Chapter Three: Train Yourself to Be Godly
CHAPTER THREE
Train Yourself to Be Godly
Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly.
1 TIMOTHY 4:7
The apostle Paul did not take for granted the godliness of his spiritual son Timothy. Though Timothy had been his companion and colaborer for a number of years, Paul still felt it necessary to write to him, “Train yourself to be godly.” And if Timothy needed this encouragement, then surely we also need it today.
In urging Timothy to train himself in godliness, Paul borrowed a term from the realm of athletics. The verb variously translated in different versions of the Bible as “exercise,” “discipline,” or “train” originally referred to the training of young athletes for participation in the competitive games of the day. Then it took on a more general meaning of training or discipline of either the body or the mind in a particular skill.
PRINCIPLES FOR TRAINING
There are several principles in Paul’s exhortation to Timothy to train himself to be godly that are applicable to us today.
The first is personal responsibility. Paul said, “Train youself.” Timothy was personally responsible for his progress in godliness. He was not to trust the Lord for that progress and then relax, though he certainly understood that any progress he made was only through divine enablement. He would have understood that he was to work out this particular aspect of his salvation in confidence that God was at work in him. But he would get Paul’s message that he must work at this matter of godliness; he must pursue it.
We Christians may be very disciplined and industrious in our business, our studies, our home, or even our ministry, but we tend to be lazy when it comes to exercise in our own spiritual lives. We would much rather pray, “Lord, make me godly,” and expect Him to “pour” some godliness into our souls in some mysterious way. God does in fact work in a mysterious way to make us godly, but He does not do this apart from the fulfillment of our own personal responsibility. We are to train ourselves to be godly.
The second principle in Paul’s exhortation is that the object of this training was growth in Timothy’s personal spiritual life. Elsewhere Paul encourages Timothy to progress in his ministry, but the objective here is Timothy’s own devotion to God and the conduct arising from that devotion. Even though he was an experienced, well-qualified Christian minister, Timothy still needed to grow in the essential areas of godliness: the fear of God, the comprehension of the love of God, and the desire for the presence and fellowship of God.
I have been in a full-time Christian ministry for well over twenty-five years and have served both overseas and in the United States. During this time I have met many talented and capable Christians, but I think I have met fewer godly Christians. The emphasis of our age is on serving God, accomplishing things for God. Enoch was a preacher of righteousness in a day of gross ungodliness, but God saw fit that the brief account of his life emphasized that he walked with God. What are we training ourselves for? Are we training ourselves only in Christian activity, as good as that may be, or are we training ourselves first of all in godliness?
The third principle in Paul’s words of exhortation to Timothy is the importance of minimum characteristics necessary for training. Many of us have watched various Olympic competitions on television, and as the commentators have given us the backgrounds of the various athletes, we become aware of certain irreducible minimums in the training of all Olympic competitors. It is very likely that Paul had these minimum characteristics in mind as he compared physical training with training in godliness.
THE COST OF COMMITMENT
The first of these irreducible minimums is commitment. No one makes it to the level of Olympic, or even national, competition without a commitment to pay the price of rigorous, daily training. And similarly, no one ever becomes godly without a commitment to pay the price of the daily spiritual training God has designed for our growth in godliness.
The concept of commitment occurs repeatedly throughout the Bible. It is found in David’s cry to God, “Earnestly I seek you” (Psalm 63:1). It is found in God’s promise to the captives in Babylon, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). It occurs in Paul’s pressing on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of him (see Philippians 3:12). It lies behind such exhortations as “Make every effort . . . to be holy” (Hebrews 12:14) and “Make every effort to add to your faith . . . godliness” (2 Peter 1:5-7). None of this seeking, pressing on, or making every effort will occur without commitment on our part.
There is a price to godliness, and godliness is never on sale. It never comes cheaply or easily. The verb train, which Paul deliberately chose, implies persevering, painstaking, diligent effort. He was well aware of the total commitment those young athletes made to win a crown that would not last. And as he thought of the crown that would last —the godliness that has value for all things, both in the present life and the life to come —he urged Timothy, and he urges us today, to make the kind of commitment necessary to train ourselves to be godly.
LEARNING FROM A SKILLED TEACHER
The second irreducible minimum in training is a competent teacher or coach. No athlete, regardless of how much natural ability he has, can make it to the Olympics without a skillful coach who holds him to the highest standard of excellence and sees and corrects every minor fault. In the same way we cannot train ourselves to be godly without the teaching and training ministry of the Holy Spirit. He holds us to the highest standard of spiritual excellence as He teaches, rebukes, corrects, and trains us. But He teaches and trains us through His Word. Therefore we must consistently expose ourselves to the teaching of the Word of God if we are to grow in godliness.
In Titus 1:1 Paul refers to “the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness.” We cannot grow in godliness without the knowledge of this truth. This truth is to be found only in the Bible, but it is not just academic knowledge of Bible facts; it is spiritual knowledge taught by the Holy Spirit as He applies the truth of God to our hearts.
There is a type of religious knowledge that is actually detrimental to training in godliness. It is the knowledge that puffs up with spiritual pride. The Corinthian Christians had this kind of knowledge. They knew that an idol was nothing and that eating food sacrificed to an idol was a matter of spiritual indifference. But they did not know about their responsibility to love their weaker brother. Only the Holy Spirit imparts that type of knowledge —the type that leads to godliness.
It is possible to be very orthodox in one’s doctrine and very upright in one’s behavior and still not be godly. Many people are orthodox and upright, but they are not devoted to God; they are devoted to their orthodoxy and their standards of moral conduct.
Only the Holy Spirit can pry us loose from such positions of false confidence, so we must sincerely look to Him for His training ministry as we seek to grow in godliness. We must spend much time in exposure to His Word, since it is His means of teaching us. But this exposure must be accompanied by a sense of deep humility regarding our ability to learn spiritual truth and a sense of utter dependence upon His ministry in our hearts.
PRACTICE AND MORE PRACTICE
The third irreducible minimum in the training process is practice. It is practice that puts feet to the commitment and applies the teaching of the coach. It is practice, where the skill is developed, that makes the athlete competitive in his sport. And it is the practice of godliness that enables us to become godly Christians. There is no shortcut to Olympic-level skill; there is no shortcut to godliness. It is the day in and day out faithfulness to the means that God has appointed and that the Holy Spirit uses that will enable us to grow in godliness. We must practice godliness, just as the athlete practices his particular sport.
We must practice the fear of God, for example, if we are to grow in that aspect of godly devotion. If we agree with the Reverend Martin that the essential elements of the fear of God are correct concepts of His character, a pervasive sense of His presence, and a constant awareness of our responsibility to Him, then we must work at filling our minds with the biblical expressions of these truths and applying them in our lives until we are transformed into God-fearing people.
If we become convinced that humility is a trait of godly character, then we will frequently meditate upon such Scripture passages as Isaiah 57:15 and 66:1-2, where God Himself extols humility. We will pray over them, asking the Holy Spirit to apply them in our lives to make us truly humble. This is the practice of godliness. It is not some ethereal exercise. It is practical, down-to-earth, and even a bit grubby at times as the Holy Spirit works on us. But it is always rewarding as we see the Spirit transforming us more and more into godly people.
USING THE WORD OF GOD
It is evident that the Word of God plays a crucial role in our growth in godliness. A prominent part of our practice of godliness, therefore, will be our time in the Word of God. How we spend that time varies according to the method of intake. The Navigators use the five fingers of the hand as mental pegs on which to hang the five methods of intake of the Word of God: hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating. These methods are important for godliness and need to be considered one by one.
The most common method of scriptural intake is hearing the Word of God taught to us by our pastors and teachers. We are living in a day when this method tends to be lightly regarded by many people as a somewhat ineffective means of learning spiritual truth. This is a serious error. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself has given to His church people who are gifted to teach us the truths of His Word, to remind us of the lessons we are prone to forget, and to exhort us to constancy in application. We need to heed those whom He has given to us for this purpose.
None of us ever becomes so spiritually self-sufficient that he does not need to hear the Word taught by others. And most of us do not have the ability or the time to search out on our own the “whole will of God” (Acts 20:27). We need to sit under the regular teaching of a man gifted by God and trained to expound the Word of God to us.
One reason the hearing of the Word of God has fallen into such low esteem is that we do not obey God’s teaching in Revelation 1:3: “Blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it.” Too often today we listen to be entertained instead of instructed, to be moved emotionally rather than moved to obedience. We do not take to heart what we hear and apply it in our daily lives.
We present-day Christians are hardly different from the Jews of Ezekiel’s time, of whom God said, “My people come to you, as they usually do, and sit before you to listen to your words, but they do not put them into practice” (Ezekiel 33:31). God goes on to tell Ezekiel that to his audience, Ezekiel is nothing more than a singer with a beautiful voice who plays an instrument well. To the Jews he was just an entertainer, because they had no intention of putting into practice what they heard.
The type of hearing of the Word that God commends is illustrated by the Berean Christians, who “received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11). They did not hear and forget; they did not listen just to be entertained. They realized that eternal issues were at stake, so they listened, studied, and applied. Considering they probably did not have their own personal copies of the Scriptures, their studying of Paul’s teaching is remarkable. It is a rebuke to us today, who scarcely remember beyond the church door what we heard in the sermon on Sunday morning.
We have already considered briefly the thought expressed in Titus 1:1 —it is the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness. But that is not all the verse says. In the same passage, Paul says he is an apostle of Jesus Christ for the purpose of furthering the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness. Paul was called to be a teacher for the express purpose of promoting faith and godliness among God’s elect. God called Paul to that task, and He calls pastors and teachers today for the same purpose. But if we are to profit from their ministry so that we grow in the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness, we must hear their word as the Berean Christians heard Paul: with great eagerness and an intent to obey.
The second method of scriptural intake is reading the Bible ourselves. Through Bible reading we have the opportunity to learn directly from the Master Teacher, the Holy Spirit. As helpful and profitable as it is to learn from the teaching of others, there is an unmatched joy in having the Holy Spirit speak to us directly from the pages of His Word.
We have already seen that Enoch walked with God, which implies that he enjoyed personal communion with God. Bible reading enables us, too, to enjoy communion with God as He speaks to us from His Word, encouraging us, instructing us, and revealing Himself to us. It was said of Moses that “the LORD would speak to [him] face to face, as a man speaks with his friend” (Exodus 33:11). Today we do not have that particular privilege, but we can enjoy the same effect as God speaks to us during our times of personal Bible reading. Our practice of godliness would be very incomplete without a regular Bible reading program of some type.
A second value of Bible reading is the opportunity to gain an overall perspective of the entire Bible. No pastor could —or should —preach through the Bible in the short space of a year or two. But all of us can read through the entire Bible in a year. Many Bible reading plans are available to help us do so. As we read through the Bible, the various pieces of spiritual truth begin to fit together. The book of Hebrews doesn’t make sense unless one is at least knowledgeable of the Old Testament priesthood and sacrificial system. The New Testament writers’ many allusions to the Old Testament would remain a mystery unless we had read the passages in their original setting. The doctrine of original sin through Adam, as taught by Paul in Romans 5, cannot be understood apart from a knowledge of the events recorded in Genesis 3.
Without a reading program of the entire Bible, we would be not only spiritually ignorant but also spiritually impoverished. Who can fail to learn from Abraham’s faith, David’s love for God, Daniel’s righteousness, and Job’s trial? How can we become godly without the heartbeat of the Psalms and the practical wisdom of Proverbs? Where better can we learn of both the majesty and the faithfulness of God than from the prophet Isaiah? If we are not periodically reading through the Bible, we will miss these outstanding passages in the Old Testament as well as others in the New Testament.
All Scripture is profitable for us, even passages that seem so difficult to understand. We can choose from among various Bible reading programs to help us maintain consistency in our reading and understand the more difficult passages.
The third method of Bible intake is studying the Scriptures. Reading gives us breadth, but study gives us depth. The value of Bible study lies in the opportunity to dig more deeply into a passage or topic than we can do in Bible reading. Greater diligence and mental intensity are required for study, in which we analyze a passage, compare Scripture with Scripture, ask questions, make observations, and finally organize the fruit of our study into some kind of logical presentation. The discipline of writing down our study material helps to clarify our thoughts. All of this strengthens our knowledge of the truth and helps us grow in godliness.
Every Christian should be a student of the Bible. The Hebrew Christians were rebuked because although they should have been able to teach others, they still needed to be taught the elementary truths of God’s Word. They needed milk, not solid food! Unfortunately, many of us are like those Christians.
There are numerous methods of Bible study available for every level of student. There are certain principles that should be applied, however, whatever method is used. These principles are set forth in Proverbs 2:1-5. Note the verbs that have been italicized for emphasis:
My son, if you accept my words
and store up my commands within you,
turning your ear to wisdom
and applying your heart to understanding,
and if you call out for insight
and cry aloud for understanding,
and if you look for it as for silver
and search for it as for hidden treasure,
then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God.
The verbs that are italicized give us an idea of the principles involved in Bible study, such as,
The results of applying these principles in Bible study are located in verse 5: “Then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God”, two of the concepts essential in our devotion to God. If we are to train ourselves to be godly, we must give Bible study priority in our lives.
Where can we find the time for quality Bible study? I once heard that question asked of a chief of surgery in a large hospital. Twenty-five years later, his answer continues to challenge me. He looked his questioner squarely in the eye and said, “You always find time for what is important to you.” How important is the practice of godliness to you? Is it important enough to take priority over television, books, magazines, recreation, and a score of activities that we all somehow find time to engage in? Once again we are brought face-to-face with that key element of training we discussed earlier: commitment.
Memorization of key passages is a fourth method of scriptural intake. Without doubt the classic verse for Scripture memorization is Psalm 119:11: “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” The word that is translated in verse 11 as “hidden” is elsewhere translated as “stored up,” a phrase which is more descriptive of the actual meaning. In Proverbs 7:1, for example, Solomon says, “My son . . . store up my commands within you”(emphasis added), and in Proverbs 10:14 he says, “Wise men store up knowledge” (emphasis added). In Psalm 31:19 David speaks of the goodness that God has stored up for those who fear Him. From these passages it is clear that the central idea of the psalmist in Psalm 119:11 was that of storing up God’s Word in his heart against a time of future need —a time when he would encounter temptation and would be kept from that temptation by the Word of God.
But the Word of God stored in the heart does more than keep us from sin, it enables us to grow in every area of the Christian life. Specifically for our practice of godliness, it enables us to grow in our devotion to God and in the Godlike character that makes our lives pleasing to Him.[8]
The fifth method for taking in God’s Word is meditation. The word meditate as used in the Old Testament literally means to murmur or to mutter and, by implication, to talk to oneself.[9] When we meditate on the Scriptures, we talk to ourselves about them, turning over in our minds the meanings, the implications, and the applications to our own lives.
Though we use Psalm 119:11 in connection with Scripture memorization, it may be more supportive of the practice of meditation. The psalmist says God’s Word was stored up in his heart —his inmost being. Bare memorization gets the Scriptures into only our minds. Meditation on those same Scriptures opens our understanding, engages our affections, and addresses our wills. This is the process of storing up the Word in our hearts. But if the process of storing up Scripture applies primarily to meditation, it is also true that memorization is the first step to meditation. Meditation on the Word of God is commanded in Joshua 1:8 and commended in Psalm 1:2. Both verses speak of meditation day and night, not just when we are having our quiet time. It is impossible to meditate on Scripture day and night without some form of Scripture memorization.
In chapter 1 we defined godliness as devotion to God that results in a life pleasing to God. If we had to select one chapter of the Bible that portrays the heartbeat of the godly person, it would probably be Psalm 119. In all but two of its 176 verses, the writer relates his life to the Word of God and to the God behind that Word. It is always Your laws, Your statutes, Your desires, Your precepts, and so forth. To the psalmist, the law of God was not the cold commands of some far-off deity but the living Word of the God whom he loved, sought, and yearned to please.
Walking with God involves communion with God. His Word is absolutely necessary and central to our communion with Him. Pleasing God requires knowing His will —how He wants us to live, what He wants us to do. His Word is the only means by which He communicates that will to us. It is impossible to practice godliness without a constant, consistent, and balanced intake of the Word of God in our lives.
The intake of the Word is our foundational means of practicing godliness, but it is not our only means. In the next chapter we will consider how to develop a devotion to God. In subsequent chapters we will consider how to grow in some individual traits of godly character, including a look at some practical steps we can take in the practice of godliness.
THE NATURE OF TRAINING
Paul said, “Train yourself to be godly.” You and I are responsible to train ourselves. We are dependent upon God for His divine enablement, but we are responsible; we are not passive in this process. Our objective in this process is godliness —not proficiency in ministry, but God-centered devotion and Godlike character. We do want to develop proficiency in ministry, but for training in godliness we want to focus on our relationship with God.
Training in godliness requires commitment, the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit through His Word, and practice on our part. Are we prepared to accept our responsibility and make that commitment? As we ponder that question let us remember that “godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:8) and “godliness with contentment is great gain” (6:6).