Pursue Godliness
I want to talk to day about how we can be spiritually healthy. We'll come back to the first few verses later but for now just notice what he says in v6: '6If you put these instructions before the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound teaching that you have followed.' The first thing we need if we're to be spiritually healthy is to make sure we're being nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound teaching that we receive from God's word. But good food isn't enough. On its own it'll just make you fat. No you need to use the food productively. So he says: “Train yourself in godliness, 8for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. 9The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance.”
Training in godliness is something that begins when you first become a Christian and continues for the rest of your life.
That's because godliness is the sort of characteristic that needs constant work. You don't just reach a certain stage of godliness where you can sit back and coast along. It isn't like learning to ride a bike. No, training in godliness is a lifelong task for the Christian if we're to remain spiritually healthy.
Have you noticed how often a football or cricket commentator appears on TV, someone who used to be sleek and fit, but they've now developed a paunch or are looking a bit chubby in the cheeks. What's happened, you see, is that they've stopped training. You see it in those nostalgia games that we get every year with stars of the past dusting off their creams or their footy boots and trundling around the field trying not to make a fool of themselves. What those games show, apart from how age catches up with all of us, is that if we stop training we quickly lose our fitness and skill levels.
So Paul's warning Timothy here to keep up his training in godliness for the same reason. If we get out of training our fitness level, or in this case, our godliness, will fall off.
What is Godliness?
Well, what is godliness?
At its simplest, godliness is taking on God's character. It's imitating God. This has been the essence of godly living from the earliest times. The Old Testament law was premised on this injunction: “Be holy for I am holy.” In the New Testament it's the same. In Eph 4:24 God tells us to clothe ourselves “with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” In Col 3:12 we read: “As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”
The result of us believing in Christ is that Christ's Spirit comes and fills us, enabling us to bear fruit according to his nature. And what is that fruit? “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23gentleness, and self-control.” (Gal 5:22-23)
These are the sorts of characteristics that Paul's talking about when he talks about training ourselves in godliness: love, joy, peace, patience, compassion, humility, meekness. Later on in this letter he links godliness with contentment. In 6:6 he says godliness with contentment is great gain. Why? Because contentment indicates that we're willing to trust God to look after us whatever our circumstances; and godliness shows that we're preparing ourselves to meet him in his kingdom.
So if that's what we're aiming for, how are we going to achieve it?
Personal responsibility
The first thing to notice is that it involves personal responsibility. He says “Train yourself!” Do you remember those ads on TV for electronic machines that'd help you tone up your muscles? You connected probes to your muscles and the machine sent electric pulses through your skin to make your muscles contract, so you'd develop muscle tone without expending any actual effort. Wouldn't it be great if we could get the spiritual equivalent of one of those? Something that would automatically make us more godly. But that isn't how it works, is it? We actually have to practice being godly. The psalmist says “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; 2but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night.” Now this isn't new age meditation. You know, the eastern style of meditation where you pick a phrase and say it over and over again until your mind stops thinking about the troubles of the day and is freed up to connect with the universe. No, this is meditating on God's word; thinking about what he expects of us, working out what God is like, so we can imitate him; letting his word go deep into our subconscious. And having understood what he's like, and how he wants us to be, we can then work on those characteristics that fit with godliness.
Along with that we also need to be aware of the things in us that militate against godliness and work to get rid of them. Paul puts this in that passage I just mentioned from Colossians 3 about changing the way we dress ourselves. He says “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator” (Col 3:9-10) Putting on the nature of God doesn't just happen. It's something we do consciously, like taking off our dirty clothes and putting on clean ones, leaving our dirty clothes in the washing basket. It requires personal responsibility.
The Object is Personal Spiritual Growth.
The second thing to note is that this training, as with any sort of training, is aimed at growth in our personal spiritual life. He says to train yourself in godliness. I think it's interesting that those of us who've been through training for ministry, in an evangelical context particularly, have generally been well trained in ministry skills, in our knowledge of the Bible, in preaching and pastoral care, but I'm not sure we're all that well trained in developing our personal spiritual life. If we do well in that area it's probably due to our early training as a Christian. It's almost as if our Protestant heritage is so ingrained with the idea of faith being a personal matter that we avoid delving into the spiritual lives of those who are being trained.
But it's important that we continue training in godliness, aiming at personal spiritual growth. That is, growth in our fear of God, in our comprehension of the love of God and in our desire for the presence and fellowship of God. Paul's prayer for the Ephesians was that, being rooted and grounded in love, they might “have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that [they might] be filled with all the fullness of God.” It's interesting how, as you think about the leaders of the Church that you've come across, there'll be one who crops up here or there who seems to have had a deeper awareness of God, a deeper love for God and his people, a deeper devotion to God than the rest. But what does that say about the rest of us? It says to me that I need to keep up my training. It says to me that I need to be wary of equating ministry skills or ministry achievement with growth in godliness. It says I need to spend more time meditating on the love of Christ, enjoying his presence with me, enjoying my fellowship with him. And why? Because it will be of benefit to me now, in that it will help me both in my relationship with God and in my relationship with those among whom I minister, and (v8) because it will benefit me in the life to come, in that it'll prepare me for standing in the presence of God himself.
Commitment
The third thing to notice about training in godliness is that all training requires commitment. We regularly find this image of the long distance athlete pressing on to the end. "I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own." (Phil 3:12) “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” (Heb 12:1)
Paul uses the term training deliberately. He knows that being in training implies being committed. It means being prepared to put in the effort. I know a little bit about this. I go to the gym 3 or 4 times a week, first thing in the morning. But often when I wake up I have this discussion with myself. It goes something like this: “Well, I guess you should get dressed and go to the gym.” “On the other hand I could just stay here and sleep for another 30 minutes or so and maybe go later.” “Yes, but you know you probably wouldn't go later.” “But it's much more comfortable in bed and I don't really feel like I've got the energy to work out right now.” And so the conversation goes on until I drag myself out of bed and go off to the gym. And the only reason I get there in the end is that I'm committed to putting in the effort in order to stay fit, to put off as long as I can the inevitable effects of ageing. Well, the same principle applies to being godly people. We need to be committed to the task if we're to grow in godliness.
We need to press on to make it our own. We need to lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with perseverance the race set before us. We need to make every effort to support our faith with goodness, and knowledge, and self-control, and endurance, and godliness. That's what it means to be in training.
To be committed to the effort required to achieve our goal.
Focus
One of the things about being in training is that you have to be clear about your goals. You'll never have the commitment needed if you can't see where all your effort is leading. You'll never get anywhere in training if your mind isn't focussed on what you're working towards.
Look where Paul says our focus should be. V10: “For to this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all people.” Our focus, if we're to aim at godliness, has to be on the living God, the Saviour of all people. It seems obvious perhaps, but let me suggest that it isn't as easy in practice as it sounds. What happens in practice is that we human beings love to have programs and systems to help us develop godliness, and almost inevitably our focus shifts on to those systems and programs.
That's the sort of thing he's talking about in the first few verses of this chapter. It seems there was some sort of a combination of a Jewish desire to put aside anything that might stop people from focussing on God, and a Greek asceticism, related to the idea that the spiritual and the material worlds were opposed to each other.
We don't see exactly this sort of thing today; we don't have people forbidding marriage today, but we do have people who think that marriage doesn't matter. We also have others who want to change marriage into something other than a union between a man and a woman. Nor do we see many people promoting fasting as a means to godliness, though there is a bit of that around. But there are many who want us to find our spiritual fulfilment in ways other than those taught by God in his word. So the new age gurus will encourage people to try Eastern meditation, Reiki, Yoga, martial arts, not as physical exercise but as a means to spiritual connectedness, to attaining “the Truth of universal consciousness.”
This is a danger for Christians as well as for non-Christians. We're all part of this culture that's slowly throwing off the constraints of the past with its focus on absolute truth. It's very hard to resist the influence of our world as it pushes relativism and, in this context, “a spirituality without borders or confining dogmas/beliefs”.
Part of the error of liberal or “Progressive” Christianity is the idea that “the teachings of Jesus provide [only] one of many ways to experience the Sacredness and Oneness of life”.
No, what we need to focus on, if we're to grow in godliness, has to be on the living God. That is, on our relationship with God. Not on a set of rules, or a body of knowledge. It's no good being focussed on building up our knowledge about God. That'll just give us a false sense of security. You may have come across people whose theological credentials are impeccable yet whose manner of life, their approachability, or humility are the opposite of godly. People who are proud or patronising or arrogant rather than being warm, accepting, understanding of human weakness, humble about their own achievements. If we're focussed on God and on our relationship with him, it seems to me, we will only ever be humble and understanding and accepting of human weaknesses, because we'll be so aware of how far we fall short of God's standards and ever conscious of our dependence on God's grace and mercy.
Finally part of our training in righteousness includes using the gifts God has given us. He tells Timothy first to let no one despise his youth, then to set an example of godly living and finally to use the gifts God has given him, presumably in teaching and leading the church.
So the question today is this: are you working on your own personal spiritual walk with God? Are you training yourself to be more loving, more joyful, more peaceable, more patient, to show more compassion, more humility, to be more self-controlled, more content? Can you look back and see your progress in godliness over the years? If you can it should be an encouragement to keep training; to keep growing in your closeness to God. If you can't see that sort of growth then let it be a spur to you to pursue godliness, to get into training while you can; to get your focus back on the living God. And as part of your training are you using the gifts, developing the gifts, that God has given you for the church?
“Be Holy for I am Holy” says the Lord. “Train yourself in godliness, 8for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”