"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." It might seem a strange thing to those of you who know Hugh and Dorothy well, to preach on the pursuit of godliness at their commissioning. I guess if you made a list of the godly people you know, they’d come high on the list. But I want to suggest today, that Paul uses the expression, "Train yourself in godliness" for good reason. You see, godliness is the sort of characteristic that we have to work at all the time. You don’t just reach a certain stage of godliness where you can then 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.
I’m reminded of those sports shows where you see sports men and women who have just retired from professional sport. Some of the guys on the Footy Show, or commentators at the Cricket. And so often what you find is that the footballer or cricketer who used to be sleek and fit, has suddenly developed a paunch or is 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 the TV channels set up every now and then 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 is warning Timothy to keep up his training in godliness for the same reason. Because if we get out of training our fitness level, or in this case, our godliness, will fall off.
What is Godliness
But before we think about how we can train ourselves in godliness, let’s first think about what godliness is.
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. Eph 4:24 tells us to clothe ourselves "with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." Similarly, 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 NRSV)
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, righteousness, holiness. And later on in this letter to Timothy he links godliness with contentment. In 6:6 he says godliness with contentment is great gain. Why? Because contentment indicates that the focus of our hope is on the living God, the Saviour of all people and that we’re willing to trust him to look after us whatever our circumstances.
So if that’s what we’re aiming for, how are we going to achieve it, according to 1 Tim 4?
Personal responsibility
The first thing to notice is the personal responsibility involved in pursuing godliness. He says "Train yourself." Have you seen those electronic machines you can buy for toning up your muscles? You connect probes to your muscles and the machine sends electric pulses into your skin to make your muscles contract, so you 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." If we spend time reading and meditating on God’s word, we’ll understand what God is like, so we can imitate him. And having understood what he’s like, and how he wants us to be, we can work on those characteristics that fit with godliness. What’s more we 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 in terms of 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. ... 12As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience." (Col 3:9-12 NRSV) 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 each day. 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 have been through training for ministry in an evangelical context particularly, have generally been well trained in ministry skills, in our knowledge of the Bible, perhaps 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 personal religion, that we avoid delving into the spiritual lives of those who are being trained. I wonder what it’s like at Kongwa. Perhaps the African culture is more up front about talking about people’s spiritual lives than ours is.
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] may 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 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 get into training a bit more. 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 we need to notice about training in godliness, is that all training requires commitment. (Phil 3:12 NRSV) "Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own." (Heb 12:1,14 NRSV) "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, ... 14Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord." (2 Pet 1:5-6 NRSV) "For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, 6and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness."
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. Some of you know that I go to the gym 2 or 3 times a week, usually in the morning. But you know, just about every morning 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." "But you know, if you don’t go today it’ll be twice as hard next time." 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 for a little while longer 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 that is 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. It’s no use joining a swimming squad if your aim is to be a rower. You’ll never get anywhere in training if your mind is focussed away from your area of endeavour. It was suggested a couple of years back that the reason André Agassi fell in the world tennis rankings was that he was more worried about his love life than his tennis. Well, you might want to argue about which was the more worthwhile focus, but the fact remains that when his focus was removed from tennis, his success rate fell off.
Well look at where Paul says our focus should be. In v10 he says: "For to this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior 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. You see, 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: He says: "the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, 2through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron. 3They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth." It isn’t exactly clear where this error arose, but it may have been 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.
So, these regulations about marriage and food have their origin in a desire for godliness, but in fact have lost their focus. They’ve moved from focussing on God and what he says about right living to regulations that in the end are no help at all. In fact, he says, they’re the work of deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons. How do we know that? Well, because they’ve taken what God has declared to be good, provided it’s taken with thanksgiving, and rejected it.
So our focus, 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, or personal presentation, their approachability, or humility, or ability to empathise 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.
So the question this afternoon is this: are you working on your own personal spiritual walk with God? Are you training yourself to be more loving, to be more joyful, to be more peaceable, to be more patient, to show more compassion, more humility, to be more self-controlled, to be more content? Can you look back and see your progress in godliness over the years? One of the good things about going regularly to the gym is when you look back to when you first started and you realise that you’ve actually made progress. You can lift more now than when you started. You can run faster or further. You can row for longer without feeling like you’re having a heart attack. But I wonder how often we look back on our spiritual life and notice the growth we’ve made in godliness. If we can see that sort of growth in our spiritual life it’ll be an encouragement to keep training. To keep growing in our closeness to God. If we can’t see that sort of growth then let it be a spur to us to pursue godliness, to get into training while we can. To get our focus back on the living God. To plug into the power of Jesus Christ. As Col 2 puts it: "holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God."
Hugh and Dorothy, this is a word for all of us, but especially for you as you return to Tanzania to continue your work for God there. Just as Paul reminded Timothy of the importance of his spiritual life, so for you, and for us in whatever area of ministry he’s given us, godliness is of the essence. "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."
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