(the following is an adaptation of a talk I gave recently at a women’s retreat)
I grew up in the church culture of the southern part of the U.S. in the 80’s and 90’s. I like to joke that I lived in the buckle of the Bible Belt. Though I was raised in a church that I loved and remember fondly, woven into my memory and threaded into my conduct as a young Christian was the idea that godliness was reduced to the absence of certain behaviors. If you dressed modestly, abstained from vices such as alcohol or cigarettes, and avoided gambling and dancing, then you were on the fast track to holiness. I looked at the external indicators of my life and decided the Lord must be extra proud of me. I relished the “good girl” image I portrayed while missing the monster of pride that lived in my heart. I was a Pharisee in saddle shoes and French braids.
The thing is, merely avoiding certain behavior isn’t enough. Jesus always addressed the motive behind the behavior (see Matthew 5-7). The apostle Paul frequently followed up his commands to flee sin with exhortations to pursue godliness (see 2 Tim. 2:22). And real godliness is not something that can be measured by just external behavior. Lots of people have moral behavior. But godliness flows from the heart, and it begins with God.
When I was a teenager, my family began sitting under a different type of teaching. I learned that controlled behavior couldn’t mask what was growing wildly out of control in my heart. I was behaving to appear holy, not because Jesus had already made me so. Godliness isn’t something you pursue to be saved but something you pursue because you already are saved. And it isn’t just for the sake of good behavior or having good answers for Bible trivia but for becoming like God. Performance and godly obedience are not the same thing.
If I wanted to pursue genuine godliness, then I had to pursue the One from whom all godliness is sourced. And that would take more than a behavioral change. It would require me to make a study of God, and that was where real heart change could occur. It would force me to murder my pride. Loving the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength meant I had to know the One I claimed to worship, and the only way to do that was through God’s chosen means of revelation: the Word. Knowing God as He revealed Himself in Scripture continues to change my life in the best way possible.
Decades later, I observe the church culture and see that a shift has occurred in response to the legalism that ruled many churches of our recent past. We look at the Pharisaical expectations to hide sin and portray completely untarnished lives, and we want to avoid that at every cost. After all, it was the legalistic religious leaders that Jesus was hardest on in the gospel narratives. He called them white-washed tombs: outwardly polished and clean but full of decaying, rotting flesh on the inside. Nobody wants to be those guys, right? So we’ve leaned hard in the other direction avoiding regulations and rules that make believers feel like their obedience is in any way performance-driven or a means to salvation. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Jesus plus nothing.
Lately, though, I watch the current church culture encourage a more relaxed version of Christianity that encourages an emotional formation of theology rather than Scriptural one and fosters an atmosphere of leniency rather than obedience. The pursuit of godliness has been lost within the fear of legalism, and as a result, the attitude toward spiritual disciplines is often a disdainful one. Biblical illiteracy in the church is as much a problem now as it was when I was a child, and I am afraid that what we’ve fed in our attempts to avoid legalism is something just as dangerous to the believer’s heart: laziness.
Avoiding certain behaviors doesn’t make you holy, but ignoring the Word of God won’t make you holy either. Waiting until you feel like opening your Bible or until you are somehow inspired to do so will not feed your faithfulness to Christ. In this Americanized Christian sub-culture where we believe anything that’s worth doing shouldn’t require much of us, don’t let anyone convince you that the pursuit of godliness is something to be avoided. Paul uses plain words in 1 Timothy: “Rather, train yourself in godliness, for the training of the body has a limited benefit, but godliness is beneficial in every way, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance” (1 Tim. 4:7-8).
Avoiding certain behaviors doesn’t make you holy, but ignoring the Word of God won’t make you holy either. Share on XTraining requires a regimen. Spiritual disciplines like daily Bible intake and prayer are tools for growing in godliness—for becoming like God. Can we use them with cold hearts or with prideful motives? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean we should avoid them or wait until we have perfectly obedient attitudes to use them. No, fixing our gaze on the Lord everyday has long term benefits on our lives. It has an eternal benefit! We learn to obey God with a contrite heart by looking at Him every day. Not to become a better version of ourselves but to sluff off the old man and learn to live as those who belong to God.
If we’re not pursuing godliness, it’s likely that we’re moving away from it. Our flesh would like us to believe we’re safe in standing still, but we don’t live on neutral ground. Don Carson explains it well:
People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated1.
We can’t know God apart from His Word. Starving ourselves from the study of Scripture will not aid us in avoiding legalism. It will only feed laziness and prevent us from growing in all spiritual wisdom and the knowledge of God (Col. 1:9-12). If you’ve resisted adopting spiritual disciplines because you want to avoid legalism, I’d encourage you to do a little heart examination. Make sure that you aren’t masking laziness with pseudo-fear of legalism. Sometimes it’s not actually a fear of being self-righteous. Sometimes it’s just a resistance to the act of sitting down to read the Bible and pray. Call it what it is. And then give your heart the opportunity to feast on the sustaining Word of God each day so that you can be nourished by the words of the faith (1 Tim. 4:6).
If you come from a legalistic background, motive really matters here, but my encouragement is the same. Regularly examine your heart when you approach the Word, but keep approaching the Word. Do so as a means to know the God you worship, to become like Him, to obey Him because you love Him. That is how to avoid legalism. Keep your eyes on Christ. Remember that He bought you access to the Father at the cross, so draw near with confidence and hold on to your confession of hope in the gospel (see Heb. 10). Take advantage of the ability to draw near to Him. Study Him to know Him and love Him and to grow in reflecting His image to the world around you.
Whether you err on the side of legalism or laziness, the answer will always be to go to the Word and fix your gaze on Christ.
1(D.A. Carson, For the Love of God, Vol.2)
Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Gigi McAdams says
This is amazing! So well stated and backed up with scripture. I love the Don Carson quote. I’m printing this out to remind myself that schedules and order are needed in my life to override my laziness. The Word, everyday!
And thank you