Fallen Nature and Ungodliness

Our Fallen Nature: The teaching of Jesus

It is difficult to understand those who cling to the doctrine of the fundamental goodness of human nature, and do so in a generation which has witnessed two devastating world wars and especially the horrors which occasioned and accompanied the second. It is even harder to understand those who attribute this belief to Jesus Christ. For he taught nothing of the kind. Jesus taught that within the soil of every man's heart there lie buried the ugly seeds of every conceivable sin -'evil thoughts, acts of fornication, of theft, murder, adultery, ruthless greed, and malice; fraud, indecency, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly.' All thirteen are 'evil things', and they come out of the heart of 'the man' or 'the men', every man. This is Jesus Christ's estimate of fallen human nature.

--From "Christ the Controversialist" (London: Tyndale Press; Downers Grove: IVP, 1970), pp. 139, 141.

The above is from a daily thought subscription I receive in my email. This one is from June 19 and I saved it to share on my blog at some point. I think it is relevant to some of the recent discussion about our sinfulness and it also seems relevant to chapter seven of "Respectable Sins (Confronting the sins we tolerate)" by Jerry Bridges. Chapter seven is entitled; Ungodliness. Words in italics are passages from this chapter.

Contrary to what we normally think, ungodliness and wickedness are not the same...Ungodliness describes an attitude toward God, while unrighteousness refers to sinful actions in thought, word, or deed. An atheist or avowed secularist is obviously an ungodly person, but so are a lot of morally decent people, even if they say they believe in God.

Ungodliness may be defined as living one's everyday life with little or no thought of God, or of God's will, or of God's glory, or of one's dependence on God. You can readily see, then, that someone can lead a respectable life and still be ungodly in the sense that God is essentially irrelevant in his or her life. We rub shoulders with such people every day in the course of 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...

Now, the sad fact is that many of us who are believers tend to live our daily lives with little or no thought of God. We may even read our Bibles and pray for a few minutes at the beginning of each day, but then we go into the day's activities and basically live as though God doesn't exist. We seldom think of our dependence on God or our responsibility to Him. We might go hours with no thought of God at all. In that sense, we are hardly different from our nice, decent, but unbelieving neighbor. God is not at all in his thoughts and is seldom in ours.

In another passage from this chapter, Bridges writes about our prayers:

...Do our prayers reflect a concern for God's will and God's glory and a desire that our lives will be pleasing to God? Or are our prayers more of a do-list we present to God, asking Him to intervene in the various health and financial needs of family and friends. Now, it is not wrong to bring these temporal needs 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 "divine bellhop." Our prayers are essentially human-centered, not God-centered, and in that sense we are ungodly to some degree.

For Paul, all of life is to be lived out in the presence of God with an eye to pleasing Him...Paul wrote to [the Corinthian church] "So, 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...Everything we do is to be done to the glory of God. That is the mark of a godly person.

What, then, does it mean to do all to the glory of God? It means that I eat and drive and shop and engage in my social relationships with a twofold goal. First, I desire that all that I do be pleasing to God. I want God to be pleased with the way I go about the ordinary activities of my day...Secondly, to do all to the glory of God means that I desire that all my activities of an ordinary day will honor God before other people...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, would your words and actions glorify God before them? Or would you perhaps be like the father of whom one of his children said, "If God is like my father, I want nothing to do with God?"

...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 we on the spectrum?

...Survey after survey continues to inform us that there is little difference between the values and behavior patterns of Christians and non-Christians. Why is this true? Surely it reflects the fact that we live so much of our ordinary lives with little or no thought of God, or of how we might please and glorify Him. It's not that we consciously or deliberately put God out of our minds. We just ignore Him. He is seldom in our thoughts.

I stated at the beginning of this chapter that I believe ungodliness is our most basic sin, even more basic than pride. 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. My wife and I were lamenting over two otherwise nice, decent people who are living openly immoral lives and relishing it. And then I reminded my wife and myself that "there but for the grace of God go we." Self-righteous pride, one of the more common of our acceptable sins, is a direct product of our ungodly thinking.

Bridges challenges his readers to honestly and prayerfully examine whether they are zealous or anemic in their desire for godliness because "growth in godliness has to begin with the recognition that we need to grow in that most fundamental area of life."

Bridges concludes the chapter with these words:

Above all, pray that God will make you more conscious of the fact that you live every moment of every day under His all-seeing eye. While you may not be mindful of Him, He is certainly aware of you and sees every deed you do, hears every word you say, and knows every thought you think (see Psalm 139:1-4). Beyond that, He even searches our motives. Let us then seek to be as mindful of Him as He is of us.

Over the last several years, my thoughts have become more God-centered. I want to continue to grow away from the man-centered message of how God can enhance my life and provide my personal fulfillment. I don't want to in any way use God for my personal agenda in life. I want to grow toward an all-consuming desire to live for His glory in even the most mundane areas of my life. I want to be salt and light. I want to point others to God with my life and my choices. I pray for humility -- no matter how God chooses to give it to me and knowing that learning humility is always uncomfortable and often extremely painful.

The result of living for God's glory will indeed bring fulfillment and it will enhance my life. But I don't want to be focused on me. I want to be more and more focused on God and His glory. This sometimes becomes a soap box of mine in conversations about certain authors and trends. But my eyes have been so opened to the ways we humans seek to elevate ourselves and in turn lower God. We do it so naturally, we don't even have to think about it when we do it. I don't want that thinking to contaminate my relationship with God. I want to serve God. I don't want Him to serve me.

The simple truth about my life is that if God never did another thing for me beyond what He has already done, I could serve Him for the rest of my life and still be in His debt. As I sit here typing, He gives me breath. Without Him, I am dust. But because He loves me, and only because He loves me, I am a child of the King. I want to live in the knowledge that I am not His because I was smart enough to choose Him. I am His because in His great mercy He chose me and drew me to Him. In return for His amazing love, I want to give my life for His glory.

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