There are ten duties that God
calls for which a godly man will conscientiously perform, and indeed these
duties may serve as so many other characteristics and touchstones to test our
godliness by:
1. A godly man will often be
calling his heart to account
He takes the candle of the Word
and searches his innermost being: ‘I commune with mine own heart: and my spirit
made diligent search’ (Psa. 77:6). A gracious soul searches whether there is
any duty omitted, any sin cherished. He examines his evidences for heaven. As
he will not take his gold on trust, so neither will he take his grace. He is a
spiritual merchant; he casts up the estate of his soul to see hat he is worth.
He ‘sets his house in order.’ Frequent reckonings keep God and conscience
friends. A carnal person cannot abide this heart-work; he is ignorant how the
affairs go in his soul. He is like a man who is well acquainted with foreign
parts but a stranger in his own country.
2. A godly man is much in private
prayer
He keeps his hours for private
devotion. Jacob, when he was left alone, wrestled with God (Gen. 32:24). So
when a gracious heart is alone, it wrestles in prayer and will not leave God
till it has a blessing. A devout Christian exercises eyes of faith and knees of
prayer.
Hypocrites who have nothing of
religion besides the frontispiece love to be seen. Christ has characterized
them: ‘they love to pray in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen’
(Matt. 6:5). The hypocrite is devout in the temple.
There everyone will gaze at him,
but he is a stranger to secret communion with God. He is a saint in the church,
but an atheist in private. A good Christian holds secret communication with
heaven. Private prayer keeps up the trade of godliness. When private holiness
is laid aside, a stab is given to the heart of religion.
3. A godly man is diligent in his
calling
He takes care to provide for his
family . The church must not exclude the shop. Mr. Perkins said: ‘Though a man
is endued with excellent gifts, hears the Word with reverence and receives the
sacrament, yet if he does not practise the duties of his calling, all is sheer
hypocrisy.’ Religion never did grant a patent for idleness: ‘there are some
which walk among you disorderly, working not at all; them that are such we
command and exhort by our Lord Jesus, that with quietness they work, and eat
their own bread’ (2 Thess. 3:11, 12). The bread that tastes most sweet is
obtained with most sweat. A godly man would rather fast than eat the bread of
idleness. Vain professing Christians talk of living by faith, but do not live
the calling. They are like the lilies of the field: ‘they toil not, neither do
they spin’ (Matt. 6:28). An idle person is the devil’s tennis ball, which he
bandies up and down with temptation till at last the ball goes out of play.
4. A godly man sets bounds to
himself in things lawful
He is moderate in matters of
recreation and diet. He takes only so much for the restoration of health as may
the better dispose him for God’s service. Jerome lived abstemiously; his diet
was a few dried figs and cold water. And Augustine in his ‘Confessions’ says: ‘Lord,
Thou hast taught me to go to my food as to a medicine.’ If the bridle of reason
checks the appetite, much more should the curbing-bit of grace do so. The life
of a sinner is brutish; the glutton feeds ‘without fear’ (Jude 12). And the
drunkard drinks without reason. Too much oil chokes the lamp, whereas a smaller
quantity makes it burn more brightly. A godly man holds the golden bridle of
temperance, and will not allow his table to be a snare.
5. A godly man is careful about
moral righteousness
He makes conscience of equity as
well as piety. The Scripture has linked both together: ‘that we might serve Him
in holiness and righteousness’ (Luke 1: 74,75). Holiness: there is the first table; righteousness: there is the
second table. Though a man may be
morally righteous and not godly, yet no-one can be godly unless he is morally
righteous. This moral righteousness is seen in our dealings with men. A good
man observes that golden maxim, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,
do even so to them’ (Matt. 7:12). There is a threefold injustice in business
matters:
(i) Using false weights: ‘the
balances of deceit are in his hand’ (Hos. 12:7). Men, by making their weights
lighter, make their sin heavier: “They make the ephah small’ (Amos 8:5). The
ephah was a measure they used in selling. They made the ephah small; they gave
but the scant measure. A godly man who takes the Bible in one hand dare not use
false weights in the other.
(ii) Debasing a commodity: ‘they
sell the refuse of the wheat’ (Amos 8:6). They would pick out the best grains
of the wheat and sell the worst at the same price as they did the best. ‘Thy
wine is mixed with water’ (Isa. 1:22). They adulterated their wine, yet made
their customers believe it came from the pure grape.
(iii) Taking a great deal more
than the commodity is worth. ‘If thou sell ought unto thy neighboour... ye
shall not oppress one another’ (Lev. 25:14). A godly man deals exactly but not
exactingly. He will sell so as to help himself, but not to damn another. His
motto is, ‘a conscience void of offence toward, and toward men’ (Acts 24:16).
The hypocrite separates these two
which God has joined together – righteousness and holiness. He pretends to be
pure but is not just. It brings religion into contempt when men hand out Christ’s
colours, yet will use fraudulent circumvention and, under a mask of piety,
neglect morality. A godly man makes conscience of the second table as well as
the first.
6. A godly man will forgive those
who have wronged him, but revenge is sweet to nature
A gracious spirit passes by
affronts, forgets injuries and counts it a greater victory to conquer an enemy
by patience than by power. It is truly heroic ‘to overcome evil with good’
(Rom. 12:21). Though I would not trust an enemy, yet I would endeavour to love
him. I would exclude him from my creed, but not from my prayer (Matt. 5:44).
Question: But does every godly
man succeed in forgiving, yes, loving his enemies?
Answer: He does so in a gospel
sense. That is :
(a) In so far as there is assent.
He subscribes to it in his judgment as a thing which ought to be done: ‘with my
mind I serve the law of God’ (Rom. 7:25).
(b) In so far as there is grief.
A godly man mourns that he can love his enemies no more: ‘O wretched man that I
am!’ (Rom. 7:24). Oh, this base cankered heart of mine, that has received so
much mercy and can show so little! I have had talents forgiven me, yet I can
hardly forgive pence.
(c) In so far as there is prayer.
A godly man prays that God will give him a heart to love his enemies. ‘Lord,
pluck this root of bitterness out of me, perfume my soul with love, make me a
dove without gall.’
(d) In so far as there is effort.
A godly man resolves and strives in the strength of Christ against all rancour
and virulence of spirit. This is in a gospel sense to love our enemies. A
wicked man cannot do this; his malice boils up to revenge.
7. A godly man lays to heart the
miseries of the church
‘We wept, when we remembered Zion’
(Psalm 137:1). I have read of certain trees whose leaves, if cut or touched,
the other leaves begin to contract and shrink, and for a time hang down their
heads. Such a spiritual sympathy exists among Christians. When other parts of
God’s church suffer, they feel themselves, as it were, touched in their own
persons. Ambrose reports that when Theodosius was terminally ill, he was more
troubled about the church of God than about his own sickness. When Aeneas would
have saved Anchises’ life, he says, ‘Far be it from me that I should desire to
live when Troy is buried in its ruins.’ In music there are two unisons; if you
strike one, you perceive that the other is stirring, as if it were affected.
When the Lord strikes others, a godly heart is deeply affected: ‘my bowels
shall sound like an harp’ (Isa. 16:11). Though things go well with a child of
God in his own private life and he lives in a house of cedar, he still grieves
to see things go badly with the public. Queen Esther enjoyed the king’s favour
and all the delights of the court, yet when a warrant portending bloodshed was
signed for the death of the Jews, she mourns and fasts, and ventures her own
life to save theirs.
8. A godly man is content with
his present condition
If provisions get low, his heart
is tempered to his condition. ‘Many,’ says Cato, ‘blame me because I am in
need, and I blame them because they cannot be in need.’ A godly man puts a
candid interpretation upon providence. When God brews him a bitter cup, he
says, ‘This is my diet drink: it is to purge me and do my soul good.’ Therefore
he is most content (Phil. 4:11).
9. A godly man is fruitful in
good works (Titus 2:7)
The Hebrew word for godly
(chasid) signifies ‘merciful’, implying that to be godly and charitable are of
equal force, one and the same. A good man feeds the hungry, clothes the naked: ‘He
is ever merciful’ (Psa. 37:26). The more devout sort of Jews to this day
distribute the tenth part of their estate to the poor and they have a proverb
among them, ‘Give the tenth, and you will grow rich.’ The hypocrite is all for
faith, nothing for works, like the laurel that makes a flourish but bears no
fruit.
10. A godly man will suffer
persecution
He will be married to Christ,
though he settles no other estate on him than the cross. He suffers out of
choice and with a spirit of gallantry (Heb. 11:35). Argerius wrote a letter to
his friend, headed: ‘From the pleasant gardens of the Leonine prison’. The
blessed martyrs who put on the whole armour of God blunted the edge of
persecution by their courage. The juniper tree makes the coolest shadow and the
hottest coal. So persecution makes the coal of love hotter and the shadow of
death cooler.
Thus a godly man goes round the
whole circle of religious duties and obeys God in whatever He commands.
Thomas Watson
The Godly Man’s Picture, pp.
168-173
