When God Calls It Sin – Part 2 – #1 Ungodliness

About this Series: “When God Calls It Sin” was originally a 5-week study I had lead in 2019 for an adult Sunday School class at my old church.

The outlines and lessons were based on Jerry Bridges’ book “Respectable Sins,” which I highly recommended for anyone serious about confronting the sins in their own hearts that are often overlooked.

For the blog, I am adapting my own notes and slides from the class and posting them almost verbatim. Since each class was an hour long, however, I will be dividing segments of each lesson into separate posts for easier reading.

Jump To:

• Part 1 (Introduction)
• Part 2 (Ungodliness || Unthankfulness || Anxiety || Frustration || Discontentment)
• Part 3 (Pride || Selfishness || Judgmentalism)
• Part 4 (Anger || Impatience & Irritability || Envy, Jealousy, & Related Sins)
• Part 5 (Sins of the Tongue || Wordliness)

Part 2 Segments:

1. > Ungodliness
2. Unthankfulness
3. Anxiety
4. Frustration & Discontentment

---

Ungodliness

The first of the “respectable” sins we are going to look at today is the sin of ungodliness. Let us begin by looking at two key passages of Scripture to set the framework for what follows:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age

Titus 2:11-12 LSB

Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and being subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

Ephesians 5:18b-21 LSB

The first thing to understand about ungodliness, I believe, is that it truly is the root of all other sins. Even more so than pride, because a godly person will not be prideful.

All of us, to some degree, are ungodly. You can be a nice, respectable citizen and still be an ungodly person; ungodliness simply describes an attitude we might have toward God.

Jerry Bridges defines “ungodliness” in a very helpful way: “Living one’s life with little or no thought of God, or of God’s will, or of God’s glory, or of one’s dependence upon God.“

We go through our daily lives, seemingly unaware that we are always in the presence of an all-seeing, all-hearing God; and he desires to have an intimate relationship with us. Godliness is that intimate relationship.

How much of your life do you live without any regard for God? It may not always be that we deliberately put God out of minds consciously. Instead, we tend to ignore Him and He rarely occupies our thoughts.

In the book, Bridges offers up a story of two young men in his town that decided to camp out in fron of an electronics store all night, in the middle of winter, in hopes of being one of the first to buy a new video game system. They had arrived at the store at 9:30 on a Saturday morning, waiting for the store to open the following morning.

Would any of us have such zeal for godliness? Are we that passionate about our pursuit of God as those boys were for their toys?

The goal of pursuing godliness is simply to grow more and more conscious and aware that every moment of our lives is lived out in God’s presence. That should be a goal of every Christian man, woman, and child.

In 1 Corinthians 10, the Apostle Paul writes that “whether, then, [we] eat or drink or whatever [we] do, do all to the glory of God.” That is the mark of a godly person: we drive, we shop, we eat, we drink, etc… all with the goal of bringing glory to God!

It is important to note here that simply living a moral life or regularly attending church services is no indication of your godliness. If God is seldom in your thoughts, then you are an ungodly person.

That is a radical statement, to be sure, but the Apostle Paul agrees:

For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh are not able to please God.

Romans 8:5-8 LSB

Paul clearly explains the danger of the sin of ungodliness: You can not please God by setting your minds on worldly things!

So please ask yourself how much of your life is lived with little or no thought of God.

When you get together with other believers, outside of church, how often do you talk about God? Or about what Jesus has done for you?

Do your normal conversations ever stray away from sports or current events or your own families to talk about God? Do you ever delight in just talking about the Lord with your brothers and sisters in Christ? Do you ever greet one another with hymns or songs of praise? Do you genuinely desire to worship with others any day of the week besides Sundays?

It is human nature to let our passions dominate our conversations and it is natural to want to talk about the things that we love and share them with others. If you love sports, you will talk about sports. If you love (or hate) politics, you will talk about politics.

But again we must ask the question: how often does Christ dominate your conversations outside of church?

Obviously, I am not arguing that 100% of our time needs to be spent on our knees in prayer and worship; God does grant us liberty to enjoy other activities as well. We also need to work for a living.

But we cannot think of God as a Sunday topic or a church topic. If He is not the root of all that you do, then you are, at least in part, guilty of the sin of ungodliness.

What Does Godliness Look Like?

We now have a definition of what ungodliness is and how it manifests in our lives and hearts. But what does it look like to live a godly life? If we are living our lives with a constant awareness that God is watching, how might our behavior change? Here are just a few practical examples:

• Treat the waitress or cashier with love.
• Be patient and kind to the customer support representatives on the phone.
• Avoid watching movies and TV shows, or reading books, that contain content that God clearly hates (we will return to this subject in part 5)
• Forgive the driver that cuts you off in traffic.

Or, as one of my favorite verses says, we can live a godly life by “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5 KJV)

In other words, we need to train ourselves to catch each thought and compare it with Scripture. It is not easy to think about thought before we think it, but that is what Paul has in mind here. As we live out our day-to-day, we must be conscious of each thought we entertain; ponder the ramifications of those thoughts as they relate to our obedience to Christ Jesus.

I am sure we all remember that old cliché: “What Would Jesus Do?” I believe a better question to ask ourselves is “What Would Jesus Think?” Sin begins in the heart, which drives our thinking, long before our actions reveal that thinking.

How would Jesus feel about my decision here? What would Jesus say to me about my current thought process? Would He approve of how I just reacted? Would Jesus watch this show with me? I hope you get the picture!

Before we wrap up with ungodliness and get to some questions, I would like us to watch this video as Paul Washer talks about holiness in the Church. Since holiness (or godliness) is the opposite of ungodliness, this should serve as a good reminder of how we should look.

Questions

• Do you think the world has a legitimate claim that many professing Christians are hypocrites?
• Have you ever gone through your daily activities without ever thinking about God? Do you think it had an impact on your life or those around you?
• 1 Timothy 4:7 tells us that we are to “train [ourselves] for the purpose of godliness.” What are some practical things we can do each day to train ourselves?

Next: Unthankfulness >>