Pastor Tim continues our series “Follow Me” thinking about our calling to godliness, what that has to do with legalism and, maybe, even a little discussion of ballpark nachos. We’ll sort it all out by going to James 1:21-25.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Tim uses the metaphor of a road trip and packing a car to illustrate how we can lose focus on Jesus while trying to add “good things” to our lives. What are some modern examples of how we might inadvertently push Jesus out of the center of our lives while still trying to be “good people”?
The sermon distinguishes between aiming to be “good” versus aiming to be “God’s.” How do these two different motivations—seeking praise or avoiding punishment versus being genuinely shaped by Christ—lead to different outcomes in our spiritual lives, and how can we identify which motivation is driving our actions?
James describes looking into “the perfect law, the law of liberty” as a two-way mirror that ultimately reveals Jesus rather than only our own shortcomings. How does this understanding of God’s law differ from a legalistic approach, and what difference does it make in how we live out our faith day to day?
The nachos illustration suggests that true godliness should permeate our entire lives rather than being a superficial coating. What does it look like practically for God’s grace to “drench” all aspects of our daily lives—work, relationships, and decisions—and how would that change the way we approach them?
“Cleanliness is next to godliness” is reframed as the internal cleansing Jesus provides. How might recognizing that God is transforming us from the inside out free us to reflect His love more naturally, rather than forcing an outward appearance of piety or simply checking off a religious list?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening and welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be with you again tonight as we dig into our series, Follow Me. Tonight we’re going to consider godliness.
And if you’ve been joining me the last few weeks as we’ve been going through this series, you might think, Tim, what does that, how does that differ from what we’ve been talking about? Because we’ve been talking about what it looks like to follow Jesus and to be more like him. Isn’t that godliness? And yet, as we’ve been following this list that Peter provides in 2 Peter 1, verse 6, he mentions godliness separately. So I think it’s important that we pause and reflect on what it looks like specifically to be godly. So let’s go ahead and come before our God in prayer, and then we’ll dig right in. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your goodness and your love. Thank you for being with us, for sending your Son that we would be able to follow him, and most of all be redeemed by him. Thank you for sending your Spirit to give us strength to do the things that you’ve called us to do. And tonight, as we reflect on what it is like to be godly, what it is that you want us to be, Lord, would you encourage us as we look to your love, and we see that love being poured out for us, even as you call us to show that love to others around the world. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
If we wanted to boil down where we’re going tonight into a simple question, it’d be something like this. How should we organize our lives? How should we prioritize them?
We began tonight, much like we have for this whole series, with scenes of travel, of going on a road trip. If you’ve ever been on a road trip, if you drive someplace to go on an adventure, you see all those scenes, but of course, before you go, you have to pack the car. And you load up all your supplies, you put all your clothes into the luggage, and you take off. And then you come to the end of the trip, and somehow it seems like all those things that fit neatly into the car at the beginning of the trip just don’t fit as well. Those suitcases are bulging with the clothes that previously were nicely folded in them. And maybe along the way, as you stopped, you picked up a souvenir here, and bought a piece of furniture at the flea market there, and suddenly that car is really full, and as you try to figure out how to get the suitcases in to head home, you have to reorganize. And so you pull everything out, and you start putting things back into the car. Put some stuff over here, and you tuck some things over there, and you get some things under the seats, and everything is back in place, and you go, ah, that’s great. Until you realize you forgot something. You used one of the seats that someone needs to ride in to get home to hold stuff, and it looks really nice and neat and tidy, but you can’t fit all of the people that need to return. Or that really neat little table you picked up at the flea market is still staring at you across the parking lot. You forgot to put it back in, and you have to pull everything back out.
In our lives, as we think about even what it looks like to follow Jesus, one of the big risks for us is that we start pulling out the things that are bad, and trying to put in things that we think are good, or even things that are good, and we get everything in. We have all this stuff that we think is good, and we’re going to be good people, and we’re going to just succeed now in our mission to follow Jesus, and then we look over and we see something over there that isn’t in the car, and that’s Jesus. We said we want to follow him, but we’ve lost the center of what it is that God has called us to do, which is to follow him. So how do we organize our lives?
Well, Peter says that a centerpiece of this is godliness. I think it’s not a coincidence that after we’ve looked at things like steadfastness and patience, but before we arrive at love at the end of the list, Peter stops and says we need to be godly.
The word he uses there is one that doesn’t show up a lot in the New Testament. There’s a reason for this. The word was the same word used by the Greeks and the Romans to refer to their religious activities. It was often avoided by early Christians, much for the same reasons today you’ll hear someone say, well, I’m not religious. I follow Jesus, but I’m not religious. Or maybe someone who isn’t a believer says, maybe you’ve said this, I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual. I believe there’s a higher being out there. But we don’t want that term religious, because what do we think of when we think of that term? People often think of a list of things to accomplish. Another way this word could be translated that fits right into our stereotype is pious. We think of these people that are neat and tidy and look like they have everything under control.
Maybe we think of some picture from the 19th century of a tall, steepled, white church with everyone dressed in their Sunday best looking very strict and proper. We think, well, if I want to say that I have a relationship with Jesus, I’m not going to say I’m religious. I am following Jesus.
This word shows up here, and it’s important, because while that’s the stereotype and that’s the problem, and that was the problem in those days that someone might hear Peter say it and think, oh, so Peter’s basically saying, okay, I take out Zeus or Athena or whatever God I happen to be following, and now I follow Jesus instead, but I still follow all those standardized ritualistic practices that I do to make sure that people know I’m religious. That’s the danger, but Peter doesn’t want to let go of what’s important, which is that we actually focus on and we direct our attention to our God.
This term that’s translated religious or godly or pious, if we look at the Greek translation of the Old Testament that Peter would have known well, it’s also the term used to translate fear of God, fear of the Lord.
We talked about that a number of months ago in our series, Proverbially Speaking, that there’s this fear that we’re called to in the Proverbs, a fear of the Lord, not a trembling terror from God, but rather a recognition of who he is, a desire to do what’s pleasing to him, because he’s the God of the universe. And as we do that, we talked about how we start to understand more about who he is and how he loves us, because we understand more about his holiness.
I think Peter here wants us to keep that in mind, too, this holiness, this call to be holy, this call to care, to actually know that the things that God says are important are important. So not religious in that bad stereotypical sense, but yes, religion in the sense of actually caring about what God cares about.
Jesus’ call, we should note, was to follow him, not to achieve certain things, and that’s the critical difference here that frames this discussion, that frames what it means to be pious in a pleasing sense to God, that talks about godliness, that we’re following him, that we’re not attempting to complete a scorecard.
James talks about that in James 1, verse 21 and following. He says, “Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
We often think that what we’re trying to achieve is to be good people. I remember a number of years ago when I was teaching a class on world religions, we came to the section on Christianity, and I asked the students a question. What is Christianity really about? What is it that someone’s supposed to do as a Christian? And the answer consistently was, be a good person.
And James is talking about something profoundly different than just being a good person. It might sound like that’s what he’s saying, but if you notice, he centers it on this phrase, the implanted word. What’s the implanted word? The implanted word is the fullness of God’s revelation that he has promised from the prophets on to write on our very hearts. It’s the work of the Spirit working in our lives so that when he says that we should be doers of that word, he’s not talking about doers of a list of quote-unquote religious things so that people say how pious we are, but rather he’s talking about looking at what the Spirit is doing in our lives and how he helps us to see God’s word, and through that reflecting who God is, that kind of doer of the word, of that implanted word that God writes in our hearts.
That brings us to a question that’s really important for us to ask ourselves. Am I aiming to be good, or am I aiming to be God’s? Because so often when we think of these lists of virtues, and we’ve been going through this list of virtues that Peter talks about showing up in the lives of a Christian, we’re aiming to be good. We’re aiming to be that good person, someone who people praise. Oftentimes that’s why we do it. We want people to say, isn’t Tim a good person? Isn’t he great? Isn’t he wonderful? Maybe you want that. You want people to look at you and think of you as a good person.
Or maybe we do it out of fear of punishment. We start to make bargains in our heads with God. Maybe you’ve done this. We say, well, God, if I just do these things, I know you have these things in your word and your law. If I just do these things, then will you answer my prayer that I’m praying? We do it out of fear that either God isn’t going to give us what we want if we don’t do things, and we don’t provide enough of our end of the bargain, or that maybe God’s just going to zap us and punish us if we don’t.
Whether we’re doing it for people’s praise or we’re doing it out of fear, what that really comes down to in the end is legalism. It ends up being just, how can I fulfill the law? It’s amazing how quickly we can go from God’s grace and talking about how he has written his law in our hearts, that his spirit is transforming us from the inside out, to suddenly going back to a moralistic checklist.
We read a passage like James chapter 1, and he talks about being doers, and we think, okay, I’m going to go be a doer, and it becomes all about doing things for one of those reasons, to be praised or to avoid punishment.
But what is he really talking about with this implanted word? It’s an awareness of God being in every part of our lives, that as we do everything we do, that we are just drenched in the goodness of God. That implanted word, that revelation of God’s word, including, most importantly, the coming of the very Son of God into the world to save us, is right there drenching every act that we do.
It’s been an interesting year, and one of the things that we obviously are missing this year is the opportunity to go to Busch Stadium and see the Cardinals play. Or maybe you’re watching from somewhere else and you’re thinking of your own team, you really should still want to see the Cardinals play. But in any case, there’s lots of wonderful things about the experience at a ballpark, and part of it’s just the excitement of the team playing, especially if they win. There’s all the other fans who are excited, there’s just the magnificence of the giant building and maybe the different awards, and they’re hanging, and all that sort of stuff. But of course, a very important part of that experience is the wonderful baseball ballpark food. Yes, it’s too expensive, but it tastes so good. For example, let me show you this excellent presentation of nachos with cheese.
Now, I love nachos and cheese. Wherever I go that you can get those really good ballpark-style or festival-style nachos and cheese, I just cannot resist them. But if you appreciate them like I do, you know that there’s a critical difference between good nachos and cheese and not-so-good ones, and it comes down to how that cheese is spread out.
All the nacho chips are standing upright, and that’s so important. This is essential for good nachos, because as the nacho cheese sauce is poured on top, that sauce just comes down and drips over all the chips and just soaks them up, drenches them in that cheesy goodness.
But what about bad nachos? Well, those are the ones where they’re all sitting flat and there’s that wonderful cheese and you eat that layer of cheesy nachos and underneath there are just dry tortilla chips sitting there, just staring at you, and you eat them and they’re dry tortilla chips. There’s none of that cheesy goodness left. All the jalapenos are gone, the nacho cheese sauce is gone, and it feels like something’s missing. These nachos were not genuinely transformed into good nachos.
So often our life is that way. We try to be a good person, so we have this outward drenching of what appears to be godliness, but it isn’t permeating our lives, because it’s not focused on that implanted word, that work that God is doing in our lives.
And true godliness is not just a superficial cheese sauce on top of our life, it’s drenching down and permeating, because godliness is showing God’s work in our lives, and we see that when we go on to the next part of James, chapter 1. He says in verse 23, “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away, and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”
Let’s think about this a little bit here. Again, it could sound very legalistic. We hear, well, if you just do good things that God blesses you, and maybe you’re thinking, Tim, this sounds like legalism. But let’s think about this picture for a moment. He says that if we’re just a hearer and we’re not a doer of God’s word, it’s like looking into a mirror, and we look into that mirror and we see ourselves and we walk away and we forget.
I asked a question over the weekend about what all of you thought of the word godliness, what that reminds you of, and one really good answer, I thought, was that someone said that whenever he wants to remember what godliness is, he just looks in the mirror and thinks it’s the opposite of this, and that, I think, is something like what James has in mind here.
When we look in the mirror, we see ourselves, and so often, I think, we look in the mirror and we fall short of our own standards even, but we definitely fall short of God’s standards, and we look in the mirror and we see that imperfection, and it reminds us. One reason we might want to forget what we see in the mirror.
We go on to God’s law, James says, and we look at that, and we realize that we don’t meet God’s standards, that we don’t look like godliness. That’s not the picture that we’re often showing. God’s law is a constant reality check that reminds us that, yeah, I look at myself and I see myself, and godliness is the opposite of that.
What James says is more nuanced than simply a critique of us saying, you fall short, try to do better. Notice he refers to the perfect law in verse 25, and as commentators have reflected over the years on that phrasing, something interesting comes out, because it’s a very unusual phrase, the perfect law.
Of course, God’s law is perfect, all of his word is perfect, but why does James phrase it that way? And what it appears is that what James has in mind, much like many people that were writing during New Testament times, is when they refer to law, they’re referring to all of God’s revelation.
When he says the perfect revelation, what does he have in mind? He has in mind Jesus. Yes, he has in mind the law of God, but he has in mind the fulfillment of that law that Jesus has completed, how Jesus lived a perfect life. As he was calling his disciples, he was living without sin, he resisted temptation, he did not fall to it, and he went to the cross for us, that we might live as he took on our punishment for us.
That’s what James has in mind when he talks about the perfect law. God’s fullness of revelation, and all its splendor and glory.
And so as we look in that mirror, James has something more in mind than simply looking at God’s law and seeing how imperfect we are.
What do we do when we look into a mirror? We might say, oh, my hair’s sticking up, I need to comb that down, or my shirt’s crooked, let’s see if I can get that straight. And we do those sorts of things, because we don’t want to be a slob.
And when we look into God’s law, it shows those places that we’re imperfect.
But God’s mirror isn’t like our normal mirrors, it’s more like a two-way mirror, if you’ve ever experienced one of those.
If you think about a two-way mirror, you can only see yourself, you see your reflection, but someone else could be standing on the other side watching.
They’ve used these, for example, in stores to try to catch thieves, you’ll see them sometimes in places where teachers are being observed as they’re being trained.
And one interesting thing, if you’ve ever played with a two-way mirror, is that if you turn a light on in the observation room, suddenly you can see the person on the other side.
At first, you’re on the side that’s brighter, and all you can see is your own reflection, but that light flips on, and suddenly you can see whatever’s behind the mirror.
If we think about this mirror that we’re called to look into of God’s word, it’s sort of like that.
Because we’re looking at it, and we’re saying, oh yeah, my hair’s askew, my color’s crooked, oh boy, I fall so short. And even if I, at that point, then say, okay, I’m going to be a doer of the word now, I’m going to go do stuff, I fall so short. But then Jesus flips on the light from the other side of that mirror, and as we’re staring into that mirror trying to straighten ourselves, what do we see?
I no longer see my own reflection, you no longer see yours, but you see Jesus looking back in love.
And he looks at us, and we see everything that we are not, that opposite, that godliness, looking back at us.
And instead of trying to look at our own reflection and somehow perfect it, we find ourselves being shaped more and more by the one who’s looking at us.
We see Jesus’ fulfillment of the law for us. We see the one who best reflects the image of God looking back at us, that as we fall so short, even though we were made in God’s image, we see the one who was made in God’s image, who is the very God of the universe, who took on everything for us.
As we do that, it’s that drenching of God’s grace, it’s that wonderful cheese sauce that makes everything taste so good, drenching down into our lives, so that we’re not just getting that veneer of cheesy goodness, but we’re actually being made good.
Not all in this moment. Not good people like people often think, where, ah, this person doesn’t steal and doesn’t use bad language and goes to church on Sunday, but someone who is genuinely good, perfect in the eyes of God, far more than we can ever imagine.
That’s where Jesus is taking us to.
As we continue to look into that two-way mirror, and he keeps turning that light on so we see him and not ourselves, we become more and more like him throughout life, knowing what he will complete in eternity.
You can’t preach on godliness and not think of the old motto, cleanliness is next to godliness. That actually goes back at least to John Wesley. He mentions it in a sermon in the 18th century.
And over the years, it’s been used to promote all kinds of things, to justify things like buying soap. Novel idea. Soap’s a great thing. Keeping your house clean, keeping yourself clean. All these different things that are good things, but is cleanliness really next to godliness?
I think it is, but not in the sense that we think of. Those things are good, but they’re ultimately superficial.
What kind of cleanliness is really next to godliness is the cleanliness that we see when we look into Jesus and we realize that implanted word that he’s placed in us is cleaning us from the inside out.
That we’re not just that veneer of godliness, but he’s transforming us so that our entire lives are drenched by his grace, so that as we go out and do things, as we become doers of the word, it’s not out of a legalistic necessity, but it’s because he’s so permeated with everything that we do that we reflect his love to the world.
And we do it not trying to check off that list to avoid punishment. That’s not what James has in mind here.
James has in mind that we do it because as we are genuinely reflecting on who Jesus is, his love just comes out of us.
As we are genuinely being transformed by his spirit, his love pours out of us.
That as God’s drenching occurs, there’s no more of those dry tortilla chips in the bottom of our life, but just the wonderful marinated goodness of God’s work in our lives.
That’s what we show to the world.
So yes, cleanliness is next to godliness. The cleanliness that Jesus provides as he cleanses us is what brings forth the godliness we’re called to show the world.
Would you pray with me, please?
Father, thank you for your goodness. Goodness beyond anything that we could ever try to achieve by some standard of quote unquote being good people.
Lord, I think all of us, whether we’re believers tonight or we’re just struggling to figure out what we believe, we all fall into that trap. We’re trying to be good people. We want people to say we’re good people, but Lord, would you help us to turn away from just looking into that mirror, seeing ourselves? Would you help us to see the light that’s turned on behind that two-way mirror and to see Jesus instead?
Remember that the goodness that we’re called to show, the godliness we’re called to show is the godliness of Jesus that you bring out in our lives through your spirit.
Would you turn us away from any sense of legalism, any sense of just trying to fulfill a list of checkboxes and help us instead to just be drenched more in your grace and your goodness, the fullness of what you have revealed?
So as we go into the days ahead, we are godly, not because we’re forcing on just a little layer on top of our lives of something that looks good, but because you are working and transforming our hearts to be more like yours.
We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Well next week we continue. We actually wrap up our series at 7 p.m. on Monday night. We’re going to be thinking about love next week. That’s the end of Peter’s list, our kinds of love that we can show in our lives.
And I think it’s no mistake this comes at the end, because if we’re not being patient and steadfast, if we’re not reflecting on that implanted word we talked about tonight that God’s bringing out, He’s cleansing us and enabling us to show godliness, then we’re going to fail miserably at love.
But as we see all these things and we see God’s love in them, He enables us to love others. So I hope you’ll join me next week. This is going to be a wonderful, special conclusion to this series, and I do hope that you’ll be here next Monday night at 7 p.m.
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If there’s any way I can be praying for you this week, feel free to shoot me an email at the email address on screen or leave it in the comments so we can pray together as a group.
And likewise, if you have any comments or questions, anything that you’re wrestling with what we talked about here or otherwise, I’d love to hear from you again. You can leave in the comments or you can shoot me an email if you’d like it to be private. I would love to hear from you.
And I hope that you’ll join me again next week as we wrap up this series. In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week.
Remember as you look at the mirror of yourself throughout this week, that Jesus is flipping on that light, that the one whose true word is before you as you read the scriptures is looking at you with love, and he is the one who brings out the godliness that we can show even this week.
I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week. Thank you again for joining me.