What in the world does piety mean? This devotion looks at that meaning and how we can discipline ourselves to doing a better job at being pious.
Nuggets
- Piety comes from God by following His laws and commandments and imitating Him.
- A pious person truly tries to be perfect in following God’s laws and commandments.
- A pious person remains constant in devotion to God.
- A pious person knows that communication with God is essential.
I don’t remember in what sermon I ran across the word piety. Hmmm. Maybe I should have included the word piety in the Churchy Word series. It surely fits.
I quickly found that it is also translated to more familiar words. Let’s take a look.
Let's Put It into Context
The Holman Bible Dictionary says there are a couple of words/phrases used to translate piety.
- Fear of the Lord/reverence
- Righteousness/blameless
We’ve already looked at fear of the Lord — several times. We learned in What Does Fear of the Lord Mean? that the fear of the Lord means reverence and love, not terror.
In Finding Favor by Acknowledging God, we talked about our following God’s laws and commandments shows that we fear God. We said that, when we fear God and give honor to Him, we want to serve Him in What Constitutes an Obedient Disciple?
In What Does It Mean to Walk in the Spirit?, we said that walking in the Spirit should promote the fear of the Lord.
To read a related devotion, click the appropriate button below.
So, let’s take a look at some verses that are translated piety. Then we will look at righteousness. We’ve scratched the surface of the latter a couple of times but have never really dug into it.
Devotions in the What Is Righteousness? series
The problem I ran into is that the verses that translated the word as piety really didn’t discuss what it was. The closest thing I came across was restrictions offered prayer.
So, I thought we would look at the flip side of those. If our prayers are not restricted, we should be pious, right?
Piety Has an Aspect of Humility
“But you even undermine piety and hinder devotion to God” (Job 15: 4 NIV)
God is Sovereign God. He doesn’t need us to be Sovereign. Regardless of whether we believe Him or not, He is the One true God.
Because of that, we should not approach Him stuck on ourselves. We should not think we made ourselves what we are, can fix all our problems ourselves, and — most importantly — save ourselves.
Piety doesn’t come from us. It comes from God by following His laws and commandments and imitating Him.
We should approach God in humility. We have to realize we are sinners — even sinners saved by grace. We have to acknowledge that the only way we can gain eternal life is through belief in Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer.
This submission to God creates in us a clean heart (Ps. 51: 10). This is needed because humility goes against what the worldview teaches. The worldview advocates that we value our knowledge and abilities.
Piety Does Not Tolerate Sin
God instituted those laws and commandments to reveal His character to us as well as establish boundaries under which we are to live. This are for our benefit.
Sin is when we disobey God and break one of His laws and commandments. When we do that, we need to confess our sins and ask for forgiveness.
Oh, yeah. It is really easy to want to keep that on pet sin. Maybe it is pride. Maybe it is lust. Maybe we love to gossip. Maybe we do things excessively.
A pious person truly tries to be perfect in following God’s laws and commandments. No, we aren’t going to nail that every time. When we screw up, we repent.
But remember, repentance is not only expressing sorrow for things we’ve done wrong. But it is making the commitment to changing ourselves so that we no longer do the wrong things.
It is giving up that sin because, even though it may be pleasurable to us, it is against God’s Will. A pious person tries to do God’s Will.
Piety Resists Temptation
I know. I questioned whether I wanted to put this section in or just tack this on under sin. I think I can see the distinction to make it its own.
Temptation is that period of time between conception and execution of doing what is sinful. So, we haven’t sinned yet — we’re just thinking about it.
A pious person remains constant in devotion to God. We don’t give into temptation. We don’t compromise our beliefs to fit better into the world.
What I see the takeaway in this section is we are mature enough and committed enough to withstand the temptations. That is because we seek God. We’ve scheduled it into our calendars. We have made it a priority.
Piety Is Fueled by Prayer
A pious person knows that communication with God is essential.
- We want to keep in contact with God.
- We want to praise and glorify His Name.
- We acknowledge Him as Sovereign Lord.
- We ask for forgiveness of our sins.
- We want His guidance in our lives.
- We acknowledge our dependence on Him.
We must pray fervently and frequently. Buddicom noted that, “if this fervour of prayer be wanting, the deficiency originates in an evil heart of unbelief which departs from the living God.” He also said, “Our wants are continually recurring; but only the fulness [sic] of infinite mercy can supply them.”
It is through this fervent, frequent prayer that we grow. We do this when our prayers are focused on God, not on this world and our wants and needs.
A pious person is focused on eternal life, not this life. Because of that, we are trying to grow into the disciples we need to be for residency in heaven.
Making the Connections
Maybe the reason I didn’t find much is because it is an old-time word. We do hear righteousness more.
I totally agree, though, with the flip side of what I found. A pious person is someone totally committed to God.
How Do We Apply This?
How do we become more humble? We have to become more aware of situations where we are and aspects that make us prideful. What are the triggers? How is God really at work there instead of us? What do we have to change to give Him the glory?
We can combine sin and temptation here. How do we resist the temptation to sin? In an earlier devotion, I had some worksheets where we could question and evaluate temptations.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
What about our prayer life? Are we consistent or sporadic in talking with God? Are our prayers more about us or more about Him? Have we scheduled time to communicate with God or do we leave it up to when we have a moment?
Bottom line is a pious person is one who has totally surrendered their lives to God. A pious person is doing surrendered a good job of imitating God.
In the next devotion, we are going to look at verses that translate piety as righteousness.
Father God. We want to imitate You. We were made in Your image — we want our characters to mirror Yours. Help us to grow in grace and knowledge of You. Amen.
What do you think?
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