What is the payoff for living godly lives, and how do we get there? This daily devotional looks at things we can do while we are waiting for Jesus to return to take us home.
Nuggets
- If we know the end of this Heaven and earth is coming, we want to live godly lives to prepare us for eternity.
- We need to be godly because God will not change His laws and commandments and expectations for us.
- We have to be ready for the day of the Lord by ABCDing.
- We have to live godly lives until the day of the Lord arrives.
Devotions in the Review 101: Godliness series
Being human, we ask ourselves what is in it for us when we live godly lives. That is an easy question to answer.
How do we live godly lives? That takes a little more to answer it.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Godliness, equated with the Old Testament term fear of the Lord, is reverence in thought, feeling, and conduct that is promoted by walking in His Spirit and obeying God’s laws and commandments and produces a moral likeness of God. The fear of the Lord means awe, reverence and love, not terror.
Let's Put It into Context #2
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (II Pet. 3: 10 ESV)
I don’t want to chase a rabbit. (New year’s resolution? Don’t worry. It won’t last.).
But I need to explain what all is being dissolved in verse 11. Then we can get to the good stuff.
Verse 11 refers back to what Peter had discussed in previous verses. It is commonly referred to as the day of the Lord.
The day of the Lord is when we will be called home. Yep, we are talking end times here.
- Christ’s reign will have been completed.
- God’s mercy for sinners will end.
- Jesus will come again.
- All that God said would happen will come true.
- We are going to get to see God for Who He is.
- God’s glory, power, and wrath will clearly be on display.
- We will see God really is in control.
- We will be judged according to our sheep and goat nature.
Resource
Glossary
This Heaven and earth is going to pass away. This verse says it will burn and dissolve. However that takes place, all of the sin of this world will be exposed.
Until that time, we have to put the correct emphasis on the earth, then. It is a temporary thing.
Are you still tripping over the fact that this world is going to go away? It is doctrine.
The earth will pass away. We won’t. Spaulding wrote, “Dissolution is not annihilation, it is simply transformation.”
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If we don’t put our emphasis on the temporary earth, we need to put it on what is eternal. We have to put our emphasis on being godly when Jesus returns.
Being Godly Because the End Is Coming
“Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness” (II Pet. 3: 11 ESV)
If we know the end of this Heaven and earth is coming, we want to live godly lives to prepare us for eternity. Peter is contrasting “… lives of holiness and godliness” (II Pet. 3: 11 ESV) with the “… the works that are done on … ” the earth (II Pet. 3: 10 ESV).
I know. We think the works that are done on the earth are pretty special. We consider ourselves knowledgeable and caring.
We don’t hold a candle to God. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isa. 55: 9 ESV).
Let’s look at the arguments posed here for godly living. Spalding gave us several.
- The day of the Lord is a direct result of man’s sins.
- Man will be restored to the relationship God intended when the day of the Lord occurs.
The thing is — we know the end is coming. We just don’t know when. “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief …” (II Pet. 3: 10 ESV).
We aren’t going to get any more warning than the end time signs.
To read a related devotion, click the appropriate button below.
To read devotions in the How Do We Know If We Don’t Know series, click the appropriate button below.
If we don’t know when Jesus is coming back, that means we have to prepare like it could be today — this minute. “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (I Cor. 16: 13 ESV).
What does standing firm in our faith mean? “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel” (Phil. 1: 27 ESV).
We need to live like the gospel tells us to live. We need to live godly lives.
Being Godly Because God Never Changes
“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed” (Mal. 3: 6 ESV)
We need to be godly because God will not change His laws and commandments and expectations for us.
Melvill pointed out something that is easy to overlook. In essence, we’ve been talking about the changes we will encounter with this earth passing away.
Resource
God will never change. “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Num. 23: 19 ESV).
Things are really going to happen just as God says they are. He doesn’t lie. He is not going to reconsider. He isn’t going to be talked out of it.
Living Godly Lives Start with ABCD
“Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out” (Ac. 3: 19 ESV).
So, we have to be ready for the day of the Lord by ABCDing.
How do you do that? Let’s start with repent.
Repentance is acknowledging our separation from God and expressing sorrow for breaking God‘s laws and commandments by making the commitment to changing ourselves through obedience so that we no longer do the wrong things. We need to repent of the sins we’ve committed by doing something that is wrong or not don’t something that is right. Sins our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of his reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose he has for us, or follows Satan‘s promptings.
God designed a Plan of Salvation so that we could be delivered from the consequences of sin. The consequences of sin are spiritual death and separation from God.
This was accomplished through His grace. Grace is a free and unmerited gift from the Heavenly Father given through His Son, Jesus Christ that enables salvation and spiritual healing to believers by the work of the Holy Spirit. Because of God’s infinite grace, Jesus our Redeemer in order to forgive us of our sins.
Redemption is where something is used in exchange for something else to gain or regain something. Jesus is our Redeemer because He was born of a virgin, making Him 100% God and 100% man; gave His life on the cross for us so that His blood could pay the price for our sins; and because of God’s great might and power, rose from the grave, conquering death and paying the price for our sins.
We access this grace through faith. Faith is the conviction that the doctrines revealed in God’s Word are true, even if we do not understand all aspects of them, a belief which impacts our lives. Because we have faith and believe, we gain the forgiveness of our sins. Forgiveness is, when we ask, God pardons us because we have broken His laws and commandments.
We accept the pardon by letting go of the guilt and remorse that we feel because we have done something wrong. It is a conscious decision to accept His forgiveness. We also commit to changing ourselves so that we no longer do the wrong things.
By doing this we gain eternal life in heaven. Heaven is the opposite of hell. It is a perfect existence.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
What Type of Person Should We Be?
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12: 2 ESV)
We have to live godly lives until the day of the Lord arrives. What does that mean?
- We use our intelligence to discern what God wants us to know and good from evil.
- We are to love as God loves.
- We are to preach His gospel and make disciples.
- We are to do whatever God asks us to do.
- We need to grow in faith and grace.
- We need to repent of the sins we continue to commit and omit and broken-hearted because we still commit the sins.
- We need to watch and waiting expectantly for Jesus’ coming.
- We must be sincere and diligent in living for God.
- We are to be patient.
- We need to live lives full of charity
To read a related devotion, click on the appropriate button below.
Devotions in the How to Discern the Voice of God series
Devotions in the Consistency Needed for Spiritual Growth series
Devotions in the What Is Charity? series
Making the Connections
I think the bottom line is we need to want it. We need to want godly lives.
It is going to be hard. Satan is going to throw everything he has at us to try to derail us off the narrow path.
Glossary
Wilson told us how we should do this. He wrote, “Christians should live and walk as on the borders of eternity, dying daily.”
Resource
Remember when I said if we don’t know when Jesus is coming back, that means we have to prepare like it could be today — this minute.
This is what Wilson is talking about. Start each day thinking today is going to be the day.
Vaughan took that a step further. He said we should hasten the day. “In every age Christians are to be praying and labouring for the extension of the gospel over the whole earth.”
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I know what you are thinking. How can we do that?
We do that by spreading and praying for the spread of the gospel. “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Mt. 24: 14 ESV).
How Do We Apply This?
Well, we already gave a list of what we are to be doing. Now we have to do it.
Gracious Heavenly Father. We want to start living as if You are coming today. We want You to find us watching. We want to be living as we should. Help us to live godly lives. Amen.
What do you think?
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