http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14950985/should-saints-be-warned-about-wrath

Do you want to grow as a man of God?

Maybe you’re a new believer. Your character drastically differs from just a couple years ago, but you know you have a long way to go. Or maybe you’ve been a believer for a long time, but you’ve sensed yourself spiritually stagnating. You’d be hard pressed to point out a way you’ve made evident spiritual progress in the last year.

If either of those profiles fit you, this article, and its two goals, are for you. The first is to give you a new ambition, namely, becoming a man of God. The second is to give you some directions for the journey.

The “man” in “man of God” is deliberate; I’m speaking particularly to men. Much of what I’ll say also applies to women, but the next-to-last section zeroes in on a uniquely male calling.

First, here’s the new ambition. I want you, from now till the day you die, to make it your ambition to become a man of God. And I want that for you because God does. As Paul writes to Timothy, “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness;
for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:7–8).

Godliness is “of value in every way.” It is more valuable than physical strength or financial success. It is worth more than the thickest resume or the most coveted property. Godliness will, in the long run, make you happier than the satisfaction of any earthly desire.

So how can you get it? Here are six pieces of counsel.

Mind the Gap

First, mind the gap — that is, the gap between your character and God’s. And “gap” doesn’t even begin to cover it. More like “infinite chasm.” But God commands you to cross it: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2; cf. 1 Peter 1:15–16).

Learn to see and evaluate your character in light of God’s. Hold Scripture before your eyes as a mirror to reveal what’s lacking in you but present in him, and what’s present in you but lacking in him. “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). What darkness is present in you? What light is missing? If you want specific benchmarks to measure yourself against, study the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23), and the qualifications for elders (1 Timothy 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9).

One good way to become more mindful of this gap is to seek out and study godly men. Who do you know who radiates more of God’s holiness and joy and love than you do? Get to know him. Get close to him. Find out how he has made the progress he has, and do what he does (more on models below). The gap between your character and his can help you see the infinitely greater gap between your character and God’s. But not only that: learning how a more godly man got more godly can power-assist your progress in godliness.

Mine New Motives

Real change comes from the heart. This requires (though is by no means limited to) a new set of motives for you to mine. In order to make any lasting progress in godliness, your chief motive must be to glorify God: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Train your heart to love God’s glory more than your own, to love praising God more than receiving praise. Make it your ambition to please God in all you do (2 Corinthians 5:9).

In our theme verse, Paul promises that godliness is of value in every way. What is the value-added of godliness? What should motivate you to pursue it? Godliness gives you power greater than any physical prowess, technological reach, or military strength: “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city” (Proverbs 16:32). Godliness gives you a freedom that runs deeper than any other: freedom from tyranny of self and slavery to sin. As Jesus promises, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32). Godliness gives you contentment, which is greater gain than any stockpile of earthly treasure. “Godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world” (1 Timothy 6:6–7).

Do you want power or freedom or lasting, secure gain? You’ll find the best, and the only reliable, form of all of those goods in godliness. So, work to continually recalibrate your motives.

Form Transforming Habits

In order to do this, you need to form transforming habits, especially Scripture study, meditation, and prayer in private and with others. Donald Whitney’s book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life is a practical, challenging guide to these, as is David Mathis’s Habits of Grace.

If you’re not in the habit of regularly communing with Jesus through time in his word and prayer, here’s how I’d encourage you to start. Whatever your morning schedule looks like, get up a little earlier, even just twenty or thirty minutes. Read something in Scripture — could be a Psalm or a chapter of Proverbs, could be the passage your pastor is going to preach the next Sunday — and find something to turn into prayer.

What in the passage can you praise God for? What sins in your life does the passage reveal? What reason does the passage give you to thank God? What does it teach you to ask God for? Turn Scripture reading into prayer and even a short time with Christ can become a regularly refueling engine of daily transformation into his character.

Get New Models

Everyone has models. Even if you don’t consciously admit it, styling yourself as an intrepid individualist, chances are there are men you strive to be like. Whether in matters personal or professional, superficial or substantive, there are men you know, or at least know of, that you want to be like. And if you haven’t been self-consciously striving for godliness for the past several years, then chances are, you need new models.

“Find the godliest men you can, get as close to them as you can, and learn as much from them as you can.”

So find the godliest men you can, get as close to them as you can, and learn as much from them as you can. That’s what the apostle Paul told the whole Philippian church to do: “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us” (Philippians 3:17). And again, “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:9).

Find Ways to Father

One nearly universal definition of manhood is to produce more than you consume (see, for instance Roy Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?, 195). It’s easy to see how that works in an economic, material sense: to provide for a family, you need to earn more than you use. You must be a generator of surpluses. And working hard so as to provide for others is a basic biblical imperative that especially lands on men’s shoulders (1 Timothy 5:8).

But this shorthand definition of manhood — that you produce more than you consume — doesn’t just apply to bringing home bacon. It has deep spiritual relevance as well. We all have burdens, and we need help bearing them (Galatians 6:2). We all have limited wisdom, and so we all need counselors (Proverbs 24:6). But a spiritually productive man is one who is a net burden-bearer, and a net wisdom-dispenser, a net exporter to others of spiritual good and gain. So strive to be a spiritual producer. Strive to have your desires so under control, your heart so aligned with God’s will, and your mind so transformed by his word, that you store up a surplus of spiritual help that you can regularly share out with others.

“Fatherhood, both natural and spiritual, is the distinctive shape of masculine maturity.”

Another way to say this is, find ways to father. If you’re the father of children, train them in all God’s ways (Ephesians 6:4). If you’re unmarried and desire to be married, pursue the kind of holiness, competence, leadership ability, and maturity that will make you not only attractive husband material but ready and eager to be a father. Fatherhood, both natural and spiritual, is the distinctive shape of masculine maturity. A father provides and protects. What kind of man do you need to become in order to faithfully provide for and protect others in both material and spiritual ways?

Make Membership Matter

Finally, make membership matter — meaning church membership. The New Testament assumes that all Christians will belong to local gatherings of Christians that assemble regularly and are mutually, self-consciously committed to each other (for example, 1 Corinthians 5:1–13). I’m putting this last, but in some ways it really goes first.

Church membership is the crucial, formative context for these other five items that have come before. Finding, committing to, and throwing yourself into a gospel-preaching church is the best way to regularly expose yourself to the character of God, reminders of gospel motives for godliness, help in forming spiritually fruitful habits, godly models to follow, and opportunities to bear others’ burdens and build them up in love.

These six points are just a start, hopefully a jump-start, for the long, often difficult journey of growing more godly. But the good news about church membership is that, when you regularly gather with a body of believers who are committed to Christ and each other, every single Sunday is a fresh start. And fellowship with other godly men who are striving in the same direction can continually refresh your heart in your quest to be more like Christ.

If an individual Christian does not show love toward other true Christians, the world has a right to judge that he or she is not a Christian.

I read Francis Schaeffer’s The Mark of the Christian shortly after it was published in 1970. Schaeffer quoted Christ’s words in John 13:35: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Then he cited Jesus’s prayer in John 17:21 that the disciples “may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

Schaeffer tied the verses together:

[In John 13:35] if an individual Christian does not show love toward other true Christians, the world has a right to judge that he or she is not a Christian. Here [in John 17:21] Jesus is stating something else that is much more cutting, much more profound: We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus’s claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians. (26–27)

A beautiful, biblical slap in the face.

Final Apologetic

I was sixteen — a new believer studying how to defend gospel truth to friends and family. Yet Schaeffer called Christian love and unity “the final apologetic,” the ultimate defense of our faith.

Schaeffer helped me see what should have been self-evident in Christ’s words: believers’ love toward each other is the greatest proof that we truly follow Jesus. If we fail to live in loving oneness, the world — or to bring it closer to home, our family, and friends — will have less reason to believe the gospel.

In 1977, some of us who’d struggled at our churches gathered to worship and study Scripture. Before we knew it, God planted a new church. At twenty-three, as a naive co-pastor, I thought we’d found the secret to unity. But eventually, though our numbers rapidly increased, too many left our gatherings feeling unloved, not experiencing what Schaeffer called the “reality of the oneness of true Christians” (27).

Our Deep Disunity

In the 52 years I’ve known Jesus, I’ve witnessed countless conflicts between believers. But never more than in the last year. Many have angrily left churches they once loved. Believers who formerly chose churches based on Christ-centered Bible teaching and worship now choose them based on non-essential issues, including political viewpoints and COVID protocols.

Churches are experiencing a pandemic of tribalism, blame, and unforgiveness — all fatal to the love and unity Jesus spoke of. Rampant either/or thinking leaves no room for subtlety and nuance. Acknowledging occasional truth in other viewpoints is seen as compromise rather than fairness and charitability.

Sadly, evangelicals sometimes appear as little more than another special-interest group, sharing only a narrow “unity” based on mutual outrage and disdain. This acidic, eager-to-fight negativity highlights Schaeffer’s point that we have no right to expect unbelievers to be drawn to the good news when we treat brothers and sisters as enemies.

Playing into Satan’s Strategy

The increase in Christians bickering over non-essentials doesn’t seem to be a passing phase. And it injures our witness, inviting eye rolls and mockery from unbelievers and prompting believers to wonder whether church hurts more than it helps.

Satan is called the accuser of God’s family (Revelation 12:10). Too often we do his work for him. His goal is to divide churches and keep people from believing the gospel. “By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10). When we fail to love each other, we are acting like the devil’s children.

“When we fail to love each other, we are acting like the devil’s children.”

“Give no opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27). To resist the devil, we must love God with abandonment, and love our neighbor as ourselves. That central principle is the heart and soul of Scripture. “The whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:14–15).

Unity of Differing Opinions

When Paul wrote to believers in Rome, he addressed the issues of what meat was considered “unclean” and which day to worship on — each certainly as controversial in the culture of their day, if not more so, as most political issues or COVID responses are today. The paradigm-shifting revelation he shared in Romans 14 is this: while true love and unity are never achieved at the expense of primary biblical truths, they are achieved at the expense of our personal preferences about secondary issues.

We are “not to quarrel over opinions” (Romans 14:1). Or as the NLT puts it, “Don’t argue with them about what they think is right or wrong.” Love doesn’t require wholesale agreement.

Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. (Romans 14:3)

Paul emphatically states that equally Christ-centered people can have different beliefs, which lead to them taking different — even opposite — actions in faith.

“One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5). We can take contradictory positions on nonessential issues but still honor God by valuing love over our opinions.

Pursue What Makes for Peace

As long as we hold our convictions with faith and a good conscience, God himself approves of people on both sides of nonessential matters. And if God can be pleased both by those who do and don’t eat certain foods that were prohibited under Old Testament law, and by those who worship on the Sabbath or on another day of the week, can’t he also be pleased with those who choose to take or not take a vaccine, or to wear or not wear a mask?

“Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?” (Romans 14:4). God warns us not to set up our own judgment seats as if we were omniscient. Why do we imagine we can know that a brother’s or sister’s decisions, heart, and motives are wrong?

“Each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another” (Romans 14:12–13). We will not ultimately answer to each other, but we will answer to God concerning each other.

“Raise your expectations for love and unity in your church. Lower your expectations for them coming naturally.”

“So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. . . . The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God” (Romans 14:19, 22). Peace and edification don’t come naturally; they require Spirit-empowered work.

The call to “pursue” peace (or “make every effort,” NIV) means unless there’s a compelling reason to speak or post, and you’ve sought God’s direction and sense his leading, and you can speak graciously, then do what Scripture says and keep what you believe between yourself and God. Having a strong opinion never equals God telling us to express it. Scripture confronts us for how we have treated each other before the watching world:

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion” (Proverbs 18:2).
“When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent” (Proverbs 10:19).
“There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing” (Proverbs 12:18).

Steps Toward Love and Unity

What other practical steps might we take toward love and unity in our fractured times?

1. Practice James 1:19. If we would only “be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger,” this alone would foster love and unity to an astonishing degree.

2. When you disagree, if possible, meet face to face and talk. Don’t shred each other publicly.

3. Ask yourself where you are pointing. Will my words or social-media post be more or less likely to draw others to Jesus?

4. Raise your expectations for love and unity in your church. Lower your expectations for them coming naturally or easily.

5. Repent of being an agitator; commit to becoming a peacemaker.

6. Talk to your church leaders. Honestly articulate problems and ask how you can help foster love and unity.

7. Pray for those who’ve hurt you. Doing so transformed my relationship with a brother. One of my wife’s closest friends is someone she chose to intercede for decades ago, despite their conflicts.

8. Ask God to help you reject pride and develop true humility. A.W. Tozer said, “Only the humble are completely sane, for they are the only ones who see clearly their own size and limitations” (Tozer on Christian Leadership, 11). To think clearly is to think humbly. “Think of yourself with sober judgment” (Romans 12:3).

True unity is grounded on

mutually believed primary truths about Jesus,
refusal to elevate secondary beliefs over primary beliefs,
demonstrated heartfelt love for Jesus and others, and
the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.

When I reread The Mark of the Christian fifty years later, when divisiveness is the air we breathe, it spoke to me more deeply than ever. Schaeffer’s message rings true: when we call upon God, and make concerted efforts to live in humble love and unity, people see Jesus, and some will believe in him.