I would like to take two or three,
maybe four, Sunday evenings to look at a
passage of Scripture and a theme which is
suggested by that fifth verse in the third
chapter of 2 Timothy, a passage which introduces
something which is exceedingly relevant and important for
all of us as Christian people.
Here the apostle is referring to some who,
according to him, have a form of godliness,
or of religion, a form of godliness, but
they are denying the power of it.
And he did, the Christian, the young man
Timothy to whom he is writing here, he
did have nothing to do with such people,
people who have a form of godliness, but
who are at the same time denying the
real power of it.
Good and the shepherd that the apostle was,
it was inconceivable that he should not at
some stage or other forewarn his young convert
and assistant Timothy of the dangers that would
emanate somewhere toward the end of the age.
And here we have at least one aspect
of that teaching of the great apostle Paul
concerning some of the perilous times that would
await the church before the consummation of the
age.
He really does warn Timothy, and through Timothy
and through the guidance and direction of the
Spirit in providing the word for us in
the twentieth century, he warns us likewise, of
perilous times that must come to pass before
the age comes to its conclusion and its
consummation.
Well now Paul's eyes then are focused on
the last day.
And here he tells young Timothy of some
of the difficult things that will take place.
Now when you read the list that we
have of the prevailing sins of the last
day, or of the last days, you will
notice of course that they're all prevalent at
all times.
And there hasn't been an age hardly since
apostolic times, I don't think there has been
an age, not that all these sins were
prevalent.
Nevertheless the apostle would seem to be suggesting
that when the conscious is drawing nearer, when
the king is about to descend with the
clouds of heaven in his glory to receive
his people to himself, and the last final
judgment occasion is about to dawn, evil will
spread as never before.
Leading up to that climactic occasion it would
seem that all these sins that characterize the
several ages of history will come as it
were and will mushroom as it were toward
a harvest.
But of all the iniquities that the apostle
seems to put his finger on, there is
something here in our text which is exceedingly
relevant to a religious people.
I deliberately use that word religious.
There is this awesome possibility that in the
midst of the most profound ungodliness there should
nevertheless be a religious people who simply have
the form of godliness.
And who are not only content with that,
but in their heart of hearts they are
actually opposing and frustrating and fighting against and
denying the essential power of true religion in
the heart.
And so my subject is religion, form or
force.
Something external and visible only or something that
is deeply inward, subjective, inexperienced, and from the
depths within, as it were, forming a kind
of dynamite or dynamic mainspring that gives birth
to character and conduct that is acceptable in
the sight of God.
Now we look at this tonight and this
is a kind of introduction to what we
are going to be looking at later on.
The first thing I want to call your
attention is to this notable description of religion.
And I shall be using that word tonight
probably, if I'm consistent, because that is the
word that the Apostle Paul uses here.
It's translated godliness.
It's the word for piety or the word
for religion.
It doesn't necessarily mean godliness in the highest
loftiest New Testament sense, but it means religion,
it means piety.
It may be godliness if it is true
and if it is genuine, but it need
not be genuine, and in this case it
probably isn't.
So we should be translated as such.
So whether I'm consistent or not, at least
you will know what the Apostle is getting
at.
A notable description, having a form of godliness
or a religion, but denying the power thereof.
Now, underlining, underlining this text is a concept
of true religion, a concept of genuine piety,
of godliness properly so called.
And the Apostle is judging this furious species
as one who knows what the genuine article
is.
And what he's saying here is this.
Genuine religion has two sides to it, two
aspects to it.
And he uses two Greek words.
First, there is an external aspect, moscosis, that's
the word.
It's the form, it's the pattern, it's the
shape of one's life, viewed as from the
outside.
Religion shapes your life.
But then, says the Apostle Paul, that's only
the half of it.
Now, genuine religion is not all form, it's
not all visible to the human eye, it's
not all what you can see.
There is another element altogether to it.
There is something that is intangible and invisible
and in words.
There is this other word, dominus, power.
You can't see it, but you can see
its effect.
You can't put your hand on it, and
yet you know it's there.
And the concept of genuine religion that comes
through here is this beautiful, this balanced concept
of things.
It has an outward pattern, it has an
inward dynamic.
Now, you will appreciate this, when I say
to you that simply looking at this description
of genuine religion, I have found most challenging.
For it is so easy for us, and
it is perhaps even more of a danger,
more of a peril, for a minister of
the word, than for anyone else.
I don't know about that, but it certainly
is easy for the minister of the word
to be content with the outward form.
With the things that are visible, the things
that are evident, the things that are obvious.
And to forget the all importance of the
corresponding feature to which the apostle Paul here
refers, the dominus, the power, the inner power
that should always generate behavior, and not only
generate it, but regulate it.
Now, I wanted to look at these two
things briefly in the first place.
First, religion has form, morphosis.
One of the famous German New Testament scholars,
and one of the best, says that this
verbal noun as it is, morphosis, translated form,
this verbal noun denotes, A, the activity of
shaping, or the result of that activity.
And then he goes on to add that,
with reference to the activity of shaping, he
says, as, for example, when one shapes a
tree.
Now, I don't know what picture that brings
up in your imagination, but it brings something
very clearly to my memory and to my
imagination.
In certain parts of the south of England,
I have seen, on a number of occasions,
privet bushes and privet hedges that have been
cultivated.
You may have them here.
If I knew about them, I would refer
to them.
Well, I don't, but you may know of
them here.
And these privets have been shaped.
I remember a place, and I can't tell
you where it is, but it's somewhere in
the south of England, where outside the house
there is a beautiful lawn, and they must
have cultivated these privets over a period of
years.
Privet bushes, privet hedges, but they've all become
decorated, and you have a host of birds
there.
When you come along, you think, these are
birds.
But, you see, the privets have been steamed.
The privets have been cut and trimmed and
shaped to represent a flock of birds.
I remember one place in the north of
Ireland, where you had two massive pheasants on
either side of the gateway to the garden.
The same principle.
Privets shaped.
Now, what the Apostle Paul says here is
this.
Godliness, religion, genuine religion, has shape.
Something, you can see that it takes form,
patterns.
Different from someone else, maybe, but it is
essentially religion.
And in the truly godly person, of course,
it is godlike.
In a general way, this may be true
of all religions, but in the Christian faith,
it is a likeness, it is a resemblance
to God.
Life on its exterior side, its external side,
is shaped after God.
Thinking of Christian experience or Christian piety, then,
its form would take some such pattern as
follows.
The first thing about Christian experience is that
it begins with the acceptance of what God
has revealed.
This is the beginning of the shape it
takes.
Every Christian experience really begins here, as far
as the outward side is concerned.
Other things may have taken place undercover, in
the depths of the soul.
But viewed from the human perspective, this is
where Christianity begins in the soul.
By the acceptance of what God has said
about himself, about man, about the world, about
human needs.
In other words, the acceptance of what God
has revealed.
You may always know godliness as envisaged in
the Bible in this way.
It is characterized by an acceptance of God's
self-revelation, revelation of himself, and his revelation
of all else.
A truth revealing about life in general.
Then, of course, it goes beyond that.
It involves a participation in the salvation that
God has provided.
Not just the knowledge that God has provided
salvation, but a participation in it.
This involves the forgiveness of sins, and our
regeneration, and our justification, and our adoption, to
use other New Testament images or metaphors.
This is the pattern of experience that grows
where there is a genuinely godly man or
a godly woman.
That should lead, of course, in turn, to
a confession of faith.
And the confession of faith is a very
beautiful one in the New Testament.
It has at least three sides to it.
A verbal, as if thou shalt confess with
thy mouth that Jesus is Lord.
A sacramental side, by baptism and participation in
the Lord's table.
And a practical side of manifestation of the
new life in a character that corresponds to
the faith we profess.
And then, of course, over and above that,
you can see it taking shape, can't you?
Over and above that, there is the discipline
to maintain what has begun.
By the reading of the Word of God.
By seeking his face and fellowshiping with him
and his people.
By obeying his commandments.
By doing his will.
By even facing the most humdrum duty in
his name and for his sake.
And this is the way it goes on.
You can see it taking shape.
All these features would give shape to the
religious life of a Christian man or Christian
woman.
That's the significance of this word, form.
My friends, is this the shape of Christianity
that men see in your life and mine?
But look at the other.
True religion has not only morphosis but dynamism.
Dynamic.
Or dynamite.
Again, Paul is thinking very particularly, of course,
of Christian piety rather than piety in general.
And what he is saying is this.
This shaping of the outward life is not
really simply a matter of intellectual omniscience.
Or living up to human standards or what
have you.
As a matter of fact, what he is
saying is this.
That what really molds the form or the
shape of the external life is this inner
power.
This dynamic in the soul.
This power within.
And it's because of this power within that
life takes the shape it does.
In the experience of the godly man or
the godly woman.
Now, we shall have much more to say
about this.
But I do want, at this very stage,
just for us to get some concept of
what ought to be going on in our
lives.
In terms of experiencing the power of God.
If you pursue the rest of Scripture, you
will find that God is said to indwell
his people.
Now, you say, that's very familiar.
I've known that for a very long time.
So there's no need to dwell on that.
Oh, but isn't there?
Do you know of anything which is more
stupendous than this?
And that the almighty God, the Lord, the
creator of the ends of the earth, who
never is weary and never is tired and
never flumbers, never sleeps, never, never, never, never
has to pause to see if he can
do what he will.
But he, the almighty God, can come and
live and does come to live in the
human heart.
As some of us were discussing on Thursday
night in our Bible study group, there is
a beautiful little hymn which my wife and
I have become, or a song that my
wife and I have become familiar with recently
about God, who is big enough to rule
the vast creation, but small enough to live
within my heart.
The almighty God has come into the hearts
of his people to live.
This is where the power comes from, you
see.
It's not from the circumstances of the hour.
They may be opposing.
They may be difficult.
They may be a whole array of difficulties.
But the power comes from the fact that
the omnipotent God has come to live in
our hearts.
If you notice how the Bible spells this
out, how variegated the pictures are and the
portrait is, if you pursue the rest of
the New Testament, you will find that this
comes through in a myriad ways.
First of all, the word of God has
come to dwell in us.
God dwells in us by his word.
Oh, what God has done by his word.
You go back to the book of Genesis
and you will see that when God said,
therefore, God's word, let there be and there
was, has never hiatus between the command of
the almighty and the performance of that command,
said long enough for his will to be
fulfilled.
God's word has come to dwell in our
hearts.
If you remain in me, says Jesus, and
my word remain in you, you can ask
what you will and it will be done
to you.
You see it?
The same mighty word for thy creation sprang
into being.
My word has come to live in you
and if it remains in you, says Jesus,
you can ask what you will and it
will be done.
Let the word of Christ, says Paul to
the Galatians, dwell in you richly as you
teach and admonish one another, etc., etc.
So let the word of Christ dwell richly
in you.
Let it have free play, free expression, the
word.
Again God indwells us, of course, by his
Holy Spirit.
Don't you know, says Paul to the Corinthians
in 316, and something similar again at the
end of chapter 6, don't you know, he
says, don't you know that you yourselves are
God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in
you?
Look at your body.
Look in the mirror.
And you get home.
Of course you're familiar with your form and
with your features.
But look in the mirror tonight before you
go to bed and say to yourself, God's
Holy Spirit has come to dwell in that
body.
This body of mine is the very temple
of God.
God has come to dwell here.
And because you are sons, says Paul to
the Galatians, God has sent forth the Spirit
of his Son into your heart.
The Spirit of God dwells in his people.
Again the New Testament puts it like this.
It says that Christ is dwelling in us.
Christ lives in us.
You remember Paul's very classical word in Galatians
2.20, where he describes his own Christian
experience in this way.
He says, I have been crucified with Christ.
And I no longer live.
But Christ lives in me.
Now you see the significance, a part of
the significance of that is brought out when
you and I remember that this is the
Christ of the Resurrection.
This is the Christ who was crucified on
Calvary Street but who rose again.
And who is alive forevermore.
And he's alive in me, says Paul.
This is my experience.
This is what explains me.
Why I'm no longer the man I was
as they called me Saul of Tarsus, but
I'm the new man that they called Paul.
It's because Christ has come to live in
me.
John speaks of the power of God in
us by referring to the, and it's a
very, very strong word.
And you might, you might shy away from
it.
But he says that the very, the Greek
word is firm.
You know where it comes from.
The paternal bane.
And he says, such man or a woman
that is born of God cannot go on
sinning because the seed of God remains in
him.
And his pedigree is such.
He can't go on sinning.
He has to stop.
The holy seed of God is implanted within
him.
And it's so powerful.
It's so mighty.
He can't go on as monkey did.
He's got to stop.
And he's got to turn around.
Brothers and sisters, have you got it?
This is power.
Power.
It's the power of God in us.
By his Spirit.
By his word.
His Christ, the anointed one has anointed us
with his own anointing and goes on living
in our heart.
And the divine seed and the divine nature
of Peter adds are all in him.
Now you see, the Christian life is a
life of shape, outward form.
You can see the pattern of it.
But the pattern is produced by a mighty
power.
The Apostle Paul was right when introducing himself
in this epistle to the Romans.
He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel
of Christ because it is the promise of
God.
The power of God.
Right unto salvation.
Now you can see it's not true.
While the Apostle Paul in that same epistle
to the Romans tells them in chapter 2,
Look, he says, don't allow this age, this
world that we're living in, to shape or
to mold your life.
To squeeze you into its mold.
Oh, the world is ever with us and
the prince of this world and they all
try to shape our life and their shaping
is a misshaping.
And God let it.
He says, don't let the world squeeze you
into the world's mold.
But rather, yield your body to God as
a living sacrifice.
And then you will know what is the
good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
And you will grow up into Christian maturity.
In other words, you will carry with you
and you will experience an ongoing power of
God in your soul.
That will transform the outward life as well
as the inner life of the mind and
the spirit.
To bear the shape that is God on
earth.
And consistent with the gospel, a kind of
shape that will, in the words of the
Apostle elsewhere, beautify the gospel of grace.
Now, I just want to mention tonight now
this perennial danger that we have.
Having a form of God in this world,
in the last times there will be all
kinds of problems, all kinds of things.
And they will all have reached their highest
pictures as well.
All the frenzy of evil will have come
to a climax.
On all hands, you read these things, they're
terrible things.
But here especially, he says, here is one
species, here is one particular problem of the
latter day.
There will be men who have a form
of religion.
They would like to call it Godliness.
But it's a form of religion.
Whilst he says, not only are they missing
or lacking the necessary power, but they're even
denying it.
They're not only without it, but they're opposing
it.
There is something exceedingly challenging about this.
Now, theoretically, I suppose, this could take place
by neglecting the one or the other of
these two aspects of genuine godliness or piety
or religion.
By neglecting the outward form, the behavior, the
service, or by neglecting the inner power.
Theoretically, you can have either or, and you
can go to one extreme or the other.
And we have them, of course, in the
20th century.
You have people, and all their emphasis is
upon, you know, we must appear right before
men.
We must be doing the right thing.
We must never go out of step.
And that's all right as far as it
goes.
Indeed, it is necessary.
But then you have the other species, and
they talk always about the experience of the
soul.
We've got to be experiencing this about God,
this about His Spirit, this about His Word.
And we've got to have this thrill in
the soul all the time.
Now, that's all, it may all be in
accordance with the Word.
But when these two things are divorced, the
one from the other, you have something that
is completely contrary to the biblical picture.
We need the outward form, but so too
do we need the inner power.
We need the morphosis, but we need the
dunamis.
And the tragedy of the church, and it
would seem that it's moving towards a climax
in the latter days, is that somehow or
other we will have forgotten the inner side
of things.
We shall maintain the outward, the visible, what
men see, and we may be deemed to
be impeccably religious.
But without the inner power.
Now, the causes for the separation of form
and power may be numerous, and may be
quite varied.
In some cases, one has known it to
be so because of ignorance.
Now, I don't want to be unkind now,
I don't mean to be.
But some people come to the Lord Jesus
Christ, and they have very little knowledge of
things.
And their concept of the Christian life is
just what they've seen in somebody else.
That's very good as far as it goes.
And what they've seen is a godly character,
a weakened character maybe, a persuaded character.
And perhaps at the moment of their conversion,
Christian life to them is just a matter
of living.
What I do in the world, what men
see, now that's important.
But that's not all the Christian life, you
see.
Most of the Christian life is like the
iceberg submerged in the depths.
Two-thirds of it are in the hidden
places.
And the most important aspect of any godly
life is the hidden parts.
But you see, there are many people who
come to the Lord and who make a
profession of faith just because of what they
see in other people that may attract them.
Or challenge them, as the case may be.
And then they come to think that the
Christian life is just a matter of how
I am and what I do and how
I behave before people.
Now please don't misunderstand me, this is very
important.
But it's not the whole of the Christian
life.
And if I come to think of my
main power from day to day as simply
having all the shops in the window so
that everybody can see what's going on and
I must say the right words and I
must be in the right place at the
right time.
Well you see, I'm on the way to
becoming a Pharisee, not a godly man.
It's important that we should be irreproachable in
the eyes of men and women.
You see this is the balance.
And yet that is not the whole of
life.
There's much, much, much, much else.
So you see, it's important to tell young
Christians, look, yes, yes, if any man is
in Christ Jesus, he's a new creature, he's
got to behave differently.
He's got to walk differently, he's got to
talk differently.
Everything's got to be different, all our attitudes,
yes, yes.
But oh my friends, it is all very
important also that we should tell every young
Christian there is an inner life of the
soul to be cultivated.
An inner relationship with God.
There is a power of God to be
experienced in the soul of a man without
which he cannot begin to live, let alone
continue.
Or sometimes people make this mistake and they
are simply concerned with the outward life because
of an unworthy motive.
You say, what unworthy motive can inculcate in
people a desire to be caressed externally in
terms of behavior?
Well, I'll tell you, it's things like this.
There are children of Christian parents who know
that their parents are disappointed in them that
they don't make a professional sense.
And the temptation is, if they respect their
parents, is to put on a show.
And especially if there's any undue pressure from
mom and dad or from grandma and grandpa.
The temptation is, I must put on a
front.
I must be as they are.
And my friends, our very eagerness to see
our children saved can sometimes make little parents
love them.
It's out there, a certain temptation.
And unless our faith is in God, who
raised the dead, we shall be tempted to
do it because we love our children.
Now that's only one illustration.
I have no time to deal with others.
I don't want to prolong the service tonight.
But you see, this is possible within Lillet,
even in a genuinely Christian life.
We can become so concerned with outward things.
Isn't that the story of some of the
churches in the New Testament?
You remember some months ago we were in
the book of Revelation with the church of
Sardis, for example.
Jesus said to that church of Sardis, He
says, I know your deeds.
You have a reputation of being alive.
But you are actually dead.
See, the points for shape were there.
Oh, they were there for the hour of
worship, the hour of prayer.
They sang the hymns.
They joined in together.
They went through it all.
You could not help them.
But says the Son of God, though the
shape is impeccable, the form is blameless.
There's no dominion.
Look at it.
Wasn't Ephesus on the way there?
Having forsaken her first love, that church was
on the way toward the same tragic end.
And Lord Isaiah was there already.
Oh, the danger of it and the consequences
of it are many.
The consequences of thus having a form of
religion whilst denying its power are tragic in
the extreme.
You see, if we walk this way and
if we become like this, we completely misrepresent
the gospel.
The most important thing about the gospel is
that it not only tells us the right
thing, the way of God, the will of
God, the standard of God for men and
women on earth to prepare for eternity, but
it provides the power.
The gospel is not a moral philosophy which
tells you this is right and that is
wrong.
The gospel is good news and the good
news is this is what God requires and
God provides what He requires by His own
indwelling in the soul and His own living
there.
Doesn't really help anybody in society just to
be impeccable in our behavior unless we can
explain to men and women in the power
of Satan how it is that we're able
to live above the flesh and the devil.
And unless it is evident that the God
who we worship is the God who provides
power, power.
And of course, you know, form without power
invariably leads to cynicism.
I don't want to encourage any of you
to read the life of Adolf Hitler, but
if you ever, if you will, you will
realize that as with Mahatma Gandhi, this is
the kind of thing that put him off
from the gospel too.
It was to meet people who would talk
about law and order spiritually.
They just had it.
You know, everything had to be in place.
Everything had to be right and proper.
But there was no end of power.
It all seemed to be, you know, some
vegetable show in London a few years ago,
just when we were in Westminster Chapel, somebody
was disqualified because he'd brought in some very
beautiful stairs and tied them on with a
safety pin where they should have been growing
and been tree-lined.
We can bring in some mode of activity
or mode of living and just tie it
on to an ungodly heart or an ungodly
soul.
We can do so much in the power
of the flesh, but the real thing of
the scriptures, godliness, piety, religion, pure and undefiled
before God, as James speaks of it, is
something that is generated from heaven, that's for
sure.
Then in the soul, heaven comes into the
soul, God comes into the soul, the Spirit
comes, the Son comes, the Word comes, the
seed of God comes in, and God brings
forth fruit in fallen men and women.
That's what godliness is.
Now I close then.
Why do people reject or oppose this inner
power?
And I can only indicate perhaps the first
step we must take from here, and I
appear in an evening service next time.
It's hard to see.
We do not like the power of God.
Oh, somebody will say, this is what I
yearn for, this is what I pray for,
I pray for power.
Brothers and sisters, do we ever pray for
power?
If we do, do we realize what we're
asking for?
You see, if God exercises His power within
us, it means that He controls us.
And am I not right in saying that
in all our hearts, the real battle is
the battle against divine control?
Oh, we'd like to have power to be
like somebody else, to do what somebody else
has done.
Oh, we'd like to have the power to
achieve, of course we would.
But you see, that's not God's way.
The power of God in my soul is
not to be or do like somebody else,
but it is to be and to become
what God wants me to be, and to
do what God wants me to do, and
to go where God wants me to go.
And that's different.
And in order to be and to do
and to go as it pleases Him, He
must have control.
And you see, that's why people deny the
power.
It's much easier, you see, to read the
New Testament without hearing the voice of God,
saying, oh, I know the doctrine.
I know sanctification.
I know exactly what it means.
I can spin it out.
I know it.
I can tell you all about it.
And I can tell you what's right, and
I can tell you what's wrong.
It's all on the intellectual level.
That's not the New Testament or the book
of Acts, nor of Ephesus.
That's not the Christianity or the book of
Acts, nor of Ephesus.
There is an intellectual level.
There is truth for the mind.
There is a sense of right for the
conscience.
But there is this experience of the living
God indwelling the soul, empowering, mastering.
That's why we don't want the power, and
that's why many of us do not have
more power in our lives.
We don't want to be mastered.
We want to go our own way, and
we can use the power of God for
our own ends, all right, but we can't
do that.
Brothers and sisters, here is a beautiful pattern,
but it's more than that.
It's the divinely appointed pattern whereby we may
adorn the doctrine, beautify the gospel, represent our
Lord worthily in an unworthy world, and be
in his hands, if he would, the instrument
for the gathering of men and women and
boys and girls to himself, having the force,
which is appointed, produced by the power of
the Spirit, on and forth.
Let us pray.
O Lord, our God, we thank you for
your wonderful grace and mercy toward us, particularly
in that you have written to us your
holy words with the very finger of the
Spirit.
And you have given us with your infallible
words to indicate the way of righteousness and
the way of peace and the way of
godliness.
Lord God, teach us your way.
Continue with us and speak to us and
mold us, fashion us after your way, and
enable us, increasingly as opportunity and life is
given to us, enable us, we pray, to
fit into the portrait as you have given
it of the godly man and the godly
woman.
Through Christ, your Son, our Lord.
Amen.