Godliness Through Discipline

Some notes from Godliness Through Discipline by Jay E. Adams

The Bible is very plain about how godliness does come. Paul wrote about godliness to Timothy. In his first letter to that budding young minister, he said, in contrast to all of the ways that will fail (mentioned in the first part of the verse), "Timothy, you must discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness" (I Timothy 4:7). Discipline is the secret of godliness.

The godly man leads a life that reflects God. Godliness is the goal of the Christian life; we must please God by being, thinking, doing, saying and feeling in the ways that He wants us to.

If you are going to learn discipline, you must first learn patience.

Discipline means work; it means sustained daily effort. The word Paul used is the one from which the English words "gymnastics" and gymnasium" have been derived. It is a term clearly related to athletics.

Take up your cross daily .... denying the self. Daily denial of the self indicates the presence of a day-by-day battle inside of the Christian. He must "take up the cross" as an instrument of a death upon which to crucify the self every day. It means putting to death the old life patterns of the old man.

But that is not enough. Whenever God says "put off" He also says "put on." On the positive side, each day one also must seek to "follow" Jesus Christ. That is what it means to discipline oneself for godliness. It means to continue to say "no" to self and to say "yes" to Christ every day until one by one all of the old habitual ways are replaced by new ones.

God gave man a marvelous capacity that we call habit. Whenever we do something long enough it becomes a part of us.

The practice of godliness leads to the life of godliness. It makes godliness "natural". If you practice what God tells you to do, the obedient life will become part of you. There is no simple, quick, easy way to instant godliness.