Hosea 6:6

          Being a man of a greatly flawed character, compulsively given to base lusts of the flesh in sensuality and immorality, I have wrestled with the concept of God’s all-abounding grace and my responsibility to pursue righteousness—not because I want to be good—but because it is only in goodness that we are most fluently able to commune with our Father in heaven—to know Him and to glorify Him—by reflecting His holy character back to Him with thanksgiving and praise.  In this sense, righteousness is the highest practical reality that I desire specifically because a relationship with Almighty God is the highest spiritual reality that I desire.  In my judgment, the desire for intimacy with God is indivisible from the desire, which is the continual pursuit, of righteousness.  David says in Psalm 27, “My heart says of you, ‘Seek His face!’ Your face Lord I will seek,” and yet Jesus says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”  To divide the desire for the face of God from the desire for the righteousness of God is to invalidate either desire in us.  For, it is only by righteousness that we will be found to be in His presence, and His presence is the purpose of our righteousness.  There is no difference between the power that saves from the power that sanctifies, and it is my belief that, if we are able to lay hold of the concept, of which I will attempt to expound, we may lay hold of the power of God in a way that brings revival to our community.

“For I desired mercy and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings”

Hosea 6:6

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.  People will be lovers of themselves… rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.”

2 Timothy 3:1-5

            The word ‘mercy’ in Hosea 4:6 is translated from a Hebrew word that means, ‘piety’, ‘goodness’, ‘sanctity’.  These concepts, when built into our character by the power of the grace that comes only through Jesus Christ, is what the bible means when it uses the term ‘godliness’.  The Greek word translated ‘godliness’, itself, means ‘piety’.  So, when the bible speaks of ‘godliness’ it is speaking of God’s character being expressed in our own character.  And since, true godliness can only be built in us through the power of God, if godliness is found in us, it is evidence of the power of God in us.  We exercise the power of God by expressing his godly character through our character.  This is what I mean when I use the phrase, ‘the power of godliness’, which is not, itself, a phrase found in scripture, but the precedent is foundational in the teaching of scripture.

            God has designed us to function in a manner to which the power of godliness is shaped by the forms of our devotion.  For example, the ceremonial law in the Old Testament, despite its futility to keep Israel from sin, was designed to reveal, in types and shadow, the character of God, so that by using these precepts to order their lives they might be set apart from all other nations, or in a crude way, to sanctify them.  The form of devotion was meant to facilitate the power of godliness.  This has always been the formula, and it is still the formula for us in Christ, though it operates in a more profound way through devotion that is now facilitated by God’s Spirit.  Devotion is the means to bring about the practical expression of godliness.  They are both important, but one is of more preference than the other.  Meaning, the power of godliness is greater than the forms of our devotion.  This is evident, not only when Jesus cites Hosea 4:6 to explain His own actions when He defied the law of the Jewish Talmud (Dining with sinners; healing on the Sabbath), but also, in Paul’s exhortation to Christians in Rome when he says, “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature the things required by the law, they are a law for themselves (Rom 2:14).”  This does not mean that the forms of devotion should be abandoned in the pursuit of godliness.  For, Jesus tells the Pharisees, “Those (lawful precepts) you ought to have done without neglecting the others (godliness)(Matt 23:23).”  What this means for us who live in the much desired grace of Jesus Christ, being free from the ceremonial law, is that the forms of our devotion are rendered empty and meaningless if they are not consummated by the deeds of godliness.  Charity is not useful to us or gloritying to God as an abstraction to be contemplated and discussed, but only if it is the principle we use to determine a life lived in the expression of self-sacrifice.  And self-sacrifice, being the practical mode by which we embrace the principle of charity, is not only service to others, but the progressive abandonment of sinful behavior.  Jesus does not heal or forgive without an exhortation to reform.  He says to the man by the Pool of Bethesda, “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”  Likewise, He tells the adulterous woman to ‘sin no more’.  

Prayer, praise, fasting, study of the word—these are all forms of devotion.  These were meant to shape the goodness of the nature that God wants to build in us through them, and important as they may be, apart from the deeds of piety these forms were meant to facilitate (obedience can be expressed by any Christian despite maturity), the forms themselves are worthless.  The power of godliness is found in the deeds of godliness and not the forms of our devotion, because it is only the deeds that are an actual expression of faith through obedience to commands that compel us to act contrary to our natural inclinations of right and wrong.  Even prayer itself is fruitless apart from an active will to engage the desires the forms of devotion were meant to shape, because prayer is only communion with God if we are sincere in our desire to pursue God, which Jesus says is only demonstrated in our attempts to obey His commands.  We are obligated to act according to the desires we express in our prayers even if those actions continue to produce failure.  If we do not do this then our prayers are empty like sacrifice without mercy, and our praise is meaningless like burnt offerings apart from the knowledge of God.  We must not believe the lie that we cannot do what God asks of us—for God is our help.  We must stop telling ourselves that we are unable to resist temptation—for the bible says that God has given us a way out of each and every temptation we face.  The power of God is power over sin, and God says that He is always with us.  Any reasoning we give for failing to obey is a rationalization that compounds our sin by keeping us from true repentance.  The exhortation to obedience is the part of the gospel that challenges us, and, being our spiritual act of worship, it is the practical manner by which we are sanctified.  It is only in the attempt to be obedient that we apprehend the absolute necessity of the forms of devotion to help us to do so, and it is only through the effort to obey that we experience the power and the fellowship with God that we pursue in devotion.  The bible identifies the acts of piety as preferential to the forms of devotion because the acts of piety will lead to devotion through exposing our continual need for God’s help, identifying Him as the object of our purpose.  The forms of devotion will never lead to acts of piety apart from the conscious, volitional choice to step out in faith in obedience to God, which is the beginning of piety.

            The power of godliness to do what is good begins with supplication to God, is mediated by God’s word and devotion, but is only consummated by the simple choice to act in obedience even, and especially, in the face of what we are convinced we cannot do, for ‘everything is possible to those who believe’.  Faith is not only the belief that God is who He says He is—for even demons believe this and tremble—but it is the willingness to do what we would otherwise not be willing to do because, by the grace of Jesus Christ, He has made us able to do it.  We spend so much time contriving false humility by reciting the nature of our depravity that we forget that Jesus has said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God,” and so, we cease to try with all of our hearts, souls, mind, body, and strength.  When we give in to this form of deception, the power of godliness that should be ours becomes lost in the forms of our devotion (actions that require significantly less faith in their religion), and we become men who only retain the form of godliness while denying its power. This is how the precious saltiness of God, in Christ, looses its flavor and becomes trampled underfoot.

            God desires us to seek righteousness through action with the same voracity with which He desires to give it by providence.  It is only in this action that the power of God becomes differentiated from the power of man, because it is only in this that our faith in God proves more valuable than man’s faith in anything else.  The question only remains: what kind of faith do you have?