TRAIN YOURSELF TO BE GODLY
An address given by Dr Reymond at the Spurgeon Ministers’
FraternalFROM SWORD & TROWEL 2000 No 2
It is my intention to restrict my remarks this morning to what I believe is the
most crucial piece of advice to any Christian minister labouring today in the
Gospel ministry. It is the advice which the apostle Paul gives to Timothy in 1 Timothy
4.7 - ‘Exercise thyself rather unto godliness’, or ‘train yourself to be godly’. Based
on a close exposition of the text, may I suggest this paraphrase of the words - ‘Since you
would instruct others in godliness, do not neglect but rather continually
devote yourself to the systematic cultivation and earnest exercise of your own
spiritual life.’
Given the times in which we live, all the more urgently must this advice be
pressed upon people engaged in Christ’s service today, for godliness or holiness of life is a
necessary prerequisite of any true fragrance of spiritual prosperity in Christian service.
What John Owen of Coggeshall said of true godliness in the mid-seventeenth century must
be truer still today: ‘It is a comely thing,’ he writes, ‘to see a Christian weaned from the
world, minding heavenly things, green and flourishing in spiritual affections, and it is the
more lovely because it is so rare.’
However much the earnest and systematic cultivation of the spiritual life
may be the deepest aspiration of Christian saints generally, even more is it a
duty to be impressed upon him who aspires to the office of the ministry, as well as
upon those of us already holding the teaching and ruling office of elders in Christ’s church.
For without that inner life which is produced only by much time spent in the consideration
of the Word of God, in purposeful self-examination, and before the presence of the Lord in
earnest prayer, we who hold ordination to the Christian ministry will never obtain that
blessed ministry which the Puritan writers described as powerful, painful (that is,
laborious), and useful. That is the high ministry to which one must eagerly aspire if the call
of Almighty God to the teaching ministry has truly been written large upon the heart. This is
so, I believe, for the following three reasons:
In the first place, only a flourishing spiritual life and a genuine walk in
holiness with God will fortify the ordained teaching minister in times of
discouragement.
I sincerely believe that the ministerial failure, ‘burnout’ and ‘dropout’ about
which we read and hear all too often today is to be traced directly to the minister’s failure to
maintain personal, intimate fellowship with the triune God.
Because of the press of his myriad other ministerial duties, all too often he
allows the cultivation of his spiritual walk with God - this training in godliness - to drop
out of his daily vocational routine. The minister who eliminates this exercise from his daily
round immediately places his ministry in peril.
It is hard for ‘lay’ Christians to comprehend fully the nature of the service
upon which those in the ministry have embarked. In particular, it is difficult for them to
appreciate the extent of the difficulties and discouragements which attend the pastor’s
teaching and labours. In a letter to a recently ordained friend, John Newton wrote:
. . . a distant view of the ministry is generally very different from what it
is found to be when we are actually engaged in it . . . If the Lord were to show us the
whole beforehand, who that has a due sense of his own insufficiency and weakness,
would venture to engage in it? . . . The ministry of the Gospel, like the book which the
Apostle John ate, is a bitter sweet: but the sweetness is tasted first, the bitterness is
usually known afterwards, when we are so far engaged that there is no going back.
The Gospel ministry in general and the teaching ministry in particular is indeed a
high privilege but also a hard calling, its executers not only divinely chosen in
but often also divinely chosen to the furnace of affliction. Martin Luther wrote
concerning the ministry:
The labours of the ministry will exhaust the very marrow of your bones,
and hasten old age and death.
And Luther captures for us his own personal awareness of the spiritual
extremities and struggles of the teaching ministry in his famous Pastor’s Prayer, depicted in
a frame that hangs on the wall of the reception area at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort
Lauderdale. While I am sure that you have read it before, let me remind you of it:
O Lord God, Thou hast made me a pastor and teacher in the church.
Thou seest how unfit I am to administer rightly this great and responsible office; and
had I been without Thy aid and counsel I would surely have ruined it all long ago.
Therefore do I invoke Thee. How gladly do I desire to yield and consecrate my heart
and mouth to this ministry! I desire to teach the congregation. I too desire to learn
and to keep Thy Word my constant companion and to meditate thereupon earnestly.
Use me as Thy instrument in Thy service. Only do not Thou forsake me, for if I am
left to myself, I will certainly bring it all to destruction. Amen.
The Puritan pastor, John Flavel, adds to Luther’s thought his opinion, saying
that the engagements of the ministry -
are fitly compared to the toil of men in harvest, to the labours of a
woman in travail, and to the agonies of soldiers in the extremity of a battle.
This is so, he reasons, because the issues and consequences of
the work of the ministry are so great; because the opposition is so
powerful; because the outcome of the pastor’s labour is so completely beyond
his control; and because ‘ . . . sin and Satan unravel almost all we do, the
impressions we make on our people’s souls in one sermon vanishing before the next.’
Consider for a moment the ministry of Richard Greenham, who laboured in
an English country parish near Cambridge for twenty years in the late sixteenth century. He
was a diligent, faithful, and gifted servant of God and the Gospel. Rising at 4 am each
weekday, he would preach a daybreak sermon to catch the flock before they left for the
fields. His godliness and insight as a Christian counsellor attracted needy people from afar.
Yet, in spite of his faithful and earnest ministry and eminent gifts, and in spite of the
success he enjoyed in ministering to those who came to him from other
parishes, his ministry among his own people was virtually fruitless. It is recorded
that he said to his successor, ‘I perceive no good wrought by my ministry on any but one
family.’ Observers at the time wryly concurred: ‘Greenham has pastures green,’ they said,
‘but flocks full lean.’
I am sincerely hopeful, of course, that pastors generally are not sharing
Richard Greenham’s lot, but of this I am sure: if you are a pastor you will
know so many separate occasions of failure and discouragement in the Gospel ministry that
you will be no stranger to grief.
The burdens are so great, the troubles so constant, the failures so painful, that
unless you are personally thriving in your devotion to the Lord, delighting in
His love and fellowship, enjoying intimacy with Him in prayer, and generally having
the Gospel proven to you again and again in the secret places of your own heart, your
ministry will not well endure the shocks that will come to it.
But if you are walking closely with your Lord and if you are surrounded and
protected by daily experiences of His love and presence, you will find strength
to endure every trial and to overcome every obstacle, and your ministry will not be undone
by the discouragements but rather will persevere in the midst of difficulty and in this way
bring even greater honour to Christ.
The second reason why the diligent cultivation of personal godliness is
so essential to every preacher of the Gospel is that only a flourishing spiritual life
and walk with God will protect him from the perils of success in the ministry.
I am assuming that God has equipped my pastoral hearers to be singularly
effective servants of the Gospel. Doubtless, you have good minds, winsome personalities,
and the ability to communicate effectively, and therefore I believe that, if not now, over
time, all will be appreciated preachers, teachers and counsellors. But take note now of what
I am about to say.
What success and popularity you will find attending your ministry will
certainly increase your opportunity to be useful, but such success will also expose you
to the great temptation of pride. However much we all may admit that it is necessary
for ministers to remain humble, alas, it remains true, as the godly John Newton once wrote:
There will be almost the same connection between popularity and pride,
as between fire and gunpowder; they cannot meet without an explosion, at least not
unless the gunpowder [of pride] is kept very damp.
Unless your heart is being constantly impressed, through self-examination
and meditation in God’s Word, with the true and odious darkness of your own
old man, with the weakness of your will, with the utter necessity of the mercies of God and
the aid of His Spirit upon you, your successes will lead you astray, turn your eyes away
from the Lord to yourself, and spoil your ministry insofar as it would have any capacity to
exalt Christ and to build His Church.
The Lord Himself has said in both the Old and New Testaments: ‘God
resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble’ (Proverbs 3.34; James
4.6). And if by earnest and regular devotion as a servant of God you are cultivating
that pure poverty of spirit and meekness of heart in which the Lord of grace and mercy
delights, any success that attends your labours will not undo your ministry but will simply
give you cause to praise the name of the Lord and to trust Him to use you even more.
Third, and finally, the cultivation of personal godliness - training oneself
to be godly - is crucial to all true ministry because only a flourishing spiritual life and
walk with God will lend the needed power and effectiveness to one’s labours.
We all know many talented men in the ministry whose work produces little
or no fruit because God is blowing a cold wind across their churches. The problem with
these men is not that they have no natural gifts, for they are often eminent in such gifts. Nor
is the problem necessarily that they are proud or harbouring some other great sin in their
hearts, for reason of which God is withholding His blessing. The problem is simply that
they are personally spiritually dull and listless. There is no Spirit-wrought animation in their
devotion to God, no earnestness, no zeal, no inexpressible joy in God, and no tears shed
over their people’s sin and condition.
We in the Gospel ministry may have the highest academic and professional
competence, but the work of our ministry cannot be sustained by any aggregate of natural
gifts, however splendid. Such gifts alone cannot compensate for the lack of a Spirit-
enkindled heart. We are to be perennially ‘charismatic’ in the sense that we are to be
continually ‘fanning into flame’ the Spirit’s engiftings by our longing for holiness and a
personal spiritual walk before God (2 Timothy 1.6). For if we have a dull,
listless walk with God our auditors cannot take our teaching very seriously.
We may tell them as often as we want that sin is terrible, but our own
indifferent example, if it is there, will neutralise the desired effect of our words.
We may tell them as often as we want that the love of God ought to make
their hearts sing for joy, but our own listless demeanour, if there, will undo our
exhortations.
We may tell them as often as we want that there ought to be a deep abiding
love among the brethren in the church, but our own arid experience, if there, will prevent
them from rejoicing with their brothers and sisters who rejoice, or from truly weeping with
their brothers and sisters who weep in distress and sorrow.
No, my beloved yoke-fellows in the ministry of the Gospel, God honours a
ministry that blazes with the passion and fire of a Spirit-filled heart, and He pours out His
power upon that ministry - in which the teaching and pleading come from the
broken heart and are accompanied by tears; in which its counsels are animated
by a deep and obvious devotion to God, by true love for people, and by genuine concern for
their eternal state and the salvation and sanctification of their souls.
But whence comes that tender, earnest, zealous heart which so powerfully
animates the greatly used servant of the Gospel? It does not reside natively in your breast, I
assure you, as you surely already know. It comes from many experiences with
God - from great exercises of heart and mind in heavenly things, in the cultivation of
spiritual affections in the Word of God and in prayer, in spending time with God, or, in
Paul’s simple words, in - exercising or training oneself to be godly.
I remind my seminary classes rather often of Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s
words: ‘The greatest need my flock will ever have is to see their pastor walking before them
in holiness.’ May God’s Spirit etch M’Cheyne’s sentiment indelibly upon the tablet of your
heart as you stand before your flock and as you labour among them!
There is an entry in Archibald Alexander’s diary dated February 3rd, 1820,
which reads in this connection:
May I be taught of God that I may be able to teach others also. It is only
the heart that has been deeply exercised in divine things which can enable us to
preach experimentally to others. Piety is the life of the ministry.
And true godliness involves glorying, as did the apostle Paul, only in the
Cross of Christ. There is no place for boasting in ourselves. About himself Paul affirmed: ‘I
have nothing to glory of’ (1 Corinthians 9.16), ‘Of myself I will not
glory’ (2 Corinthians 12.5), ‘We preach not ourselves’ (2 Corinthians
4.5), and ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ’ (Galatians 6.14). He described himself as ‘the least of the
apostles’ (1 Corinthians 15.9), the chief of sinners (1 Timothy
1.15), and ‘less than the least of all saints’ (his ‘less than the least’ here is a
comparative piled on top of a superlative, suggesting deep self-abasement) (Ephesians
3.8). He regarded himself as a servant of Christ (Romans 1.1; Galatians 1.10;
Philippians 1.1), of God (Titus 1.1), and of the saints (2
Corinthians 4.5).
If we would glory in anything about ourselves, we should glory
not in our strengths but in our weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest upon us:
‘Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in
distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong’ (2 Corinthians
12.10).
God does not need or want men, regardless of the number and strength of the
talents with which He has engifted them, who believe they can and should conduct their
ministries in their own strength. What God wants is a few weak men, for when they are
weak in themselves, then He can make them strong in Him.
We should strive, accordingly, as did Paul, to give all glory to God for
everything that God by His grace and power enables us to accomplish for the cause of
Christ. This simply means, echoing the first answer of the Westminster Shorter
Catechism, ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever,’ that
our greatest passion in life should be to learn to know God better than we know anyone or
anything else in this world and to enjoy God more than we enjoy anyone or anything else in
this world, for only in such devotion will our lives publicly display as they should
the glory of God and thus give as they should all glory to Him.
Seven hundred and some years before Paul, Isaiah cried: ‘Depart . . . go ye
out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean,
that bear the vessels of the Lord’ (Isaiah 52.11). Fellow-labourers in the Gospel
ministry, for the health and sake of your flocks whom He purchased with His own blood, I
call upon you, in the simple words of the great apostle: ‘Exercise thyself rather unto godliness.’ If
you do that, dear friends, your flocks will ever bless God that He permitted you to walk for a while among
them and to have taught them about heavenly things not only by your preached and taught word but also by
your godly example.
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