SOBERLY, RIGHTEOUSLY AND GODLY

Every Bible student on earth recognizes the absolute necessity of God's grace in the scheme of human redemption. Paul made that fact very plain in his letter to the church of our Lord at Ephesus. "But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together with Christ, (by grace you are saved) .... For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:4-5, 8). Paul told Titus: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared unto all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world" (Tit. 2:11-12).

In my judgment, we are approaching the time – if we are not already there - when millions of people in all denominations will embrace the doctrine that all human beings will be saved. The doctrine is known as Universalism. How do people who believe in Universalism handle the three adverbs - soberly, righteously and godly - in this passage from Titus? I can give you one example. Philip Gulley and James Mulholland, both Quaker preachers, have written a book with the title, If Grace Is True: Why God Will Save Every Person (San Francisco: Harper, 2003). These authors list a number of Bible passages which they believe teach Universalism. Some of those passages stress doing the will of God (Mt. 7:21), fearing God and doing what is right (Acts 10:35) and coming to repentance (2 Pet. 3:9). If men have to do the will of God; if we fear God and do what is right; if we must come to repentance, then not every person will be saved. Multiplied millions of people couldn’t care less about obeying the words of scripture.

One of the passages Gulley and Mulholland list is Titus 2:11which says: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared unto all" (p. 210). Were they aware of verse 12 or did they simply choose to ignore it, as they do hundreds of other passages? I shall read the two verses again: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared unto all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world" (Tit. 2:11-12). Do we have to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts or is Paul simply making a suggestion? Our study today will be devoted to the three adverbs: "Soberly, righteously and Godly."

Before I examine with you the meaning and the application of these concepts, I want to show you just how illogical Gulley and Mulholland are. In a second book, If God Is Love: Rediscovering Grace in an Ungracious World (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), these two authors correctly say: "Traditional Christianity has usually asserted we are saved by faith. James didn't agree. He said, 'If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you say, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith, if it has no works, is dead'" (Jas. 2:15-17) (p. 222). If every person is going to be saved, regardless of their behavior, why is not a dead faith just as good as a living faith?

Do you know the meaning of the word "must," as used in the New Testament? It means it is essential, it is necessary. Over and over, Gulley and Mulholland use the word "must." For example, "I must inspire a new way of thinking about our responsibility as citizens of the world" (p. 223). "We must seek equality, not just in the United States, but throughout the world. We must accept the reality that everyone cannot live as extravagantly as we do, so we need to live less extravagantly" (p. 235). "We must abandon theologies and philosophies that destroy and separate. We must embrace ideas that heal and unite.... What we must destroy are institutions that allow us to justify and rationalize inequality, injustice, and intolerance" (p. 284). Gulley and Mulholland either do not believe in the doctrine of Universalism or they do not know the meaning of the word "must." If we must do anything, the doctrine of Universalism is false.

Paul teaches that we must live "soberly." The word "sober" for many people primarily means to control one's appetite for beverage alcohol. The word certainly includes controlling one's appetite for strong drink, but it is much broader than that. The Greek word literally means of a sound mind. The King James Version renders the noun "soberness" or "sobriety." Paul exhorted Titus to tell young men "to be sober minded" (Tit. 2:6). The Apostle Peter urged his readers: "But the end of all things is at hand: be therefore sober, and watch unto prayer" (1 Pet. 4:7). Paul admonished the Roman Christians: "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man who is among you, not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith" (Rom. 12:3).

If all of us - young and old - think soberly, what a tremendous amount of heartaches and tragedies we could avoid. Is there any doubt in you mind that millions of Americans do not think soberly about alcohol and other dangerous drugs? Jerry Lee Lewis - not my favorite country performer by any means - has recorded a song with the title, "What Made Milwaukee Famous Has Made a Loser out of Me." Do you have any idea how many marriages have been destroyed because of someone' s drinking? Experts estimate that alcohol is involved in about 50% of all divorces. But that does not tell the whole story. Many wives suffer in silence when they are abused by drunken husbands. In addition, drunken fathers abuse thousands and thousands of their own children. Nobody knows how many drunken fathers either cripple or kill their own children. Would those fathers abuse their children if they were not under the influence of alcohol?

Drunks on American highways kill thousands of people every year. Are they exercising self-control? The Bible says drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:21). Shall we take the word of two liberal preachers that every person will be saved or shall we take the word of an apostle of Jesus Christ? Do you think Gulley and Mulholland know more about who will go to heaven than the Holy Spirit who guided Paul to write Galatians and 1 Corinthians?

Self-control should also apply to controlling one's sexual appetite. The scriptures could hardly be more explicit on that topic. The city of Corinth was known in the ancient world as one of the most immoral cities on earth. Paul asked the Corinthian Christians: "Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 6:9-10). Do you remember what Paul told the Corinthians about sexual immorality? "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them members of a harlot? God forbid. What? Do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body? For two, says he, shall be one flesh. But he who is joined unto the Lord is one spirit." Please listen carefully to Paul's command to the Corinthians. "Flee fornication" (1 Cor. 6:15-18). The tense of the verb demands that Christians keep on fleeing. Charles Williams renders the expression: "Keep on running away from sexual immorality."

We know the strength of the sexual appetite. But does that mean we cannot control it? If our sexual desires are too strong for us to control, how can God hold us accountable if we engage in forbidden sexual activities? But he does hold us accountable, as the word of God so plainly teaches. Do Gulley and Mulholland believe the sexually immoral will go to heaven in spite of the teaching of scripture that they will not?

Does not the Bible teach self-control of the tongue? James explains: "Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasts great things. Behold how great a matter a little fire kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell" (Jas. 3:5-6). Individual lives have been ruined, families destroyed and churches divided because of someone' s uncontrolled tongue. Solomon discusses people's loose use of the tongue. "As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; so is a contentious man to kindle strife. The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly. Burning lips and a wicked heart are like a potsherd covered with silver dross. He who hates dissembles with his lips, and lays up deceit within him; when he speaks fair, believe him not: for there are seven abominations in his heart" (Prov. 26:21-25). And did not our Lord say something about all liars experiencing the second death (Rev. 21: 8)?

Paul spoke of the necessity of living "righteously." Living righteously means obeying the commandments of the Lord. The inspired Psalmist said concerning righteousness: "My tongue shall speak of thy word: for all thy commandments are righteousness" (Psa. 119:172). You and I do not have enough wisdom or enough authority to tell us what we must do to be righteous. We must let God's word tell us what righteousness is and what it means to be living righteously. The beautiful little book of 1 John sheds considerable light on our duty to live righteously. John says: "If you know that he is righteous, you know that every one who does righteousness is born of him" (1 John 2:29).

Contrary to what one hears on radio or on television, righteousness is not what God bestows on us. It is what we do. Obviously we could not do righteousness without the grace of God, but God does do righteousness for us. The Apostle John makes that truth too plain for anyone to deny. "Little children, let no man deceive you: he who does righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous....In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever does not do righteousness is not of God, neither he who does not love his brother" (1 John 3:7, 10).

If God's commandments constitute righteousness, as the Psalmist teaches, must we not keep God's commandments to be righteous? How can anyone claim to be a Christian and deny that we must keep the commandments? In the book of John and in John' s epistles, there is a strong emphasis on keeping the commandments. The word "keep" appears eighteen times in John and eight times in 1 John. Surely every Bible student is familiar with our Lord's words: "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15). Jesus also said: "You are my friends, if you keep my commandments" (John 15:14). If we do not keep Christ's commandments, are we his friends?

I shall take time to read a few passages from 1 John. "Hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He who says, I know him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keeps his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby we know that we are in him" (1 John 2:3-5). "And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do things that are pleasing in his sight.... And he who keeps his commandments dwells in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit he has given us" (1 John 3:22, 24). "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous (or burdensome)" (1 John 5:2-3). What can we conclude from these passages? To live righteously means to keep God's commandments.

Christians must also live "godly." The New Testament writers use some form of the word translated "godly" twenty-three times. The noun is always translated "godliness" except one time (Acts 3:12). Paul uses the word eight times in his letters to Timothy. Paul encouraged Timothy and all faithful Christians to pray "for kings, and for all who are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty" (1 Tim. 2:2). Paul warned Timothy: "But refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise yourself rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise profits little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come" (1 Tim. 4:7-8). The verb is rendered either "worship" or "to show piety."

Paul charged Titus to be sober-minded, righteous and godly "in this present world." There are cultic groups which teach a second chance for those who do not obey the gospel in their present life. Is it possible to harmonize that idea with the biblical concept that we must live soberly, righteously and godly "in this present world?" You have this life only to believe the gospel and obey it. If you refuse to love God and obey the gospel, you will be "punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power" (2 Thess. 1:8-9).

Some of the Eastern Religions teach reincarnation. That doctrine offers not only a second chance, but a third and a fourth and many more. You just keep on coming back until you get it right. One verse from the book of Hebrews completely destroys the idea of reincarnation. "And it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment" (Heb. 9:27). The Greek word translated "once" means once for all, once never to be repeated. Charles Williams renders this passage: "Indeed just as men must die but once and after that be judged, so Christ was offered once for all to take away the sins of many."

There are many good moral people in our world who have not obeyed the gospel. They may believe they can be saved on the basis of their moral goodness. If that were true, why did Jesus have to die to take away our sins? And why did Cornelius have to obey the gospel? Luke describes Cornelius as "a devout man, and one who feared God with all his house, who gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God always" (Acts 10:2). God commissioned the Apostle Peter to tell Cornelius what he had to do to be saved (Acts 10:6). Peter asked: "Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 10:4748).

I close our study today by showing how unrighteous people can become righteous. I repeat a passage I read to you a few minutes ago. Paul asked the Corinthians: "Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, not abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you." In very simple language, some of the Christians at Corinth had been involved in these immoral activities before they obeyed the gospel. Paul added: "But you are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6:9-11).

When did the Corinthians cease to be slaves to sin and become righteous in God's eyes? We do not have to wonder. Paul and Silas visited the city of Corinth. Paul visited the Jewish synagogue and persuaded many of the Jews and the Greeks. He preached in the synagogue that Jesus was the Christ (Acts 18:4-5). We do not have a record of what Paul told the people of Corinth about Christ. But we know what occurred as a result of his preaching. "And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house; and many of the Corinthians hearing believed and were baptized" (Acts 18:8).

When the Corinthians heard Paul's sermon about Christ, believed on the Lord and were baptized, were they washed, sanctified and justified? If they were not, what else did they have to do? If they had to do more, why did Paul neglect to tell us? Like the Roman Christians, the Corinthians obeyed from the heart the form of doctrine they received (Rom. 6:16-18). And because of their obedience to the Lord, they were added to the church. "For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have all been made to drink into one Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:13). From then on, God wanted them to live soberly, righteously and godly.

Winford Claiborne

The International Gospel Hour

P.O. Box 118

Fayetteville, TN 37334