Ungodly?

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Romans 1:18)


In Jerry Bridges book, Respectable Sins, he makes a distinction between ungodliness and unrighteousness that I think will be fruitful to share. 


     "Ungodliness describes an attitude toward God, while unrighteousness refers to sinful actions in thought, word, or deed."
     "Ungodliness may be defined as living one's everyday life with little or no thought of God, or of God's will, or of God's glory, or of one's dependance on God."


He also says that most people would say that at the root of every sin is the sin of pride. I think I would have agreed with that before I read his book. Bridges says that "we can think of all our sins, big and small, growing out of the trunk of pride. But that which sustains the life of the tree is the root system, in this case the root of ungodliness. It is ungodliness that ultimately gives life to our more visible sins."


I quit drinking alcohol in the year 1995. This decision was made because I saw that I was not able to handle strong drink. I had gotten in a lot of trouble because of my slavery to the sauce. This decision was a good decision to make. It was a good one, but not a godly one. When I look back at my life before I was a Christian, much is very shameful. But after 1995, I started to make better decisions even though I rejected the fact that God was real. What I see now is that even though I was becoming better, I was actually becoming more ungodly.


You see, the better decisions I was making only increased my pride. I was able to make good decisions without Jesus. So I was having less visibly bad apples growing on my tree of life,  yet the trunk of the tree was increasing daily. The root system below the ground was spreading out as my ungodliness increased. 


After my conversion in 2003, this entirely changed. I was suddenly aware of God's presence. I was conscience of God. I thought about him all of the time. I started making decisions that were based on what the Bible said, not just what others thought was good or bad. I thought in terms of making decisions that were pleasing to God. I was aware that he was listening to my conversations at work. He was with me even though no one else was. I was beginning to walk in the fear of the Lord. 


This distinction between ungodliness and unrighteousness is helpful to me. After 1995, I started to become more righteous, yet more ungodly; hence my actual righteousness became self-righteousness. When you look around, there are plenty of good and moral people; yet is their goodness actual goodness? 


Jerry Bridges points out in his book that all of us still have roots of ungodliness lying under the ground of our lives. If there were not those roots, there would be no sin above ground. When there is no sin above ground in my life, I will be standing before Jesus in heaven. Until then, I pray our great God makes me more and more aware of His ever present Spirit.