How to Live a Godly Life
Coming into the knowledge of our Creator
While listening to Christian music on Spotify earlier this year I came across a track titled 2 Peter 1:3 Interlude (feat. Ryan Fullerton) by the American rapper FLAME. I was already aware of FLAME because a few months ago I discovered his album Extra Nos, which is a wonderful collection of songs that draw upon Lutheran theology and emphasise salvation as an act of the grace of God. That album helped me a great deal because I was going through a season of being deeply concerned about sin and feeling as though I was constantly missing the mark and falling short. The compassionate nature of the lyrics, especially in the song Sola Fide, gave me some much needed stability. I recommend Extra Nos to anyone who is feeling depressed about sin and is feeling as though however hard they try they feel they cannot do enough.
In the track 2 Peter 1:3 Interlude, we hear the following passage of preaching:
Look at verses three and four. He starts off by saying His divine power granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. What he’s telling us is that God’s power, the power that made this world, the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, this power has moved into your life and granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Paraphrase: Everything you need to be godly, God gave you by His power. How? Through the knowledge of Him.
Now this is an amazing thing. What this means is that the main thing we need to be godly is to know God. You don’t need different circumstances in your life in order to grow in godliness. You don’t need new family or new people in your life in order to grow in godliness. You don’t need new roommates to grow in godliness. You don’t need a new personality to grow in godliness. You don’t need a new past. What you need is: you need to know God. You see that? He says He has given us everything for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him.
Look at verse two. Peter says may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. How do you get more grace and more peace? How do you live a godly life? You live a godly life by knowing God. The reason people don’t live godly lives is they don’t know God.
Romans chapter one has this list of totally immoral things people do: gossip, hating their parents, all kinds of sexual immorality. And he says, why did this happen? Because they did not see fit to honour God. They rejected the knowledge of God. They suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness. And when you put down God as an idea, when you cover up God as a person, when you destroy the knowledge of God, you’re always going to get ungodly lives — sure as day follows night.
But when someone comes to know God, you will always get a godly life, because knowing God changes you. And what Peter is here telling us is that we’ve got everything we need for life and godliness because we know Him. He has lit up our hearts, He has given us the new birth, and now we see Him as beautiful. Before you’re born again you can’t even see the Kingdom of God. Once you’re born again, the very things that look foolish to the world; the cross; a dying saviour; all of a sudden become the most attractive things to you in the world.
When I reflect on the life I led before God in His immeasurable grace revealed Himself to me, I was wildly morally astray. The things that consumed my desires were drinking alcohol, sexual promiscuity, and sensual pleasures of all kinds. I didn’t have any kind of awareness of the existence of God. It was only during a time of life crisis, when I read the Bible with an open mind for the first time, that a whole new dimension of life opened up to me and I began to see God not just as an object of abstract speculation, but as the living and real creator of the Universe.
Jesus taught that the only way to the Father is through the Son. I don’t know whether people who adhere to religions other than Christianity have a personal relationship with God and knowledge of Him in the way described in the passage of preaching I quoted above. But I can honestly say that in my life personally, it was the knowledge of the Son of God and all He taught that brought me into a personal relationship with the Creator of the Universe, and this knowledge of God changed my heart, my ambitions, my behaviour, my desires, and every other aspect of my life.
True fulfillment, and the deepest peace we can experience as human beings, can only come through knowing God. Wherever you find yourself on your spiritual journey, you would be wise to focus your attention on growing in the knowledge of Him.