The following reflections by Jerry Bridges are shortened excerpts from his book, Respectable Sins, published in 2007 by NavPress.com. His focus is not the obvious sins of our culture but the subtle sins of believers, the target audience of his book. Writing from the trenches of his own battles with sin, Bridges offers a message of hope in the transforming grace of God to overcome our “respectable sins.” Jerry states in the Preface to his book, “The gospel is a vital gift from God not only for our salvation but also to enable us to deal with the ongoing activity of sin in our lives. So we still need the gospel every day.” – ed.
1. The Malignancy of Sin
Sin is a spiritual and moral malignancy. Left unchecked, it can spread throughout our entire inner being and contaminate every area of our lives. Even worse, it often will “metastasize” from us into the lives of other believers around us. None of us lives on a spiritual or social island. Our attitudes, words, and actions, and oftentimes even our private unspoken thoughts, tend to have an effect on those around us. Paul must have had this concept in mind when he wrote,
“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”
Ephesians 4:29
Our speech, whether it is about others or to others, tends to tear down or build up. It either corrupts the minds of our hearers, or it gives grace to them. Such is the power of our words. If I gossip, I both tear down another person and corrupt the mind of my listener. If I complain about the difficult circumstances of my life, I impugn the sovereignty and goodness of God and tempt my listener to do the same. In this way, my sin “metastasizes” into the heart of another person.
Sin, however, is much more than wrong actions, unkind words, or even those evil thoughts that we never express. Sin is a principle or moral force in our heart, our inner being. Our sinful actions, words, and thoughts are simply expressions of the principle of sin residing within us, even in those of us whose hearts have been renewed. The apostle Paul calls this principle the flesh (or sinful nature in some Bible translations). This principle, called the flesh, is such a reality that Paul sometimes personifies it (see, for example, Romans 7:8–11; Galatians 5:17).
Now, here is the unvarnished truth that we need to lay to heart.
Even though our hearts have been renewed, even though we have been freed from the absolute dominion of sin, even though God’s Holy Spirit dwells within our bodies, this principle of sin still lurks within us and wages war against our souls. It is the failure to recognize the awful reality of this truth that provides the fertile soil in which our “respectable” or “acceptable” sins grow and flourish.
We who are believers tend to evaluate our character and conduct relative to the moral culture in which we live. Since we usually live at a higher moral standard than society at large, it is easy for us to feel good about ourselves and to assume that God feels that way also. We fail to reckon with the reality of sin still dwelling within us.
One of the common truths about cancer is that it can often grow undetected until it reaches a crisis stage or even a stage that is terminal. In fact, the word deceitful, which is a moral term, can be used to describe the way cancer often seems to operate. It seems to have been successfully treated; but unexpectedly, it reappears somewhere else in the body.
The way cancer operates is a good analogy of the way sin, especially so-called acceptable or refined sin, operates in our lives. Another good descriptive term is subtle sins. The word subtle has a wide variety of meanings, some positive, as in “the subtle shades of blue in a painting.” But often it has a strong negative connotation to mean wily, crafty, insidious, or treacherous. That is the sense of the word in the expression subtle sins. The acceptable sins are subtle in the sense that they deceive us into thinking they are not so bad, or not thinking of them as sins, or even worse, not even thinking about them at all! Yes, some of our refined sins are so subtle that we commit them without even thinking about them, either at the time or afterward. We often live in unconscious denial of our “acceptable” sins.
2. Ungodliness: A root cause of other sins
When I talk about specific areas of acceptable sins, one comment I often hear is that pride is the root cause of all of them. While I agree that pride does play a major role in the development and expression of our subtle sins, I believe there is another sin that is even more basic, more widespread, and more apt to be the root cause of our other sins. That is the sin of ungodliness, of which we are all guilty to some degree.
For Paul, all of life is to be lived out in the presence of God with an eye to pleasing Him.
Consider the Corinthian church, which, was so messed up. Yet Paul wrote to them,
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
1 Corinthians 10:31
The all of that sentence includes every activity of our days. We are not only to eat to the glory of God, we are to drive to the glory of God, we are to shop to the glory of God, and we are to engage in our social relationships to the glory of God. Everything we do is to be done to the glory of God. That is the mark of a godly person.
What, then, does it mean to do all to the glory of God? It means that I eat and drive and shop and engage in my social relationships with a twofold goal. First, I desire that all that I do be pleasing to God. I want God to be pleased with the way I go about the ordinary activities of my day. So I pray prospectively over the day before me, asking that the Holy Spirit will so direct my thoughts, words, and actions that they will be pleasing to God.
Second, to do all to the glory of God means that I desire that all my activities of an ordinary day will honor God before other people. Jesus said,
“In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
Matthew 5:16
By contrast, Paul wrote to the self-righteous Jews in Rome, “You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you’” (Romans 2:23–24). Think of it this way: If everyone you interact with in the course of an ordinary day knows that you trust in Christ as Savior and Lord, would your words and actions glorify God before them? Or would you perhaps be like the father of whom one of his children said, “If God is like my father, I want nothing to do with God”?
Total godliness and utter ungodliness are the opposite ends of a continuum. All of us are somewhere between those two extremes. The only person who ever lived a totally godly life was Jesus. And probably no true believer lives a totally ungodly life. But where are we on the spectrum?
As you think about your own life, remember that we are not talking about righteous versus wicked behavior. We are talking about living all of life as if God is relevant or irrelevant. Survey after survey continues to inform us that there is little difference between the values and behavior patterns of Christians and non-Christians. Why is this true? Surely it reflects the fact that we live so much of our ordinary lives with little or no thought of God, or of how we might please and glorify Him. It’s not that we consciously or deliberately put God out of our minds. We just ignore Him. He is seldom in our thoughts.
3. Self-righteous pride
Self-righteous pride, one of the more common of our acceptable sins, is a direct product of our ungodly thinking.
Sins of the tongue, such as gossip, sarcasm, and other unkind words to or about another person, cannot thrive in an awareness that God hears every word we speak. The reason we do sin with our tongues is due to the fact that we are to some degree ungodly. We don’t think of living every moment of our lives in the presence of an all-seeing, all-hearing God.
I believe that all our other acceptable sins can ultimately be traced to this root sin of ungodliness. To use a tree as an illustration, 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.
If ungodly habits of thinking, then, are so commonplace with us, how can we deal with this sin? How can we become more godly in our daily lives? Paul wrote to Timothy,
“Train yourself for godliness.”
1 Timothy 4:7
The word train comes from the athletic culture of that day and refers to the practice athletes went through daily to prepare themselves to compete in their athletic contests. It implies, among other things, commitment, consistency, and discipline in training.
Paul wanted Timothy, and all believers of every age, to be just as committed to growth in godliness, and just as intentional in pursuing it, as the athletes of that day who were competing for a temporal prize. But I suspect that most Christians seldom, if ever, think about how they can grow in godliness.
I could not help but contrast our anemic desire for godliness with the attitude of young men in our city who recently camped out all night in snow and cold at the entrance to a local electronics store. They wanted to be sure they would be able to buy one of a limited supply of a new video game system. One young man arrived at 9:30 Saturday morning to wait for the doors to open at 8 a.m. Sunday. Would any of us have that kind of zeal for godliness?
Our goal in the pursuit of godliness should be to grow more in our conscious awareness that every moment of our lives is lived in the presence of God; that we are responsible to Him and dependent on Him. This goal would include a growing desire to please Him and glorify Him in the most ordinary activities of life.
Because ungodliness is so all-encompassing, it will help to identify specific areas of life where you tend to live without regard to God. These might include your work, your hobbies, your playing or watching sports, and even your driving. Scripture texts that might be helpful to memorize, ponder, and pray over include 1 Timothy 4:7–8; 1 Corinthians 10:31; Colossians 1:9–10 and 3:23; as well as Psalm 42:1–2; 63:1; and 27:4.
Above all, pray that God will make you more conscious of the fact that you live every moment of every day under His all-seeing eye. While you may not be mindful of Him, He is certainly aware of you and sees every deed you do, hears every word you say, and knows every thought you think (see Psalm 139:1–4). Beyond that, He even searches out your motives. Let us then seek to be as mindful of Him as He is of us.
Top photo credit: Photo of hot tempered man by Slavcho Malezan on Unsplash. Free to use under the Unsplash License.
Jerry Bridges (1929 – 2016) was an evangelical Christian author, speaker and staff member of The Navigatorsfor over 60 years. He authored 20 books on spiritual growth and discipleship. The Navigators is a ministry that shares the gospel of Jesus and helps people grow in their relationship with Him through Life-to-Life® discipleship, creating spiritual generations of believers. Since its founding in 1933, The Navigators has upheld the mission “to know Christ, make Him known, and help others do the same.”