"...and steadfastness with godliness..." - 2 Peter 1:6 (ESV)
Godliness is the fifth character quality with which Peter instructs believers to supplement their faith.
What is godliness? Of all the character qualities in this list, godliness is the most difficult to define. Does godliness mean we become like God? If so, in what sense? Dictionaries define godliness as piety. But piety can evoke the image of an upturned nose, an air of condescension, a person who is too good for the rabble they happen to find themselves around. This is surely not what we mean by godliness, is it?
Of course, not everyone has these sorts of connotations in mind when they hear the term "godliness." I have heard certain men and women referred to as "pious" in a most respectful way. For some, to be called pious is an insult. For others, it is a term that commands the greatest respect and describes a sort of religious integrity and purity of the highest order.
Perhaps the most intriguing use of the term "godliness" is found in 1 Timothy 3:16, in which the apostle Paul refers to godliness as a mystery:
Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. (ESV)
Why does Paul call this the mystery of godliness? What is the mystery? The content that Paul cites consists of six lines, each of which contains a participle and a prepositional phrase. Jesus was manifested, vindicated, seen, proclaimed, believed on, and taken up. Respectively, Jesus was these things in the flesh, by the Spirit, by angels, among the nations, in the world, and in glory.
What is mysterious about this? How do we understand godliness? It is helpful to look at the context just before the verse. In 1 Timothy 3:14-15, Paul tells Timothy he is writing these things so that Timothy may know how to behave in the household of God, which is the church, which is a pillar and buttress of truth. What Paul then goes on to cite in those six lines, then, most naturally represents the truth the church stands for and the foundation for what kind of behavior is appropriate. This is godliness.
TDNT traces the term to its roots as meaning "to fall back from." It is the idea of having an appropriate reaction to something grandiose in the truest form. But over time, the term came to be used to describe an act more than an attitude. It seems to refer to a manner of life that is impacted or influenced most heavily by God himself.
The modern notion of an influencer may be helpful here. We are aware of the presence and activity of online social influencers. These are people who typically have large followings on social media, for better or worse. The term "influencer" describes what they do, which is to influence their followers to purchase certain items, adopt certain beliefs, or behave a certain way. The types of influences are varied. What is core, however, is the notion that an influencer changes peoples' lives, whether for better or worse.
Godliness seems to refer to a similar sort of phenomenon. For someone to be godly means that the person in question is, to use the vernacular, influenced by God. We are not talking about a marginal influence. We mean that the person's chief influence is God. God is the ultimate influencer in this person's life. Godliness does not necessarily mean that the person is becoming like God in the sense that they are adopting his incommunicable attributes. Godliness means that the person is affected and influenced by God like a pale person who suddenly spends a lot of time in the sun; the person doesn't become the sun, but everyone can tell that he has been outside. Becoming godly is like that. A godly person doesn't become the God, but everyone can tell he has spent time with Him.
To be godly means for God to affect or influence our lives indelibly. When we consider Paul's description of the great mystery of godliness, we are talking about the fact that God came from Heaven, became a man, and returned to Heaven as the God-Man. Jesus is the greatest influencer of all time. And now that God has become man, our godliness is also a sort of manliness. It is a God-manliness. There is a lot of mystery there.
All the foregoing can help us understand what it meant by piety or reverence as definitions of godliness. We understand that we act differently in different situations. I do not behave in the same way while playing and wrestling on the floor with my children as I would if I were attending a funeral. The appropriate behavior in either venue would be inappropriate in the other. We understand that our environment marks our behavior.
So it is with godliness. How should we act in the presence of God Almighty? How should we behave in the presence of the eternal Son of God? How should we handle ourselves in the presence of the Spirit who hovered over the waters at creation? We know how being in the presence of God affected men such as Moses and Isaiah. But when we understand that we all live and move and have our being in God and that he fills heaven and earth, and that for Christians the Spirit is in and among us all the time, we come to realize that our entire lives are lived, in a sense, in the very presence of God. That fact ought to mark a person. Even while playing with children or attending a funeral, the overarching sense of presence that undergirds and overshadows every other environment is the environment of the all-encompassing and omnipresent God of the universe before whom we live.
For the reasons above, I suggest that the heart of godliness may be described as a growing recognition of God's transcendent nearness and an increasing respect of and submission to Him in daily life. Piety and reverence are words too small to convey the gravity entailed by godliness.
Why do we need godliness? It is an interesting question. When we ask why we need something and are not sure of the answer, it is often helpful to consider what would happen if we remained without it. What would we miss if we didn't have godliness? Based on the above discussion, it is not obvious that any particular virtue would be missing, except perhaps reverence. But even that is hard to reduce to particular actions. Godliness does not so much capture actions as a quality that accompanies them. In Aristotelian terms, godliness is an accident - that is, a nonessential quality or attribute of a thing. However, this does not mean we cannot answer the question.
If we do have all of the other qualities that Peter lists but do not have godliness, those qualities would become distorted. An ungodly faith is presumptuous. Ungodly virtue becomes duty or pretense. Ungodly knowledge may puff up. Ungodly self-control becomes self-focused. Ungodly steadfastness is short-sighted. Ungodly brotherly affection likely becomes manipulative or dies. And ungodly love -what a contradiction!- diverts its channels to perverted ends. Perhaps godliness is essential after all.
How do we cultivate godliness? If we leverage what we have seen in this article already, then we know that to become godly, we need to be influenced by God. But how so? It seems to me that many of us bring our own agendas to our worship of and interaction with God. The fact that godliness is a trait about which we are to be concerned means that we must add it to our agendas for our relationships with and behavior before God.
In a word, then, to cultivate godliness, we must first aim for godliness. There are many things for which we can aim in our relationship to God. It may be a particular measure of grace, comfort, help, wisdom, or encouragement- all fine things. But we must add godliness to what we look for and hope for from God.
The foregoing presupposes that we are having regular times of worship of God, regular times of communion with him. The less time a pale person spends in the sun, the longer he will remain pale. As obvious as the need for sunlight may seem, I have recently read reports that say that there is an increase in short-sightedness in teens that can be helped by watching screens less and being outside in the sun more. We cannot take for granted that kids will spend time outside. We have never been able to take for granted that Christians will pursue godliness. They must be taught to do so, and there is not an overabundance of that teaching in our day. As we have seen, godliness is not the easiest quality to define. It is easier to demonstrate than to describe.
Nevertheless, we can pursue godliness. We do it by seeking exposure to God to be influenced by him. A sunbather knows you must expose the skin to the sun in order to take it in. A Christian must expose their whole selves to God to be influenced by Him. We think in these terms when we worship with the local church, when we meet with fellow believers for fellowship and discipleship, when we commune with God in private, and even when we glance up at the sky and are reminded of God's greatness and glory.