Posted at Reformation Scotland:
Christians are not always the good guys. Plenty Christians are petty, dishonourable or unreliable while non-Christians can be compassionate neighbours and colleagues of integrity. So is pursuing the ways of God really necessary, or worth the effort? Can we be good without God? Are the failings of individual Christians this a valid reason to reject Christianity? The Covenanting minister John Carstares discusses this problem in his introduction to James Durham’s sermons on “the great gain of godliness” (1 Timothy 6:6).One groundless prejudice against godliness is that those who have made a big noise about being Christians, and made big claims for Christianity, have many great and gross failings and faults. They are as worldly, as pedantic, as peevish, as proud, as hot-tempered, as vindictive, as vain, as selfish, as those who never professed to be Christians. Are they not therefore all a pack of hypocrites? There are a few things to say about this.
Some are Christians in name only
Among those who claim to be Christians there are always some who are not really godly. They “have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof” (2 Timothy 3:5), and in doing so, they disgrace godliness as far as they can, and destroy their own souls. But why should their faults be attributed to godliness, when it’s the lack of godliness that actually causes them?
Undeniably, Christians have failings
It is not to be denied, but freely and honestly confessed, with sorrow and regret, that all the godly have their own failings, weaknesses and faults. They are not sinless angels, nor perfected saints. No believer on this earth has been so beautifully godly as to be without any blots and blemishes whatsoever. “In many things,” said the Apostle James, speaking of himself and other godly people, “we offend all” (James 3:2).
Yet these failings are reflected on with grief and sorrow of heart by the godly, when in any measure they analyse the situation, and to that extent, they always proceed from and are caused by their not being seriously and suitably, consistently and constantly exercised to godliness. We cannot in the least blame godliness for these failures, because godliness makes the godly censure themselves more severely, chide themselves more sharply, and judge themselves more seriously for these failures than anyone else reasonably can.