Godly Sincerity | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 23, 1873

Godly Sincerity.

We live in an age and a country wherein many other swollen shams are bursting besides cotton balloons. The escaping gas that inflated them is by no means a pleasant smell. Institutions that were thought solvent are exploding. Reputations that had swelled to great bulk are bursting. What is still more sad, there are frequent collapses of Christian character, which God and holy angels must look upon with infinite pity. There is but one remedy for these portentous shams. As light is the only cure for darkness, so the only cure for these flagrant falsehoods of profession and pretense, is to be found in what the apostle Paul calls “godly sincerity.”

This may be defined as an honest endeavor to seem to our fellow-men just what our God actually knows us to be—no more and no less. It is opposed, on the one hand, to that cowardly distrust which refuses to take responsibility and to let our light shine for the glory of our Lord. It is equally opposed to the public profession of what we have never felt, and to claiming credit for what we have never possessed. It is simply truthful speaking, and truthful living. Oliver Cromwell hit the idea exactly when he said to the artist who tried to make his rough and rugged face look handsome on canvas: “Paint me as I am, or I won’t give you a shilling.”

The honest-hearted Christian will not feign to be what he is not, nor tell God a pious lie, even in his prayers. He will not groan out a contrite confession of the very sins that he is rolling, as sweet morsels, under his tongue. He will not, in his prayers, attempt to impose upon his fellow-men a character which he knows that he cannot impose upon God. Sometimes when I have listened to a very glib confession of utter “worthlessness,” I have felt inclined to speak out: “Brother, that is just what we all think of you.” He would probably reply, in a rage: “I am just as good as you are, any day.” Would it not be a good thing to offer a subscription paper at once to some of those voluble Christians who make such superlative professions of love to Christ, in the prayer-meeting? I am afraid that the collapse would be as sudden and as ludicrous as that of the unhappy balloon which sunk into a pile of rotten rags a few days ago.

Now, half the trouble which many people take to be smooth and worthless impostors in religion would make them genuine Christians. A lie is a great deal harder to tell than the truth. It is actually harder to be a successful hypocrite than to be a successful Christian. In the one case, God is continually helping us. In the other case, God is hindering us, and all the time is exposing us to detection and disgrace. It is really easier to possess a sincere heart-piety and to let that inward light shine out naturally from the countenance and the conduct than it is to go through life wearing the mask of false profession. To be a true Christian is a constant joy. To seem to be one when we are not, is to wear a hateful, galling yoke of bondage. In order to keep up appearances, an insincere professor is incessantly obliged to do many things which are exceedingly distasteful and even loathsome. He must utter many a solemn falsehood which sticks in his throat. He must forfeit all self-respect. He must perform many a penance, and call it a pleasure. He lives in the constant dread that his mask may slip aside and reveal his real character. For no man ever went through a whole false life of professed piety without awakening occasional suspicion of his “godly sincerity.” Sometimes a sudden emergency jerks the mask aside and exposes the dissembler. Oh! what a wretched life is led by him who, in trying to “keep afloat” before his fellow-creatures, is constantly striving to calk up those fatal leaks which he knows are sending him to the bottom! What a horrible thing it must be, too, for a morally responsible being to feel in his inmost heart that he is hanging his hopes for eternity on a spider’s web.

There is but one remedy for such a living lie. It is “the truth as it is in Jesus” embraced and practiced. The only cure for a false life is a new heart, sought from the God who loves to give it. When the outward conduct is inspired by the “Christ who liveth in” us, then it is as natural and normal to live godly as it is for a healthy person to breathe. The conduct is but the outward expression of the inward principle. The clock-face reports the right time of day because the interior works are in good order. The conduct becomes the measure of the soul’s graces. There is no exaggeration in order to be “seen of men;” and there is no concealment for fear of being singular or unpopular. The heart loves Christ. The will obeys Christ. The understanding is enlightened by the Holy Spirit. The hands are busy for him doing good, and the purse opens at the touch of a conscience which is owned by Christ. Such a sincere faith makes a sincere tongue and a sincere life. Its possessor is not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Such sincerity is power. It is argument irresistible. It is eloquence that no skepticism can withstand. In the pulpit it is the virtue that hides a multitude of sins against rhetoric and æsthetics. The man “believes, and, therefore, speaks,” and when he speaks out of a genuine experience and a heart filled by the Spirit, others are forced to believe also. Sincerity was the secret of Whitefield’s power. His intellectual resources were scanty; but to him God was all and man was nothing. He cried aloud to guilty sinners whom he actually knew were hanging over the verge of hell.

There are many who, if they cannot do much else for their Saviour, can, at least, do this: They can live out a godly sincerity. They can be true to Christ. Our first counsel to every one who would make his life a spiritual power, is, Be true! Our second counsel is, Be true! The third is like unto it, Be TRUE!

“Think truly, and thy thoughts Shall the soul’s famine feed; Speak truly, and each word of thine Shall be a fruitful seed; Live truly, and thy life shall be A grand and holy creed.”—T. L. Cuyler, in Independent.