What does the Bible say about being a godly man?

(4) Godliness or piety follows righteousness. This often repeated feature of godliness, means that a man of God walks in the fear of the Lord, before God, realizing His presence in the minor details of his life. This attitude brings God into every part of his life and testimony. At the same time it brings him into line with the anointed Man of God. This is the moral effect of God's revelation to him (1 Tim. 3:16).

Thus the godly man is marked by faithfulness in persecution, hatred of evil, and love of the truth.

Thus the Word having its place of supremacy over his soul, the godly man has joy in the Word, hatred of evil, continual praise, great peace, hope in the Lord, obedience to the Lord, and openness before the Lord.

In conclusion we can say that a man of God is characterized by the following points (of course, this is not an exhaustive list). He uses God's resources, which are always available to faith. For this point in particular see 2 Tim. 1. He lives entirely for the pleasure of God, and represents God by being a living testimony of His will. He is a vessel filled with the Spirit and with Christ, who says as it were "God is all, I am nothing."

Here, then, we find Job in the most marked place of a man blest of God in everything that heart could desire. It is needless to tell you that without one divine element there could have been no stable blessing according to God, but only a deception and a snare. And what was that? He was a man of God, "perfect and upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil." He was not an angular or one-sided man, not defective in some and remarkable for other qualities. He had whole-heartedness and integrity; and this based on the fear of God and marked by the refusal of evil. The inner and the outer life were right all round. The word "perfect" gives no countenance in any degree to the foolish dream of the extinction of sin in the flesh. This is not the force of "perfect" in Scripture, but completeness of character spiritually with integrity. He "feared God and eschewed evil." There we come to the roots of things. He was one who gave God His place, and abhorred the evil surrounding him here below which was contrary to God. He was clearly a man born of God, one who walked in simplicity and trueness of purpose before God. Nor was this said of him in a merely general way. His position is brought before us, his family life, with remarkable beauty; his zealous, nay jealous, piety; for even if sons and daughters met together on a special occasion, of what was Job thinking? He had his fear. How often is such a gathering a moment of danger for the soul! How it affords an opening for Satan! And so Job dreaded lest anything might have crept in and be a virtual renunciation of God, lest, as it is said, they should have cursed [literally, blessed] God in their heart. We need not suppose anything formally uttered or done, but the heart thus failing at such a season in an unguarded moment. And this too was not merely on some particular occasion, or at a peculiar crisis when his sons stood exposed to the enemy. There is a still higher feature that characterises him: "Thus did Job continually." It was the tenor of his life. Such was the man whom God could single out in love; that He did so the book shows us.

This is very touching and very beautiful. We cannot but be struck with such references to the previous history of those beloved men of God. The "pure conscience" of the one, and "the unfeigned faith" of the other, indicate two grand moral qualities which all must possess if they would prove true men of God in a dark and evil day. The former has its immediate reference, in all things, to the one living and true God; the latter draws all its springs from Him. That leads us to walk before God; this enables us to walk with Him. Both together are indispensable in forming the character of the true man of God.

The positive side of this description of the godly man is just this subjection of conscience and heart to God. A dependent creature, realizing his relationship to a Being of unchanged perfection, his delight is in conformity to His blessed will, to Jehovah's law. He is exercised by it, occupied with it, meditates upon it day and night. As the psalms themselves even are quoted as "the law" in Scripture (Rom. 3:19), there is no possible reason for limiting this here even to the books of Moses; and the soul delighting in God will seek to possess itself of all that He has communicated. "All Scripture … is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness"; so there is nothing impractical in the whole range of that which God has given to us: if we neglect any of it, this may result in serious misunderstanding of the rest. It is a Jew, of course, who is contemplated here, and with the necessarily limited revelation that had as yet been made; and how much the more does this diligent study upon his part speak to us to whom so much more has been vouchsafed! "Labor not," says the Lord, amid an audience of the hard-working poor, whose poverty and need He so well knew, — "Labor not for the meat that perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give you." And did not these wondrous psalms of praise themselves grow largely out of such day and night study of Jehovah's law as characterizes the godly here?

Two characteristics are given of the man who is blessed of the Lord — fearing the Lord, and walking in His ways. To avoid all misconception, let it be again pressed that these are not mere characteristics — they should be displayed in all God's people; but they are given here as indications of practical state or condition. "Fearing the Lord" describes a man who acts with a good conscience before Him; and hence it is that we read, "Happy is the man that feareth alway" (Proverbs 28:14), the one, that is, who with holy fear seeks grace to avoid everything which would grieve the Spirit of God; and "walking in His ways" indicates the conduct consequent upon fearing the Lord, a walk which is formed and governed by the word of God. Altogether the practical state is the result of the truth held with divine power in the soul; and this is the only doorway, as already said, into the enjoyment of our true portion. As John says, this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.

Further, he was to be "temperate," an expression much narrowed and so far misapplied in our day. Self-control not in one respect but in all is its real meaning. It is the quality of having every way and expression of feeling, or inclination, checked in the Christian by his sense of God's presence, grace, and fear.

But of such conflicts I would not now write, but rather of the self-discipline that is necessary if we would carry on successfully the daily strife for holiness and truth. No one will deny that it is essential for holy living and for effective influence for good that a Christian man's natural powers and dispositions should be under perfect self-control.