Life Without God

They worshiped worthless idols, so they became worthless themselves. . . . They rejected all the commands of the LORD their God.   2 Kings 17:15-16

God calls us to a life of godliness, and then he speaks about our attitudes and actions toward others: “Honor your father and mother. . . . You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not [lie]. You must not covet” (Exodus 20:12-17). This is God’s second calling for his people.

The Bible calls this kind of self-restraint “righteousness.” Righteous living is faithfully reflecting God’s attitudes and actions in our relationships with other people. Christ confirmed this when he said that the second greatest commandment is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).

True godliness will result in increasing evidence of righteousness because righteousness is built on the foundation of godliness. So when people reject godliness, they find that righteousness is beyond their grasp. You cannot reflect the attitudes and actions of God until you have a God-centered life!

The story of the northern kingdom teaches us that when a nation turns away from the living God, the result is moral confusion and the unleashing of sin and evil. It began with the people rejecting God, and it ended with them putting their children into the fire. The reason they lost the morality of the Bible is that they rejected the God of the Bible. You cannot have righteousness without godliness.

It is a great mistake to think our hearts are naturally filled with love for God: “The sinful nature is always hostile to God” (Romans 8:7). Unless God changes our hearts, it is natural for us to resent him because his power seems to threaten our freedom, his holiness offends our pride, and his complete knowledge feels like an invasion of privacy. There will never be a time when God steps down from power or becomes more tolerant of our sins.

Unless God changes our hearts, our sinful minds are hostile to him, and that is the root of our sin. Sin originates with our rejection of God.

For further reading, see Romans 8