godly man

Jeff Robinson outlines what a godly man looks like here and here based on the writings of Thomas Watson.

• A man of knowledge. He knows God in Christ and is being transformed into the image of Christ by this knowledge. Possession of such knowledge must make him humble: “True knowledge brings a man out of love with himself. The more he knows, the more he blushes at his own ignorance,” writes Watson.
• A man moved by faith. His trust in God is a living principle. “He who believes that God is his God, and that all providences work for his good, patiently yields himself to the will of God.”
• A man fired with love. “A godly man loves God, though he is reduced to straits.”
• A man like God. “Holiness is a man’s glory…The goodness of a Christian lies in his holiness, as the goodness of air lies in its clarity, the worth of gold in its purity.”
• A man careful about the worship of God. “A godly man dare not vary from the pattern God has shown him in Scripture.”
• A man who serves God, not men. Here, Watson uses servant as a synonym for “fear.”“A godly man leaves the service of sin and betakes himself to the service of God.”
• A man who prizes Christ. “Put a glass under a still (water container) and it receives water out of the still, drop by drop,” Watson writes. “So those who are united to Christ have the dews and drops of his grace distilling on them. Well, then, may Christ be admired by all those who believe.”
• A man who is an evangelical weeper. What is meant by ‘evangelical weeping?’ Watson says a man who weeps in an evangelical way sheds tears over indwelling sin, over clinging corruption, over the notion that he is not more holy, over God’s amazing love for him, because, in some sense, the sins he commits are worse than the sins of others. Watson calls it “sorrow of the soul.”
• A man who loves the Word of God. Watson said a godly man loves: the counseling part of the Word, as it is a directory and rule of life, he loves the threatening part of the Word and the consolatory part of the Word—the promises.
• A man who has the Spirit of God residing in him. “I conceive that the Spirit is in the godly, in whom he flows in measure,” Watson writes. “They have his presence and receive his sacred influences. When the sun comes into a room, it is not the body of the sun that is there but the beams that sparkle from it. Indeed, some divines have through that the godly have more than the influx of the Spirit, though to say how it is more is ineffable, and is fitter for some seraphic pen to describe than mine.”
• A man of humility. “He is like the sun in the zenith, which when it is at the highest, shows lowest,” he writes. “St. Augustine calls humility the mother of the grace.” But Watson also warns of the existence of a false humility: “A man may be humbled and not humble. A sinner may be humbled by affliction. His condition is low but not his disposition. A godly man is not only humbled but humble. His heart is as low as his condition…A humble man is always preferring bills of indictment against himself. He complains, not of his condition, but of his heart.”
• A man of prayer. “As soon as grace is poured in, prayer is poured out…Prayer is the soul’s traffic with heaven. God comes down to us by his Spirit, and we go up to him by prayer.”
• A man of sincerity. In modern parlance, he is what he is. Watson writes, “A godly man is plain-hearted, having no subtle subterfuges. Religion is the livery a godly man wears and this livery is lined with sincerity.”
• A heavenly man. “Heaven is in him before he is in heaven...A person may live in one place, yet belong to another…A godly man is a while in the world, but he belongs to the Jerusalem above. That is the place to which he aspires. Every day is Ascension Day with a believer.” He lines out six ways a man is to be heavenly: In his election, his disposition, his communication, his actions, his expectation and his conduct.
• A zealous man. “Grace turns a saint into a seraph,” Watson writes. “It makes him burn in holy zeal. Zeal is a mixed affection, a compound of love and anger. It carries forth our love to God and anger against sin in the most intense manner. Zeal is the flame of the affections; a godly man has a double baptism—of water and fire. He is baptized with a spirit of zeal; he is zealous for God’s honor, truth , worship.”
• A patient man. A godly man is patient in: waiting, bearing trials, when God removes any comfort from him, when God inflicts any evil on him.
• A thankful man. “Praise and thanksgiving is the work of heaven and he begins that work here which he will always be doing in heaven.”
• A man who loves the saints. “The best way to discern grace in one’s self is to love grace in others.”
• A man who does not indulge himself in any sin. “Though sin lives in him, yet he does not live in sin. Every man that has wine in him is not in wine. A gladly man may step into sin through infirmity, but he does not keep on that road.”
• A man who is good in his relationships. Two of the most crucial relationships for Watson are marriage and fatherhood. A godly man, Watson says, fills up the marital relationship with love in accord with Eph. 5:25. “The vine twisting its branches about the elm and embracing it may be an emblem of that entire love which should be in conjugal relationship. A married condition would be sad, if it had cares to embitter it and not love to sweeten it. Love is the best diamond in the marriage ring.” A father’s duties to his children are threefold: “he must drop holy instructions into his children, he must pray for his children and he must give his children discipline. Of the latter, Watson writes, “The rod beats out the dust and moth of sin. A child indulged and humored in wickedness will prove a burden instead of a blessing.”
• A man who does spiritual things in a spiritual manner. “Spiritual worship is pure worship…A wicked man either lives in the total neglect of duty or else discharges it in a dull, careless manner…A godly man spiritualizes duty; he is not only for the doing of holy things but for the holy doing of things.”
• A man who is thoroughly trained in religion. “A godly man strives to walk according to the full breadth and latitude of God’s law. Every command has the same stamp of divine authority on it, and he who is godly will obey one command as well as another.”
• A man who walks with God. Walking with God, for Watson, includes five things: Walking as under God’s eye, the familiarity and intimacy that the soul has with God, walking above the earth (has his heart fixed ultimately on eternal matters), visible piety and continued progress in grace.
• A man who strives to be an instrument who makes others godly. “He is not content to go to heaven alone but wants to take others there. Spiders work only for themselves, but bees work for others. A godly man is both a diamond and a lodestone—a diamond for the sparkling of grace and a lodestone for attractiveness. He is always drawings others to embrace piety. Living things have a propagating virtue. Where religion lives in the heart, there will be an endeavor to propagate the life of grace in those we converse with.”