The Three Rooms Of Man
Good and godliness, we usually think of these two as being a synonymous one but, in reality, there is a defining difference in being good and being godly. Godly people are good but good people are not necessarily godly. There are many people, without God, that are good people and we, of course, know that being good is not enough to save anyone. “Our” righteousness is as filthy rags in His sight.
What happens with some individuals that are truly saved is that they slip from godly back into good—backsliding, in its initial movement, is not from godliness to extreme corruption but rather is from godliness to good. In this, sometimes undiscerned by others, movement lies the problem because the individuals who make this movement, at first, remain to be gracious, kind and compassionate but they have lost an essential spark of godliness and without that spark they find that their good is not enough to keep them from failure.
How this slippage occurs is what should concern us—just what is it that behoves someone that ventures into sin and out of a relationship with God? Understood that it is HIS own will at work and HIS own decision (there are no victims in these failures they are always perpetrators of their own fall) yet the question remains as to what do those individuals owe their sad and many times fatal decision?
It is apparent that they were not always living in that particular room of decision…. somewhere, somehow they opened the door to that room and passed from clean to unclean. This is the fearful part of this scenario of which we all must fear and pray to be kept from evil.
In essence, we therefore see, that there are three rooms—one, the room of godliness where we have and maintain proper relationships with God and man. Two, the room of juggling decisions—where somehow we have allowed the flesh to walk its own path and allowed it to formulate a wrong desire that seeks fulfillment (in whatever that may be) and somehow (and that “somehow” can have all kinds of energies) both the relationship of God and man has become injured. Once in this room of decision a man will ultimately either return to the room of godliness or will open the third door—to the room of moral failure.
How many times someone ends up in room number two and never enters room number three only God knows. Those that want us to believe that they always and without timeout reside in room number one are probably deluded. It is common to man.
It is, therefore, of vital importance that we strive to abide in room number one with all that is in us and when we allow ourselves to make those shameful trips into room number two that we had prayed enough in room number one that will strengthen us to return quickly to room number one without touching the doorknob of room number three.
The more we realize the weakness of our flesh the more we should cling to abide in the room of godliness. The man that believes that, in himself, he cannot fail has failed already.
— jlg —