Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Speaker 2: 0:21

All right guys, welcome back to another week of the Daily Blade. Now one of the greatest things that I get to do because of my really weird job is I actually get invited to come and speak at churches all over the country. So small churches, big churches, you know, some in the middle of a city, some out in the middle of nowhere. I've even been able to speak at prisons, so shout out to the guys over at Lewisburg Prison in Pennsylvania. So that is a really cool thing I get to do for my job and typically I get to pick my subject matter. The people are just like yeah, talk about whatever you want to talk about. So I usually have some that are kind of prepackaged, ready to go. But if they do make a request, right. If the church or the men's group makes a request or like, hey, can you do something on, you know, quote unquote, biblical masculinity. And that's a little bit hard, if I'm being honest, because that's really broad and it's also kind of nebulous. You don't really know exactly what people mean. But I've gotten that challenge and that request so much over the years that I've decided with a lot of my talks to make like a list of like okay, what are some elements of a godly man, and so I did come up with a non-exhaustive okay so got to put emphasis on that a non-exhaustive list of the 10 elements of a godly man. So all of these come from the Bible and that's what we're going to be covering over the next two weeks on the Daily Blade, so all of this week and all of next week. So these elements are not in any particular order, but I will tell you the first one, the one we're going over today, is preeminent, okay, so here's element one of a godly man. A godly man has surrendered his life to Christ, at which point you might be thinking, well, duh, kyle, I mean, you can't really be a godly man unless you've surrendered your life to Christ. But some people have not really thought that through, and so I figured I would just be very explicit about it. But the thing about it is, if you haven't given your life over to Christ, the pursuit of quote unquote godliness becomes one of two things. It either becomes one, being the ultimate rule follower, right, or two, making ourselves into a little G God. And those are kind of connected, because if you are the ultimate rule follower, then you can look at yourself like man. I am so awesome I've become this little G God.

Speaker 2: 2:13

But the text that we're going to be talking about today is from the end of the second chapter of Paul's letter to the church in Galatia. So Galatians 2 contains both one of my favorite historical occurrences in the entire New Testament and one of my favorite passages in the entire New Testament perhaps the entire Bible. And so in Galatians 2, verses 11 through 14, we see Paul opposing Peter to his face. So Peter was not acting right. He was kind of buying into this whole gospel plus narrative because of the circumcision party. Yeah, that's an actual party, not a party I would want to go to, but I digress. But Paul opposed him to his face. I absolutely love that story.

Speaker 2: 2:46

But let's go into Galatians 2, verses 20 and 21. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. So let's break this down just a little bit. Verse 20,. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, so you're dead. Right, guys, you are dead. You are no longer you. You were bought with a price. You're dead now. And so I thought of Philippians 3, verse 10, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may suffer or share his sufferings, becoming like him in death. Okay, so, you're like him in death Verse 20 again. But Christ who lives in me. Okay, so you're dead, but you're also not dead at the same time. Right, so you, the you that you were before, is dead now, but you are now not dead because Christ is now living in you. Okay, and let's go back to the verse and the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. Okay, so, right there in the verse, we have this uh, you know, contrasting of living in the flesh, and that's immediately contrasted with living by faith. But let's go ahead and go to verse 21. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. Again. I'll read that again, verse 21. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Guys, if we could clean ourselves up, like if we could, as Wes Huff said on the Joe Rogan experience, like you know, the law is a mirror. Have you ever tried to like clean mud off your face with a mirror? It doesn't do anything. It lets you know that you're dirty, but you can't clean yourself up. There's nothing that we can do to save ourselves, because if we could, if we could act good enough or give enough money or do those types of things, then Christ didn't need to die.

Speaker 2: 4:49

And so I actually found a great quote as I was digging into the scripture. It's from one of the greatest, if not the greatest, early church preachers. It's John Chrysostom. He says this Christ having died shows that the law has no power to justify us, for if the law can justify or make us righteous, the death of Christ is superfluous. And so, guys, I don't know about you, but you should just try to sneak superfluous into all your different quotes throughout the day. But the reality is this, guys Jesus was a real guy. He was a Middle Eastern Jewish construction worker that really did a worldly ministry for about three years. He really had apostles and disciples. He really was captured. He really was murdered by the Romans at the behest of the Jewish Sanhedrin. He really was put into Joseph of Arimathea's tomb and he really was resurrected three days later. And all of that counted for all of us. That's the reality. So, element one of a godly man, a godly man has surrendered his life to Christ. If you have not done so, I compel you to do so right now.

Speaker 1: 5:57

Thank you for listening to today's episode Before you go. If you want to help equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five-star rating and review. Stay sharp.