In four short verses, Paul summarizes the source of the Gospel and its power. There is a lot contained within, so before we get to work, we’re going to open with prayer:
Father God,
We thank you for Your plan from before the world began that we might inherit eternal life. We thank you for Your Word that guides us in the way we should go. We thank you for Your Truth, delivered by your Spirit. And we thank You for Your Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in Whose Great Name we pray, Amen.
In about the mid 60s A.D., Paul had just finished a mission to the island of Crete. In the ancient world, the name Crete was synonymous with immorality. Like in many places throughout history, in ancient Crete our ability to love was extremely marred by the effects of sin. People were scamming each other, defiling their marriage covenants, committing all kinds of crimes against their neighbor. And the result was a big mess for everyone involved. And so the issue of godliness, as is important today, was especially important for the churches at Crete. Titus, whom Paul had left to oversee the Cretan churches, was encountering trouble from a number of false teachers. Some of their teachings apparently left room for ungodliness, and so you can imagine were probably indulged in by the Cretan community. And so Paul helped out his coworker by sending him an in-depth contrast of truth and falsehood—the work we now refer to as Titus.
Throughout Titus, Paul details a life of godliness. He paints the ins and outs of what a godly life looks like: including qualities like self-control, purity, sober-mindedness, faith, love, steadfastness, integrity, dignity, sound speech. In summary, Godliness should in everything adorn the doctrine of God our savior.
In four of the verses I read earlier, Paul explains why and how this can work.
Verse 11, “For the grace of God has appeared,”
Who has appeared?
“For God so loved the world, He gave His only Son.” (John 3:16) “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6) The Son of God has appeared in human flesh, born in a manger in Bethlehem! Emmanuel—God with us. Jesus has come! And it is for this reason that we are to be godly: for the grace of God—that is, Jesus Christ—has appeared. And notice that word, grace. A gift freely given,
“bringing salvation for all people,”
Jesus, the grace of God, came to bring us salvation. It’s God’s great act of kindness, God’s great act of mercy, God’s great act of love, to send us His Son. And His Son brings salvation for all people.
Here Paul clarifies an important point. We’re told earlier in Titus that “the circumcision party” in particular, most likely a reference to Jews that maintain Old Testament traditions in a way that rejects the gospel, were causing the church some problems. One of the earliest heresies ever dealt with in the church was the notion that only certain people—notably Jews—could be saved. Paul, who was commanded by Jesus Himself to evangelize the Gentiles, made it clear here that all people—Jew or Gentile, white, black, or anything in between—all people have access to the salvation that comes from Jesus Christ. No one is beyond the saving power of the Gospel. Of course, this should not be confused as meaning that all people will be saved. John establishes the condition that “whoever believes in [Jesus] shall…inherit eternal life.” (John 3:16) Jesus promises us that while some will enter “the kingdom prepared for [them] since the creation of the world,” (Matthew 25:34) some will go “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41) Not all will be saved; but we must share with all the free offering of the Gospel unto eternal life, something that Jesus brought for all people.
And Jesus is, verse 12, “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions,”
This is really crucial to our faith. For a long time I did not understand how to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions. Paul wrote to Timothy that he is the foremost of sinners. I can tell you that I am most definitely the foremost of sinners. Whenever Paul runs off a long list of those ungodly adjectives and descriptors, I would have to lie to say that I don’t find at least a couple to which I must sheepishly confess, “yup, that was me.” I’m convicted. Do any of you cringe like I do when you see one of those lists coming? “Ooh… yeah… you know, perhaps I haven’t lived such a godly life.” If not, don’t worry; you will.
But verse 12 tells us something really important! Jesus “trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.”
One of the most important ways He accomplishes this is through His Word. And some might say, “well that’s fine for James, the Elder, to say up there, but the Bible was really written by men, not breathed by God.” And my invitation to anyone thusly persuaded is this: why don’t you try it? I mean, really, seriously try Bible study. I wasn’t terribly interested in the Bible for a long time, until I started prayerfully reading, studying, and considering each word for my life. And my faith life hasn’t been the same since. I have professed Christ my whole life. The problem is that for much of my life I didn’t understand Whom I professed or what He was even calling me to do, and I’m still learning. What a blessing it is to have God’s Word readily available for us, even for free online! Part of your training will be accomplished by dwelling with God in His Word.
Jesus explained it this way, “‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’” (John 8:32).
Free from ungodliness and worldly passions. Free from those comfort sins that tempt you most. Free from the ungodly television shows and music that seek to captivate your interest. Not a slave to sin, but a slave to righteousness.
Paul continues, “and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,”
“Self-controlled, upright, and godly lives” are to be lived “in the present age,” not in the age to come. The time is right now! A godly life now is the essential result of the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Real truth creates real change. It “will set you free.” You cannot claim to be a recipient of saving grace without also being a pupil of training grace. For “those [God] called, he also justified.”(Romans 8:30)
If you are, in fact, in a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, you will find new, heightened levels of self-control, righteousness, and godliness. If you haven’t yet been transformed, you’re in the right place and we’re very glad to have you. If you hear His call, trust Him to accomplish what He promised to do.
But how can this happen?
Verse 13, “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,”
This is one of those instances where it’s very helpful to have access to a Greek testament or a translation with good notes. The word “waiting” is rendered from the Greek prosdechomai, which connotes eagerness. We are not to wait idly; we are to eagerly await the Lord’s return.
Psalm 130 illustrates how we are to wait, “more than watchmen for the morning.” Much like police walking the night beat, watchmen would guard a city all night, aware, alert, always ready for action. We now must be on guard, ready for duty at all times, prepared for any occasion to which the Lord calls us. When morning came, the watchmen would be relieved from duty. So you can imagine these watchmen, staying up all night, completely alert, maybe they even had to arrest someone. Imagine with what kind of eagerness they met the end of their shift. But what we await is far more significant than the break of day. The watchmen mentioned in Psalm 130 were only partly relieved; while relieved from their posts, we will be relieved from our lives; they from their earthly jobs, we from our divinely appointed jobs; their relief transient, ours eternal.
Following Christ isn’t always easy. If you’ve been a Christian long enough, you will suffer in one way or another for your faith. Sometimes you will be persecuted, even by other Christians. Still other times, your conflict will be against temptations or desires that oppose God. Yet our suffering is null compared to the glory of that day when Christ comes again, when he claims His redeemed and sets all things right, when He says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Take your rest,” when the glory of God’s mercy and wrath is executed fully. Christ died as a suffering servant. But He rose from the dead, certifying His reign as the King of all Creation forever. Can’t you almost taste the glory of the day when the King returns, when all who belong to Him will be united with His glory, worshiping and adoring their God and King forever? Revelation 20 promises us that in that day, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” This appearing of the glory of Christ Jesus is our blessed hope.
And verse 14 tells us something very special about Jesus Christ. “[He] gave himself for us.”
Unlike the demon Gods of false religions, we have a very personal God who not just chose to live perfectly alongside us in human flesh, but chose to suffer and die on a cross for us and for our salvation. He chose humble servitude and suffering and thereby chose us. To Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen!
Friends, this is terrific news! Those of you who, like me, have lived terrible and ungodly lives: if you have sin in your past, if you have sin in your present, Jesus Christ gave himself for you! “He who knew not sin became sin that we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus hung on a cross to reconcile Himself to terrible sinners like me. He died on that cross and rose again, to reconcile Himself to terrible sinners like me. The wage of sin is death, and Jesus paid that wage for terrible sinners like me.
Why would He do such a thing? Why would God, who is perfect, desire us, who are full of sin? The gospel has been described as a scandal; at a peripheral glance, it doesn’t make any sense. What could God possibly want with us? And why would He die to be with us?
Christ did this for a very specific reason, “to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”
“To redeem us from all lawlessness” very closely resembles the Septuagint wording at the close of Psalm 130.
The English translation reads: “8 And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.”
We see from Titus that we must be redeemed from “all lawlessness” and from Psalm 130 that we must be redeemed from “all iniquities.” In fact, our lawlessness is our iniquity. Since our first parents chose sin, we humans have been choosing sin generation after generation ever since. After just one generation, we see that sin has robbed us of our ability to love so completely that Cain actually murders his brother Abel. I’ve known some people who have said, “I don’t believe in original sin; I don’t believe Ihave such excessive iniquity to need a redeemer.” But the only person who has ever lived without sin in the history of man was also God. Our lawlessness is our iniquity. And from our iniquity we must be redeemed. Jesus accomplishes our redemption.
“And to purify for himself a people for his own possession”
We must be redeemed, and we must be purified. We see here that Jesus purifies us for himself. Only when you completely belong to Jesus are you fit for His service. Andrew Murray, in the first chapter of his book Absolute Surrender, paints the analogy of a tea cup. If filled with ink, the tea cup is not fully rendered to its service as a vessel for tea, and cannot be used for this purpose. As Jesus said, “no one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). We must not let ourselves be filled with ink. But this is not an impossible struggle that we are to face alone.
“A people for his own possession” intentionally echoes writings from the Old Testament, in particular Exodus 19:5 and Malachi 3:17.
I’ll read a bit from Exodus 19. (Exodus 19:4~6)
4 You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
And from Malachi 3. (Malachi 3:16-17)
16 Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. 17 “They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.
Both these passages speak of us not just as a possession, but God’s “treasured possession.” We see in Exodus how God handles our opponents, how He redeems us, bearing us, even on eagles’ wings, to Himself. In Malachi, how the Lord pays attention and hears us. If we will obey the Lord’s voice and keep his covenant, if we fear the Lord and esteem his name, we will not just be His possession. We will be His treasured possession. We shall be a kingdom of priests. We shall be holy! We will be spared as a man spares his son.
In fact, Jesus wants to possess you so badly that He did not spare Himself but paid the price for you with His precious blood. When you want to possess something, and you pay for it, are you happy to just have part of it? You want the whole thing. You expect the whole thing! Jesus doesn’t want part of you; He wants all of you. He wants “all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength” (Mark 12:30).
And this is something to rejoice! Those deep, dark places in your life that you would rather not talk about, those places so brutally ravaged by sin that you wish no one would see, Jesus sees. He sees and He desires them of you. The pieces of you that have long since been broken apart, shattered, and reduced to rubble, Jesus knows where each one of them is and He wants to put them back together in a better way than they were assembled before. He wants to take you and cleanse you, to make of you something new. To redeem you from all your iniquities. To make you His, and so to make you worthy of Him. Like the miracle of the wine at Cana, He wants to take something useless, and of it make something useful. He does this by making a treasured people who are “zealous for good works.” If you’re not quite there yet, remember, He’ll train you.
What I’m going to request is going to be very difficult for some of you. I want you to recall the sin that hurt you most. Look into the deepest, darkest part of your life and hold that moment in your mind. Now I want you to think of the person that did this to you. The person that so recklessly handled you. The person that so wickedly, irresponsibly, heinously, full of evil and without any excuse, damaged your life so deeply and caused you so much anguish and suffering.
Now I ask you: have you forgiven this person?
Understand that God will exact justice, that this sin will not go unpunished. If the one who offended you continues living in such a way, God will pour his wrath on them forever in hell. If he or she repents, God will deliver this wrath to Christ on the Cross. On earth, Jesus lived a life of forgiveness. He consistently taught his disciples to forgive one another. When His friends abandoned Him and those remaining beat Him and nailed Him to a cross, He cried, “Father, forgive them!” His sacrificial atonement is the reason sinners like us can even be forgiven. Every week, we pray, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Have you forgiven your debtors? Jesus wants to “redeem us from all lawlessness.” All lawlessness includes the lawlessness of others. The process of being separated from sin and united with Christ starts and ends with forgiveness. Only through forgiveness can we complete the promise of our baptism—to die once to sin, that Christ might live in us forever. It is through forgiveness that God will spare you as a man spares his son, even as He did not spare His own Son. Forgiveness allows God “to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”
But He doesn’t just want you. He doesn’t just want this congregation, or even this denomination, for salvation is for all people. Therefore we must heed Paul when he writes, “declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.”
It is crucial to recognize this command as directly delivered to Titus as encouragement to restore His congregation with the Truth. When we’re out in the world, we don’t have such mechanisms as church discipline. Our authority may be unclear. The premise is somewhat different when we are teaching those who don’t expect to be taught. As Paul instructs Timothy, “the Lord’s servant [4] must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone.” (2 Timothy 2:~24)
But we cannot simply be disregarded. The Lord’s servant must also be “able to teach, patiently enduring evil, 25 correcting his opponents with gentleness.” (2 Timothy 2:24~25) Lives literally depend on us, who know the truth, sharing it. To “declare these things” fits soundly within the Great Commission given to all believers and is something we must do. We must declare these things with our lives and we must declare them with our words. Paul exhorts the church perhaps more times about this than any other church problem. He teaches us that we are not to be stumbling blocks, that we cannot impede others meeting Christ, but that in all things we must adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. He goes so far as to say that slaves should even “be submissive to their masters in everything” (Titus 2: 9).
And the reason is this: War and terrorism are a common global reality. News accounts of murder are not terribly unusual. Roughly half of all married couples, statistically, will divorce, wounding both partners and their children. We’re at a point where many young people have a career, perhaps have a child, and don’t even bother trying to find a solid partner and get married. To much of the world, it truly looks like love has lost. We must let a fallen, apostate world that sometimes loses all hope know about our blessed hope: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. And not only will He come again and set all things right; Christ is setting all things right in the hearts and through the lives of His treasured possession. Amen.