Speaker: Dustin Scott

Passage: Titus 2

A SLAVE TO CHRIST

We’re back in the Book of Titus. We’re in chapter 2. Before I get there, I told our first gathering I was one of those late-stage wisdom tooth removal guys, getting my wisdom teeth taken out in my thirties, and so, if I slur my speech a little bit this morning, you’ll know why. If I’ve lost what little wisdom I had, you’ll know why. So, just be patient with me if I’m kind of tripping over my words this morning. 

We’re in Titus 2. We’re in verses 9-15, which are the same verses which Gary taught last week. I promise you, I am not reinventing his sermon. He didn’t leave any important stuff out. We’re going to approach this passage from a different angle. 

We’re going to ask the question: what does it mean to be a slave to Christ? Now, you know it’s me, so you know I’m going to make you do it as we dive in. Would you stand with me for the reading of the Scriptures? 

Again, we’ll be in verses 9-15, and I’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version. It says, “Urge slaves to be submissive to their masters in everything, to be pleasing, not talking back, not stealing, but showing complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the teaching of God our Savior. 

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” What a statement of Christ’s deity. 

“Who gave himself for us so that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good works. Declare these things; exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one look down upon you.” 

Let’s pray. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to You this morning, my Rock and my Redeemer. As we study this passage, we see some difficult things, some disturbing things. Slavery is, fortunately, a concept that we don’t often think of in our society. 

Thank You for the great blessing of those believers who went before us, who saw that this institution of fallen humanity is something to be battled against. But Lord, even though we celebrate Your work through ending at least legal slavery within our own country, Lord, give us a severity, a sober mind, and a reverence to explore what does it mean to be a slave to You? What does it mean to live our life in submission to You? Teach us, I pray, Holy Spirit. You are the advocate who came to remind us of everything Jesus commanded. 

So, would You be with us? Would You reign supreme and, in the words of Revelation, would You give us ears to hear what Your Spirit is saying to the churches? Lord, if there is anything I speak which does not come from You, give us wisdom to allow those words to be forgotten, so that Your truth and Your life can reign within the church. 

Because Lord, we acknowledge the church– the people of God– our worshiping life, our sacramental life, our life together in community and fellowship, and Your Scriptures are Your express possession. You are the Lord of the Church, be with us as we study. I ask this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And everyone said, Amen. You may be seated. 

RIGHT TEACHING AND RIGHT LIVING

We’re back in the Book of Titus. The Apostle Paul begins this midsection of his letter with a statement in chapter 2, verse 1: “Promote the kind of living which reflects right teaching.” 

Before Pastor Gary’s teaching last week, Pastor Greg spent several weeks devoting us to the study of what does it look like to engage in right living within the church? We studied God’s commandments to husbands and wives, to parents and children, to free persons and slaves. We even studied what it meant to have older believers in the faith instruct and teach younger believers. 

And in last week’s message, Pastor Gary took us back to the right teaching, which stands behind the right living. We could call this the why behind the what. Many of us have children, and whenever you issue an instruction, they ask the question, Why? I have a two-year-old, so the two words we hear all the time are Why and No, and we’ve got to hone that in sometimes. 

So, the Lord is giving us the why within these verses, and Paul exercises pinpoint precision in communicating the Gospel everywhere he writes in the New Testament, but especially here in the letter to Titus. 

And his rapid-fire interweaving of right living and right teaching can easily give way to confusion, which is why the apostle Peter says in his own letter, Sometimes Paul can be really confusing. Some interpretations within the life of the Church of this passage have led to messy, misleading, and even dangerous interpretations. 

And in this passage, the Gospel, according to Paul, requires two things: it requires right teaching and right living. What is right teaching? Right teaching is the eternal revelation of God’s character and will in the person of Jesus, whereas right living is the revelation of God’s character and will in the Spirit-led and obedient life of believers.

False teaching in our era always results from the removal of one of these key ingredients of the Gospel. We have to have both right teaching and right living. 

Within this passage, Paul provides a right living principle. He addresses the relationship which exists between first-century human slaves towards their earthly masters, but he partners that with God’s generous invitation of all humanity to salvation, which is a right teaching principle. 

In the coming weeks, Pastor Greg will explore how Paul’s instruction to slaves in the first century can inform our business and employment relationships today. What does it look like to live as a committed and devout believer in our workplace, amongst our coworkers, before our boss, our employer, before our employees, and those who we shepherd and steward? 

DEALING WITH SLAVERY IN TITUS 2

But right now, I want us to consider the right teaching element of this passage. I want us to ask a few questions. How does the good service of a first-century human slave reflect the right teaching of the Gospel that seems so strange to us? 

How should we understand Paul’s instruction to slaves without misconstruing them as some kind of Divine endorsement of the human institution of slavery? And how is the slave concept fundamental to Paul’s understanding of the Gospel? 

So, with that, let’s dive in and do a little bit of background. In verses 9-10, it says, “Urge slaves to be submissive to their masters in everything, to be pleasing, not talking back, not stealing, but showing complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything, they may be an ornament to the teaching of God our Savior.” 

I want us to remember Paul’s opening line in his letter to Titus, he says, “Paul, a slave of God.” The Greek word here is doulos, and Paul tells us that slavery is to be a defining characteristic of our relationship with God. 

And as twenty-first-century Americans, that makes us really uncomfortable. We ask the question, What about this Declaration of Independence stuff? I thought we were supposed to be set free. You know, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness? 

The Greek word doulos is often rendered servant in many of our contemporary translations, and it’s unfortunate that a majority of these readings have been softened in order to make the word less offensive to modern readers. 

However, there is a good argument for the word servant. Some scholars argue doulos may constitute a reference to the bond servant relationship of Exodus 21, where, in ancient Israel, a slave could voluntarily choose to remain under the care and in the service of a good master upon their completion of six years of faithful service. 

But there’s a problem with these two approaches. Paul was not writing his letter to Titus in a twenty-first-century American society, nor was he writing to ancient Israelites who were beholden to the safeguards of the Levitical system. 

Paul is addressing a Gentile pastor, Titus, who is shepherding communities within a Greco-Roman culture. Paul is invoking the Roman understanding of slavery, not the Jewish understanding of slavery. 

So, what was that understanding in the Roman Empire? Slaves, the Latin being servi, were accorded no rights. This is troubling territory, isn’t it? The second-century jurist, Gaius, states that the fundamental difference between a free person and a slave is that a free person is only beholden to Roman law, whereas a slave must be obedient to the will and the power of their master. 

Slaves could be accrued in a lot of ways. Slavery in the ancient world wasn’t something which was attached to a person’s ethnic identity. Slaves could be taken as prisoners of war. They could be used as collateral for debt in the Roman Republic, and unfortunately, they could even be taken as the children of existing slaves. And in Cretan culture, a slave could be freed by the voluntary decision of their owner or a Roman magistrate. But in most cases, slaves were held as property for life. 

Now, it’s at this point we have to remember Paul is acknowledging the institution of Roman slavery and demanding that those who find themselves in the midst of it be faithful to the Gospel and faithful to Jesus. 

Paul is not making that first-year college atheist mistake of going, Well, God must be okay with slavery then because I find it here in this passage. We have to remember that the Scriptures begin with the affirmation in Genesis 1:26-27 that all human beings, whether rich or poor, male or female, are free, regardless of their ethnic identity, are made in the image of God. 

And that was a scandalous statement in the ancient Near East. In the New Testament, Paul himself will affirm in Galatians 3 that in Christ, there is no longer slave nor free. We have been made equal in dignity through our Messiah. 

Paul rebukes the church at Ephesus, reminding them that both human masters and human slaves will be accountable to the Lord in judgment for how they treat one another. And in my view, in his letter to Philemon, Paul makes it clear that the Gospel faithfully lived will bring an end to the injustices and the brutality of human slavery. 

This is not God saying, Hey, slavery is all good. The aforementioned Biblical principles are what have led to the worldwide legal prohibition of slavery in Christian societies, and this battle continues on. We fight against human trafficking, forced labor, and the sexual exploitation of people made in the image of God. 

And it’s unfortunate that Christians throughout history have erred by trying to reconstruct this passage into some kind of justification for human slavery. That’s an example of bad proof-texting, and it runs counter to Paul’s whole theology of reconciliation and common dignity in the person of Jesus. 

Paul is not giving an apologetic for human slavery; he’s doing something much more radical. Let me show you how the religious teachers and the moral philosophers of the Greco-Roman world didn’t bother to instruct slaves. They didn’t teach slaves. They ignored slaves. 

If you wanted to change a society, who would you go to? You would go to the top, to the people who could give you a platform of influence, and most importantly, to the people who could pay you very well for your services. So, ancient philosophers would go to emperors, to governors, to business persons, and to other members of the patrician class in order to communicate their message. 

Now, at approximately the same time as the apostle Paul, there was a philosopher named Seneca, and he was a bit of an anomaly in the Roman Empire because he demanded that slaves be treated with dignity. 

And guess what? Who here remembers that horrible guy, Nero, we learned about in the Book of Revelation? He killed Seneca because of his views, because those views about the fundamental human dignity of a person were counter to the Roman imperial norms of power and coercion. 

Yet at the same time, Seneca was not as radical as Paul because Seneca just told slave owners, Hey, you need to be good to your slaves. Paul takes the Gospel to the lowest echelon of society. That is where he sees the transformation of Christ happening. 

ORNAMENTS OF THE GOSPEL

Do you guys remember when Jesus declared the meek shall inherit the earth? Paul is going to show us how there’s a spiritual metaphor here. In verse 10, it says, “So that in everything they may be an ornament to the teaching of God our Savior.” Paul teaches that a human slave’s dutiful service to his human master is an ornament of the Gospel. What’s an ornament? It’s something which draws attention to a greater reality. 

Now, it would be easy for us as modern readers to go back to that first year college atheist mistake and go, Well, Paul starts with the old men, and he ends with the slaves. So, he must just be enforcing prejudice. That’s not what he’s doing at all. Let me show you. 

In fact, if we look at the passage, Paul is clear that it’s not the old men, the old women, the young women, or even the young men whose lifestyles are called unique ornaments of the Gospel, nor is it the church leaders, the married couples, or the free persons. 

In fact, Paul seems more concerned that these groups are living in such stupidity, such moral misbehavior, and such a lack of obedience to Christ, that they’re actually leading the Lord’s name to be blasphemed within wider Cretan culture. 

The only group whose lifestyle he calls an express ornament of the Gospel is the slave. The faithful slave illustrates the calling of every single believer in Christ. Why? The Scriptures will say at their onset– we already talked about it– that God created humanity in His own image, Genesis 1:26-27. 

In Genesis 2, it says that the Lord God commanded the man at creation, we find this relationship where humanity was created to serve and reflect the glory and the character of the Lord within the world. Paul will say of fallen humanity that after humanity exchanges that glory for sin, that we exchanged the truth of God for a lie– and here’s the key word– served the creature rather than the Creator. 

It may prove shocking to us, but the human person is an image-bearing creature and will always serve and bear the reality of something by God’s design. We cannot write our own rules, reflect our own image, our truth, or be our own master. It’s impossible. 

As human beings, we are always serving something. We are either slaves to the truth or, in the words of Romans 1, slaves to a lie. That’s why Peter says people are slaves to whatever masters them. The teaching of Scripture is that we can either be a slave to sin or a slave to Christ. There is no other way. 

And the twenty-first-century Church, throughout its many traditions, has failed to grasp this foundational principle of the Gospel. We’ve pretended that there’s a third category of person, a special kind of believer, who can live free of the consequences of their sins, but are also somehow free to live life however they want to. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

THE EXCHANGE OF THE GOSPEL

Paul says in Romans 6, “Having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness.” Every human being has a master. The question is, who is it? This is the exchange of the Gospel. And Paul’s going to illustrate this exchange in the following verses. 

He says, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good works.” 

Let’s break down this exchange. It says He purchases us from all sin. The Greek word here is lytroō, and it means I redeem or I buy back. But Paul doesn’t stop there. In the next phrase, he says, “To purify for himself,” and here’s the key phrase: “A people of his own.” 

These verses describe the two lungs of salvation. The first is justification, where, through the work of Christ, we have been set free of our slavery to sin. But the second lung of salvation– and I’m sorry, it’s not just something that happens after you’re saved, it is a part of salvation– is sanctification. 

I really prefer the Eastern Christian term theosis because, in the West, we treat sanctification like it’s some kind of unnecessary extra credit exercise we do in detention until the school day ends, as if it’s something we occupy ourselves with until the Lord returns. 

Sanctification is the second stage of salvation. God did not narrowly save us from our slavery to sin. He saved us so that we could be conformed to the image of Jesus, for as Romans 8:29 says, “Those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.” 

We have been saved from sin, but we have been saved to reflecting Jesus in the way we live. It’s worth straining out what Paul is teaching here: we’re not merely saved from the consequences of our sin; it says we’re saved from all sin. 

That means we’re freed from obeying it. That means we’re freed from doing it. That also means we’re freed from its consequences, which is why we have to embrace the Scriptural truth that as believers, as those who have been made new creations in Christ, we have the power, through the Holy Spirit, to obey God when we’re tempted. 

We can never say, Hey, I just couldn’t overcome that. Through Christ, you can. You have a new Master. As sinners, we were once enslaved to sin. As believers, we must be enslaved to Christ. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:15, “He died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for the one who for their sake died and was raised.” 

There is no third category of believer who can exist as neither a slave to sin nor as a slave to Christ. You have to have a master. So, who is it? 

The Book of Hebrews will say if we willfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment and a fury of fire which will consume God’s adversaries. 

The letter to the Hebrews was written to Jewish believers in Christ. It’s not talking to non-believers here. Jesus will put it this way: no one can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. We cannot live as slaves neither to Christ nor to sin. We must have a master.

HOW DO WE APPLY THIS?

So, what’s the application of all this? It’s a bit dark, slavery is never a fun thing to talk about on Sunday morning. The right living instructions of the Book of Titus are not just the benefits of the Gospel. They’re not just some add-ons to the Gospel. 

When Paul tells us what it should look like in husbands treating their wives, and wives treating their husbands, and parents instructing and disciplining their children, and those who are older raising up those who are younger in the faith, those are not just some neat add-ons to the Gospel. They are the lifestyle of the Gospel. 

They are what the good news of Christ looks like in our life. They are what slavery to Christ must look like in our life. It’s all about the love of the Lord, the transformative love of the Lord, which changes us and then changes the world. That’s why Paul tells the Ephesian church, “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” 

Now, I’m personally going to go out on a limb and say, I believe a person who truly understands their slavery to Christ will never treat another human being like a slave. We will be those who live out the love, the care, and the honor of our Savior well. 

At the same time, I am also convinced that a believer who understands their slavery to Christ will know that it is their life’s aim to reveal their Master through their selflessness, their honor, and their submissive love of others. Slavery to Christ is what enables the Kingdom lifestyle, which reveals the nature and character of the Lord to an unbelieving world. 

We’ve been studying verses 1-10, looking at the lifestyle, the faith within the family, within society. I want to take a moment and, as a speculative exercise, I want us to imagine what a church unenslaved to Christ might look like. 

Let’s turn these commandments upside down. Imagine a church where older men are angry, bitter, impatient, and completely disinterested in the betterment of others. Imagine a church where older women slander, gossip, and are slaves to addiction, all while offering no help or instruction to younger generations. 

Imagine a church where young women resent their husbands, long to escape their marriages, and so neglect their children. Imagine a church where young men are sexually promiscuous, slaves to addiction, lustful, lazy, unreliable, and completely useless to their families and their church. 

Imagine a church family where slaves in the first century and employees in the twenty-first century slack off at work, endlessly complain, and are only interested in getting by or collecting a paycheck. 

What does that lifestyle lead to? What does that lifestyle reveal? Not Jesus, but sin. Why would the world believe our message of new creation when we’re not living it, when we look no different from the world? How will the unbelievers see, know, and experience the eternal grace of God if a church remains unsubmitted to their Master? 

There are only two paths for humanity: slavery to sin or slavery to Christ. There is no scenario in which you are free from your sin but also free to choose your own destiny. You are either a slave to sin or a slave to Him. 

I want us to contrast the earlier picture of the unsubmitted church against some eyewitness testimony of the early Church from approximately 130 to 150 AD. What did the Church look like in this era? Here’s what the observers have to say: “They marry as other people do. They produce children, but they never destroy their offspring.” 

Next quote: “They share their table with everyone, but not their bed.” Next quote: “They themselves are poor, yet they strive to make others rich and blessed.” And lastly: “They are mistreated, but they choose to bless. They are insulted, but they repay the insults with honor and selfless love.” 

A church of generosity, a church of forgiveness, a church where children and families are honored as the design of God, that is what reveals the new creation, life of Jesus, and where believers exist as living reflections of the Lord. 

And why are we reflecting the Lord through this lifestyle? Paul will say in Philippians 2, speaking of Jesus, “Though he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave.” 

He is the Master, the Divine Master, the Creator of the universe, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End in the words of Revelation, the origin of God’s creation, the One who breathed life into every human person who has ever existed, exists, or will exist. 

He became a slave. He’s the God who became a man. He is the origin and source of life who became a consequence for our sins. There is no humility to which we could descend which goes lower than He descended. 

There is no humiliation or suffering we could endure more extraordinary than what He suffered for us. There is no selflessness or love which we could ever offer to Him, or to others, which would surpass His infinite generosity, and there is no mind that could imagine a more lavish, kind-hearted, and magnificent Lord. 

That’s why Paul says, “God exalted Him even more highly and gave Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in Heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess–” here’s our crucial statement– “that Jesus Christ is Lord.” 

We cannot cling to Christ, the Savior, when neglecting Christ, the Lord. Christ is Lord, and there is no other. Christ must be our Lord, and we must have no others. We have to stop this foolishness which believes we can live with one foot in sin and one foot in salvation. We have to express that His way is the only way. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

And as an Oriental Orthodox Bishop I follow will always say to his church, “If He is the life, if He is our life, my beloved church, then live Him.” Live Him at your work when you want to complain, live Him in your family, when you come home after a long day, and all you want to do is recline on the couch, and you see that your wife is in desperate need.

Live Him when your husband is really annoying and all you want to do is shoot a nice, neatly targeted criticism at him. Live Him when you are tempted by sexual addiction or material pleasure. Live Him in every area of your life. Live Him when you’re in the aisles at Walmart. 

That is what slavery to Christ looks like. It’s not brutal, it’s not harsh. It’s revealing the character of the One who is greater than any heart or any mind. Could you imagine what a beautiful kind of slavery it is? 

And here’s the gift: the Psalmist will say, “Friendship with the Lord is reserved for those who fear Him.” Jesus said to the disciples, “I no longer call you slaves. I call you friends.” When we understand the holiness of the Lord, when we understand the One who we are called to reflect in our lifestyle, we no longer have to live in the fear of slavery. We walk in the blessing of friendship. 

We don’t do the right thing because we’re pushing against our fleshly desires, we do the right thing because His spirit transforms our desires. We do the right thing because we know the One we serve, and we know that His way is better than any other way. 

We cannot settle for a Gospel which omits the Lordship of Christ. How else will He be revealed, except through a Church who models His new creation? We cannot settle for a false gospel which seeks to separate the right teaching of the Kingdom from the right lifestyle of the Kingdom. We must be a people who understand our Master, not just His tasks, not just His commandments, His character, His desires, His love. 

And what does that do? It makes even the Tuesday evening where you’re a little starved from missing lunch, you’re a little irritable because you’ve called home and your children are screaming at the top of your lungs, you’re frantically searching through the aisles of Walmart looking for that ingredient your wife desperately needs, yet you can’t find because you’re more incompetent than she is in this area. And it’s a holy moment. It’s a moment where the God of the universe is revealed because you remember who your Master is. 

Christ is Lord, and there is no other. We must live in alignment with Him. 

Before I pray us out, what do we do when we fail? The writer of 1 John says and if we sin, we know that He is faithful and just and will purify us from all unrighteousness when we fail to reflect Him. What’s the answer? We repent, we acknowledge, Hey, Lord, You were right. I was wrong. I’m going back to Your way. He is more merciful than we could ever imagine. 

Are you guys doing okay? We’ve survived. Awesome. Would you stand? Can I pray over you? I’m not just going to yell this stuff and then leave you unprayed for– or me unprayed for– because I need it just as desperately. 

Lord, when we survey– not to be critical– but the state of the modern Church, there’s such a famine of Lordship, there’s such a famine of holiness. The unbelieving world looks at the church and asks the question, Why would we have anything to do with this? It looks exactly like us. There’s the same sin, the same selfishness, the same lack of surrender.

Lord, would You make in us a church like the church of Ephesus, which would remember its first love? Would remember You both as Lord and as friend, and would understand that we weren’t just narrowly saved from our sins because God’s nice and He wants to make life nice. 

We were saved because You desire to be reflected in all things, that it’s Your intention to be all in all, that the world would see, know, and experience Your love, Your glory, and Your redemptive life. Make us faithful pieces of that story, make us faithful friends in that story. 

Lord, over every situation in this room where the discipleship of the Kingdom and Your Lordship is being tested, would You give grace? Would You give mercy? We remember the words of Your servant, Paul, that Your strength is made perfect in our weaknesses. 

Lord, we are so weak. Be our strength. Be our source of life. Bring redemption, which we could not bring forth on our own. Lord, I pray Your blessing, Your abundant life, and Your provision on every member of my beloved family here. May they walk in the abundance of Your Kingdom and ample measures of Your forgiveness and grace. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.