Speaker: Dustin Scott

Passage: Titus 3:4-15

ARE YOU LIVING THE GOSPEL?

So, we are closing out the book of Titus. Who here has been changed by this study? Who here has been challenged by this book? Who here has challenged their spouse with this? No, don’t do that. 

I grew up in a Baptist church, and so car rides home were often accompanied with, Man, so and so really should have heard the message this morning. It really would have changed them. So, we’re not going to do that. 

But I think it’s incredible to just ponder the Scriptures. I said I grew up Baptist, and there was almost a conception in the Baptist Church that the Bible was dropped from Heaven on a two-day Amazon Prime delivery. 

When I would ask the people around me, Where did this book come from? They’d go, It came from God. That’s really all we know. We so easily forget that the Scriptures were written by real people in real places, facing real problems. And through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, these books were given for us, but we always have to remember these books were not written to us. 

David, just a couple of weeks ago, reminded us that this book began as a coaching letter between the apostle Paul and his own friend and disciple, Titus. And I think it’s beautiful to imagine Paul likely didn’t realize that one day, thousands of years later, his letter was going to be read as Christian Scripture for our benefit and our edification. 

If we think about this relationship between Paul and Titus, a spiritual father encouraging, building up, strengthening his spiritual son, perhaps that was always supposed to be a model of how the Kingdom was supposed to work, that we never give ourselves permission to disconnect from others, but we see it as our sacred obligation to build up the faith of others, to encourage them, to strengthen them, as God has strengthened us. 

But before I get ahead of myself, this isn’t even a part of today’s teaching, so let’s dive into the passage. You know I’m going to do it, would you stand with me for the reading of the Scriptures this morning? Only two more times in the Book of Titus, but then you’ll be standing for other books. 

TITUS 3:4-15

So, I’ll be reading from Titus chapter 3, starting in verse 4 and closing out the chapter in verse 15. It says, “When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is sure. I desire that you insist on these things, so that those who have come to believe in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works; these things are excellent and profitable to everyone.

“But avoid stupid controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. After a first and second warning, have nothing to do with anyone who causes divisions, since you know that such a person is perverted and sinful, being self-condemned. 

“When I send Artemas to you, or Tychicus, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis, for I have decided to spend the winter there. Make every effort to send Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way, and see that they lack nothing. And let people learn to devote themselves to good works in order to meet urgent needs, so that they may not be unproductive. All who are with me send greetings to you. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all.” 

Let’s pray. Holy Spirit, as we think about this book, this book was written to encourage teachability within us, to encourage transformation in us, and most importantly, Jesus, to make us more like Your character in nature. Would You give us ears to hear what You’re saying to the church this morning? 

Would You reveal to us the places where we are failing to live in testimony to You? Would You convict us of those places where we do not share in Your love, we do not share Your kindness, and would You show us Your way and Your compassion, so that when the world sees us, they can see You? 

We thank You for the gift of this letter, we thank You for the gift of the apostle Paul and his own student, Titus. If there’s anything I say this morning which isn’t of You, Lord, would You allow it to be forgotten? We ask these things in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. You may be seated. 

THE GOSPEL EMPOWERS TRANSFORMATION

Throughout the letter to Titus, we learn that the Gospel is intended to bring about transformation, divine order, and unity within our lives. How many of us were here for our study of the Book of Revelation? It wasn’t quite as long as our study of Luke or Romans. But in the Book of Revelation, Jesus was searching out and assessing the seven churches of Asia Minor, asking them the question: does your lifestyle testify to Me? 

In the Book of Titus, Jesus has redirected His gaze. He’s no longer looking at the wider Church. He’s looking at our private lives. He’s searching our homes. He’s searching the way we handle ourselves among family members. He’s searching out our workplaces. And He’s asking us a question: are we revealing His character and nature through the transformation, Divine order, and unity of our life? 

We have to remember that Paul begins his letter to Titus with a truth: that the Gospel is intended to bring about transformation. We have to remember that Titus has been appointed to lead the churches of Crete, which are sin-ridden, divided, and infighting. He’s been sent there as a leader to bring them back to the spiritual health of the Gospel. 

And in chapter 1, verses 1-2, it says, “I have been sent to proclaim faith to those God has chosen and to teach them to know the truth that shows them how to live godly lives. This truth gives them confidence that they have eternal life.” I’m going to repeat that: “This truth gives them confidence that they have eternal life, which God– who does not lie– promised to them before the world began.”

Question, maybe I’m pathologically messed up, maybe I need to see a counselor, but how many of us have ever stayed awake at night staring at the drywall on the ceiling and wondered, Am I actually saved? Anyone? Maybe I am alone. Maybe I do need to see a counselor.

If you’ve ever wrestled with that question, Am I actually saved? Paul gives us a remedy here. He gives us an answer. He says that Godly living is the truth that gives us confidence that we have eternal life. 

If I would pause here and encourage us in something, when you’re facing those moments of existential dread, when you’re struggling in your faith, when you’re wondering, Am I actually a disciple, or am I just a fraud? I would exhort you, go in prayer to the Lord, encounter Him, and ask Him to search you and know you. 

Maybe you need encouragement. Maybe you need the Lord to say, Hey, this thing in your life, this attitude, look at how different it is from yesterday. You can see the fruit of the Holy Spirit working in your life.

Maybe you’ll go to the Lord and He’ll say, Nothing changed today, and that’s a great reminder to get working on our sanctification. But I would exhort you, when despair hits your spiritual life, don’t run, don’t hide, don’t separate. Go to Him. 

Paul articulates that transformation is the external evidence of eternal life. But what is eternal life? Is eternal life dying and going to Heaven? That’s what I thought it was when I was a kid. Is eternal life resurrection from the dead? These things are certainly the results of eternal life, but I would submit they are not eternal life itself. 

In the Medieval Ages, the Church got very preoccupied with the question of, how does one die and go to Heaven? But in first-century Judaism, that is not what eternal life meant. In the days of Jesus and the apostles, eternal life meant this: God’s restoration of His good creation. 

If we go back to the Book of Genesis, when God completes His formation of the world, when He creates humanity, God says that it was a minor mistake? No, He says that it was very good. 

Eternal life includes things like the removal of sin, the healing of uncleanliness and disease, the reconciliation of relationships, and ultimately, resurrection from the dead. And according to the Scriptures, eternal life is something which expands into the future, but it begins right now. 

2 Corinthians 5, “If anyone be in Christ, he is a new creation.” Jesus defines eternal life in a prayer to His Father in John 17. He says, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the same glory that I had in you before the world existed.” 

A beautiful Trinitarian passage, a beautiful passage asserting the divinity of Jesus. If a Jehovah’s Witness knocks on your door, take him to John 17, it’s a great neighborhood.

Eternal life, according to Jesus, is living in constant, close, unimpaired relationship with the Father. Paul calls this devotion to God. And it is the place of daily encounter where we go to the Lord and He strengthens us, He encourages us, He fills us with His supernatural power, and He corrects us so that we can live a transformed life. 

And Jesus says in John 17 that this supernatural relationship, this relationship we have with the Lord, is intended to transform every one of our human relationships. If I could put it this way: do we handle others the same way God has handled us? 

Jesus says in John 17, “The glory that you have given to me I have given also to them.” Who’s the them? Point to yourself. It’s us. “…So that they may be one, even as we are one.” 

If we think about the problems of the church of Crete, the division, the unrepentant sin, the divided, broken nature of these churches, we realize that Paul is answering the problems of Crete with the prayer of Jesus. 

Eternal life is the self-giving love of the Trinity poured out into the everyday relationships of a community. It is where God transforms the way we handle each other, and this life is known and experienced when He transforms the way I love my spouse, my children, my managers and employees, my church family and leaders, and this is the one we’re really uncomfortable with as Americans, even the way I love officials in government. 

Paul lays a challenge before the Cretan churches, and it’s the same challenge we carry today: how can you share the love of Jesus if you aren’t embracing the lifestyle of His Kingdom? How can you share the love of Jesus if you aren’t handling others the same way He has handled you? And how can we share the love of Jesus if we aren’t living in such a way that produces goodness, real benefit, and excellence in the lives of others? 

Jesus says, “If you love me, obey my commandments.” Paul puts it this way: “Promote the kind of living that reflects right teaching.” And why is transformation essential to the Gospel? All we have to do is look into the world and see that unchanged people change nothing, but transformed people transform everything. 

People who have been transformed by the eternal life of God changed the world. They changed their home, they changed the culture of their friendships, they changed their workplace by becoming life givers to those around them.

But transformation requires something. It requires that I actively surrender my humanity, my ideas, my opinions, my desires, in favor of His eternal perspective. It’s the active and daily decision to choose Him instead of me.

So, I have some questions for us to consider. Where has mere belief in Jesus become an excuse for disobedience in our life? The churches of Crete would have certainly called themselves followers of Jesus, but Paul calls them out and says, Hey, your lifestyle doesn’t match what you say. 

And if we assessed our daily relationships, where are we failing to handle those around us the same way God has handled us? Maybe you get into a fight with your wife and she says something demeaning and insensitive to you, and you decide to throw a fit, forgetting that you said ten demeaning and insensitive things yesterday. 

Maybe your boss fails to acknowledge your achievement at work, and you decide to throw a fit instead of realizing, Oh my gosh, how many people around me have I neglected to acknowledge? How are we handling others? 

And here’s the real challenge, this is what I like to call, mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is least Christ-like of them all? How would our nearest loved ones describe us? If Jesus was to talk to our spouse, if He were to consult our children, if He were to interview our coworkers, would they say that our thoughts, our words, our attitudes, and our lifestyle bring them closer to Jesus through our goodness, our peace, our kindness, our compassion, and our service? Or would they say that we bring frustration, confusion, and pain into their life? 

If the answer is, My goodness, I’m looking in that mirror, and what I see isn’t very Christ-like, here’s the good news: Lamentation says that the mercy of the Lord is new every morning, all we have to do is repent and return to Him. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. 

DIVINE ORDER

The next reality, which, in my view, holds prominent in the letter to Titus, is Divine order. The Gospel restores Divine order to our life. Paul writes of Jesus, “For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people, instructing us to turn away from godless living and sinful pleasures.” 

How do we live out the grace of God? By living for the good and the benefit of those around us. And for us numerology nerds, those of us who love the Book of Revelation, guess how many times Paul talks about the necessity of good works in the Book of Titus? Seven. I would dare to say that it’s the punch line of Paul’s letter. 

Eternal life is a movement where God takes us away from our own selfishness, and in the place of that selfishness, gives His own Divine selflessness. Eternal life glorifies God by living for the benefit of those around us, and Divine order replaces our human selfishness with an eternal perspective. 

You guys know I’m a Greek nerd, so of course, I’m going to talk about the original Greek text of Titus. I can’t help myself. There’s a theological juxtaposition in this book where Paul pits two realities against one another. 

The first one is the word he uses for sin, which is anomia, it means lawlessness. And the second one is this word he uses, which is oikonomia, which means the law or the management of a household. It’s where we get the English word economy from. 

Why is that important? Paul does not use the classic New Testament term for sin, which is hamartia. Hamartia means missing the mark. It means a tragic mistake, and hamartia speaks to the way that our disobedience offends the honor and perfection of God. 

Anomia is something different. It means lawlessness. You see, according to Paul’s theology, sin is not just our personal failure to obey God; it’s actually the disorder that afflicts our relationships. 

If we go back to ancient Israel, the Levitical system didn’t just address our personal sin against God, it addressed the effects of sin, the way sin damaged the nation of Israel, the way sin brought uncleanliness to God’s people. And what I find in the Book of Titus that is so interesting is our selfishness breeds disorder in our relationships. That is the way Paul conceives of sin in this letter. 

Maybe you’re here, you grew up in a household where selfishness bred disorder. Maybe you had a dad who was checked out and absent, and he didn’t disciple you and raise you in a Godly way. Maybe you had a mom who is bitter and angry and contemptuous, and that’s affected your own attitudes and thought life. 

Maybe when you were young, you fell in love, expecting to have that Disney romance, that happily-ever-after, and instead, you were used for someone else’s sexual gratification. I don’t know how sin has disordered you through relationship, but I know how it’s disordered me. And I know that everyone in this room has disordered someone else through our own sin. 

So, what is Paul getting at here? We so often conceive of the movement from Old Testament to New Testament as a movement from law to some kind of lawless grace. But that’s not what’s happening. The old covenant foreshadowed the new. 

Jesus says, “I did not come to abolish the law. I came to fulfill it.” The good news is, Jesus didn’t come to make us lawless, He did not come to leave us in our disorder. Instead, He set us free, that the disorder of our past life doesn’t have to define us anymore, that we can take on His Divine order. 

Heaven provides such a beautiful exchange. We get to go to the Lord, we get to bring our brokenness, our insecurities, our own deficits and anxieties, and what does the Lord give in the place of those things? His Divine order. He shows us the way out. 

You know what my favorite thing about the Lord is? I can go to Him in prayer, and I can throw an absolutely selfish fit, I can complain about all my perspective and how I feel overlooked and how I don’t feel cared for. 

And you know what the Lord does when we repent? He replaces our selfishness with His own Divine selflessness, bringing Divine order to our life. According to 2 Corinthians, through the gift of Christ and through the giving of the Holy Spirit, we are actually empowered to obey God. We can live with Divine order. 

So, there’s a prodding question ahead of us. There’s mirrors, there’s prodding questions. What is Dustin doing this morning? Where have we allowed lawlessness and disorder to creep into our daily relationships? 

Have we allowed resentment, backbiting, harsh talk, pornography use, our wider unfaithfulness to have a place in our marriage? Have we allowed slander and gossip and insubordination to govern us when we’re in our workplace? Have we allowed harsh, demeaning, and profane words to exit our mouth towards officials and government? 

If so, we have given disorder a place in our life, and the Lord is calling us to a new freedom, a new righteousness in Him. So, as we think about these places where we have passively surrendered to disorder, I would encourage us: actively embrace His Divine order. 

How do I do that? Do I just grit my teeth? Do I just try harder? The Psalmist would say, no. You go before the Lord. You give Him permission to search you, to know you, to find any wicked way within you. And that’s the moment where, in the words of Psalm 51, we’re given a clean heart. We’re restored to the joy of our salvation. We are made new. 

And so, if I could leave us with one challenge this morning, it’s this: where is the Lord inviting us to reorder our priorities, our attitudes, and our habits to glorify Him by benefiting others? 

Maybe you’re here this morning and you need to go apologize to your wife. Maybe you’re here this morning and you need to go sit with the Lord and repent for something that happened yesterday. The Lord is so good. His mercies are new every morning. 

If I could sit in any challenge, it would be this, Greg has repeated it many times throughout our study of Titus: do people feel like they’re near Jesus when they’re near to me? If the answer is yes, good job. Pat yourself on the back. 

But if the answer is no, find twenty minutes this afternoon to sit with Him, to invite His assessment, to invite His grace, to invite His strength, so that transformation and Divine order can reign in your life. 

Let’s pray. Holy Spirit, thank You for this book. Thank You that You didn’t come to just leave us untransformed, You came to make us like Jesus. You came so that brokenness could become wholeness. You came so that dead, old life could become brand new life. You came so that we could be restored completely in You. 

So, Lord, even in this moment, would You prompt within us any places which we need to give You government to change? Would You search us? Would You know us? Would You find all those wicked ways within us, the ones which are floating beneath the surface, which are sometimes subconscious, unintentional attitudes?

Would You cleanse us of those things so that when people are near to us, they sense that they’re near to You? So that You would become all in all, in our world, in our church, and through every aspect of our life. We ask this in Your name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.