Teaching Tuesday: Titus

Series: Passing the Torch
Sermon: Titus (8/11/24)

Happy Tuesday, all.

The Scottish theologian G.G. Findlay said “Better circumstances do not make better men.”

But what does? What makes us better?

A new job or a new spouse? A raise or a move to a new town or a new church? More recognition or more vacation days? More degrees or more prestige?

What makes us better? Where should we place our hope?

In the letter to Titus and the letters to Timothy we get a look at the Apostle Paul’s most deeply personal correspondence. These letters are called the “Pastoral Epistles” because they are Paul’s most “pastoral” and personal and specific writing. Except for the letter to Philemon, the Pastoral Epistles are the most narrow and focused writings to a particular people and place of all the New Testament texts.  

Which makes sense, right? Any of Paul’s letters may have been read aloud at church gatherings, but Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Hebrews, Ephesians, Thessalonians, and Colossians were written mainly to entire groups of churches while Titus, Philemon, and the Timothy letters were written mainly to individuals.

And these letters aren’t proactive, they’re reactive; they’re in response to something. Here in Titus, Paul is responding to two specific problems:

The first is the need for the church Titus is leading on the island of Crete in Greece to train and appoint qualified elders, leaders whose lives and teaching align with the way of Jesus.

The second is the need for the church members to focus in on right teaching and right living and reject what Paul calls “meaningless, deceptive, corruption.”

These believers have been saved, and now it’s time to live in the full manifestation of that salvation by leading well, following well, and growing in the faith as a church community.

The book of Titus sounds a lot like the book of 1st Timothy, which makes sense because they were written at about the same time and for largely the same purpose.

The church is new, it’s starting to grow, it’s starting to bring more and more people, which is great, but with larger numbers always comes the difficult challenge of maintaining good, solid doctrine that upholds the teaching of Jesus and the apostles after him.

Part of meeting this challenge is raising up leaders who will hold fast to what Paul through the Holy Spirit told them and showed them last time around: to not be swayed by the temptation to infuse false gospels and secular ideology into church teaching.

Paul tells Titus at the start of this letter that Titus’s very purpose in Crete is to go around to the various churches and raise up elders so that each church would have qualified leaders.
 
In chapter 1, verses 6-9 Paul has some detailed expectations for the kind of qualities and qualifications to look for in church elders:

An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children are trustworthy and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain.

Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.

What Paul means by doctrine here isn’t just a list of proper theological understanding.  

He has in mind how these Christians should act so that their faith would grow in them and through them others might come to the faith as well. In Paul’s writing throughout the New Testament there is no clean line between “belief” and “behavior.”

The emphasis Paul makes over and over again here in Titus is the importance for believers to do good. Believing the right things and doing the right things are not separate issues but are interconnected. For Paul here there is no tension between God’s free grace and grace-empowered good works.

We cannot earn God’s grace by good works, but because we are recipients of God’s grace, we do good, we live rightly, we honor God with our choices, our bodies, our love, our treatment of his people and his world.

Our right actions are a byproduct, a result, of our right beliefs. We can’t win God’s favor by doing good, but a genuine experience of God’s grace causes us to deeply desire to do good, as we read in Titus 2:11-14.

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.

It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

We are saved by grace through faith, and we are saved for the purpose of glorifying God’s good name by our worship and our work and making much of Jesus in our world.

If you were the only window into the Jesus-filled life your friend ever got - the only Bible they ever read - would you want to be like you? If you were them, would you want what you have?

Paul tells Titus we are saved by Jesus to do good in his name...can anyone tell?

I like the way Pastor Jim said it in one of our conversations: if you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Where is your hope found? What have you placed your hope in?

Know Him and make Him known!
- Pastor Brady

Read for this coming Sunday: 1 Peter

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