Now if you would take your Bibles in hand; turn with me to Paul’s letter to Titus, Titus chapter 2. Page – let’s see – page 998 in the church Bibles.
In chapter 2 that we’ve been considering the last few weeks, Paul has made the point that godly living as Christian people rests on the foundation of the Gospel of God’s free grace. And in 2:1-14, he has applied that principle to various categories of people and their relationships to one another in the fellowship of the local church. Today, beginning in verse 15 of chapter 2, running through verse 8, Paul applies the same principle – that grace transforms our lives in radically, God honoring ways – he applies that principle now to our public witness among our neighbors out in the world. If you look for a moment at chapter 3, verses 1 and 2, you will see that emphasis quite clearly. “Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.”
Paul and Titus, remember, were living at a time when to follow Jesus Christ was to be exposed to serious social and political stigma. If you scan through the book of Acts, you will see very clearly that from the first, Christians were opposed by the Jews held in contempt by the elites of Greek culture, and not infrequently brutalized by the violence of the mob. And wouldn’t it be easy to become resentful of the powers that be, hostile, unkind toward anyone who did not embrace the Gospel along with you? Wouldn’t it be tempting to want to fight back and to give as good as you get and fight fire with fire and use the tactics of our opponents against them?
That’s a temptation we continue to wrestle with to this day, isn’t it? Under the cover of the illusory anonymity of the internet, not a few who claim to be conservative Christians are drawn into vile speech and political invective. The hearts of a significant and growing group of disaffected evangelicals in our own time have been captured by a desire to own the libs and to exact political vengeance and accumulate political influence in order to use the coercive power of the state to enforce what are touted as Christian values, all the while using openly profane and sometimes racist language to do it. And far from advancing the cause of Jesus Christ, those who fall prey to that temptation fatally undermine it. “Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, to show perfect courtesy toward all people.” That is the standard of public discourse to which all who have been saved by grace through faith in Christ are called. Anything less falls short of God’s call on our lives and dishonors the name of Jesus. The unclean speech and the political cynicism of those whose values oppose the clear teaching of the Word of God can provide no justification for the same kind of speech and behavior among those who seek to obey the Word of God. Paul wants us to understand that our public witness is at stake.
But let’s be honest, sometimes frustrations run high. The wounds cut deep. The provocations are very real. And even at the best of times, if we are really being honest now, it’s not so easy to show perfect courtesy toward all people, is it? Our tempers get the better of us. Our insecurities make us needlessly defensive. Our egos get in the way. So how can we do better and begin to live up to the kind of Christian testimony in the public square to which we are called? That is the focus of the teaching of Titus 2:15 through 3:8. And Paul offers us here three helps in answer to that question. How can we do better in living up to God’s call on our lives, to live for Jesus Christ in the public square? Three helps.
Number one, in 2:15 through 3:2 and again at the other end of the passage in 3:8, Paul brackets this whole section with a reminder that to live this way we must be equipped by the Word. We must be equipped by the Word. Secondly, in chapter 3 verse 3, he reminds us that we were once just like the people we are tempted to hold in contempt and treat with disdain. And so we must, in the second place, be exhorted by our past. Equipped by the Word. Exhorted by our past. And then finally in 3:4-7, Paul puts before us one of the great summaries of God’s way of salvation found anywhere in the Scriptures, and he does it in order to encourage us by the Gospel. So three ways to live for Christ in the public square – equipped by the Word, exhorted by our past, encouraged by the Gospel.
Before we read the text and work through those three headings, let’s pray and ask for the help of the Holy Spirit. Let us all pray.
Our Father, the Lord Jesus promised us that You give the Holy Spirit to those who ask You. And so now with Your Word open in our hands, our hearts open before Your gaze, we pray, O Lord, may Jesus’ promise to us be fulfilled. Grant us the illumination of the Holy Spirit for the glory of His name. Amen.
Titus 2:15. This is the Word of God:
“Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.
Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people.”
Amen.
This past week I came across a story, of all things, about AI cookbooks. These are entire cookbooks produced by AI but pretending to be a human author with a made up human name. And the problem, of course, is that AI doesn’t have tastebuds! And so the recipes, at least in some cases, are downright bizarre if not things worthy of a horror movie! How does “Shepherd’s Pie Sushi” sound to you? Or how about “Thai Green Curry Lasagna”? Or maybe my favorite, “Bratworst Ice Cream”? Steady! My point is, the source of the recipe really matters!
In our text, Paul surrounds his instructions for Christian living in the public square with a reminder that in order to live the Christian life the recipe must come only from holy Scripture and not from the cues and triggers of our present cultural moment. In other words, Paul says to us, first of all, we must be equipped by the Word. Look please at chapter 2:15 through 3:2. Paul tells Titus to, “Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. Remind them to be submissive,” and so on. Paul wants the Christians on the island of Crete, where Titus is ministering, to live in godliness inside the church – that’s chapter 2 – and in godliness outside the church – that’s part of chapter 3. And as a preacher, Titus has a vital role in helping them to do it. He is to declare, exhort, rebuke with all authority. He is to remind them. His ministry is to be marked by an authoritative, heraldic proclamation of the truth of God. Not a hesitant suggestion, not a proposal, not an equivocation presenting options on the one hand and on the other.
Look down also at verse 8 of chapter 3 at the other end of the passage, bracketing this whole section. Paul says to him again, “This saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who believe in God will be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people.” Insist on these things. The preaching of the Word of God is to come with insistence and urgency and gravity and weight. It is to be the declaration of the mind of God in the Bible, not the speculations of the preacher according to whatever hobbyhorse he wants to follow today.
And the force of that reminder bracketing this section on our public witness is to drive home the essential role that the ministry of the pulpit has in forming Christian character. To live for God in the public square requires submission to the Word of God in preaching. Too many cultural warriors are formed far more by their favorite online influencers than by the exposition of holy Scripture. The online influencer tells them what their itching ears want to hear, whereas the Word of God tells us all what we need to hear. Listen – are rage-baiting, viral videos more influential right now in your life, in shaping your mind and heart than the steady teaching of the Bible on the Lord’s Day? If they are, no wonder you find the exhortation so very contrary to your instincts and habits. To be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle and to show perfect courtesy towards all people. Godliness in the public square requires that we be equipped by the Word of God. Are you being equipped by the Word of God?
Then secondly, notice godliness in the public square requires that we face the exhortations of our own past. Look please at verse 3 of chapter 3. We are to live this way, Paul says, “For” – so here’s the reason – “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, lead astray, slaves to various passions and desires, passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated and hating one another.” Paul’s describing life before conversion to Christ, isn’t he? This is who we all once were before we were Christians. And it is a vivid and even disturbing analysis of the effects of sin in the human soul.
Look at it with me. First, Paul says sin debases our reason. We were once foolish. Sin makes us take the data and reach entirely the wrong conclusions. We suppress the truth in unrighteousness. We twist and warp the revelation of God in the things that are made so that “we worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever.” Sin debases our reason. Sin perverts our wills. We were once disobedient, Paul says. We went our own way instead of the way God calls us to go in His Word. “All we like sheep have gone astray and turned each one to his own way.” Sin debases our reason. Perverts our will. Sin undermines our agency. We were led astray. It’s not just that we went astray, turned aside. No, we were led there by others. We followed, as Paul puts it in Ephesians chapter 2, “the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.” We were sitting ducks for the predations of the evil one.
And what’s more, fourthly, Paul says sin enslaved our affections. Not only does sin undermine our agency when it comes to others, sin actually brings our desires and our passions into bondage so that what God condemns, we love, and we find ourselves living in perpetual rebellion against His rule. Sin debases our reason, perverts our wills, undermines our agency, enslaves our affections, and sin also destroys our relationships. Paul says we “passed our days in malice and envy, hated and hating one another.” Sin leads us to measure ourselves against our neighbors and try to acquit ourselves by thinking about other people with contempt. “I’m not that bad. I mean look at that idiot over there.” That’s what we say to ourselves. We pass our days in malice and envy, hated and hating one another. It’s a startlingly accurate penned portrait of your old life, my old life. Sin had totaled the car of our lives. We were left with the complete wreckage of who God made us to be, burned out and broken down, His image in us shattered, His purposes denied. We were wholly averse to the good, dead in trespasses and sins in which we once walked. We loved the darkness rather than the light because our deeds were evil. That’s who we were.
And importantly, did you notice this list of what sin once made us closely mirrors the earlier list in 2:15 through 3:2 of what Paul’s Christians now to be and to do. Look at these two lists side by side, would you. In place of sin debasing our reason as believers in Jesus, we are now to be formed through the authoritative teaching of the Word of God. In place of sin perverting our wills in disobedience, we are now to submit to rulers and authorities. And to be obedient in place of in undermining our agency, we are now to be ready for every good work. Instead of sin enslaving our affections and destroying our relationships, we are now to speak evil of no one. “Avoid quarreling, be gentle and show perfect courtesy to all people.”
The point is clear. I hope you can see it. Before you justify your venom and contempt for people in the public square who do not share your convictions, remember you were once just as lost, just as ruined, just as enslaved to folly and wickedness and sin as they are. Next time, when an unbelieving establishment figure promotes yet another agenda item that is hostile to the biblical worldview, before you give vent to unbridled invective and give as good as you get and fight fire with fire, remember you are who you are now not because you are superior to those who oppose or reject your beliefs. No. You yourself were once utterly, helplessly enslaved by the very same errors. You are not better than. You are not superior to. You are a wretched, car crash of a human being that God rescued and remade entirely, freely by His grace. We need to be exhorted by our past. Have you forgotten from what you have been delivered? And have you begun instead to act and speak as if you can take the credit yourself?
To live a godly life in the public square we need to be equipped by the Word. We need to be exhorted by our past. And then thirdly, we need to be encouraged by the Gospel. It’s not enough to remember what we once were, that we were every bit as lost and blind as the worst opponent of God’s Word. We also need to remember what God in Christ has done for us. Look again, Paul is saying, at the sheer enormity of the gift bestowed upon you. It will do more than anything else to school your heart in gratitude to God and compassion for sinners who are still locked into error and spiritual blindness.
Look again, would you please, at verses 4 through 7, and consider first of all the initiative of grace in verses 4 and 5. “When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.” Verse 4, you notice the language echoing chapter 2:11 that we considered last time. In 2:11, Paul spoke about the first coming of Jesus as “the appearing,” the epiphany of the grace of God. This time he speaks about that first coming of Christ as “the appearing,” the epiphany of the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior. And what I want you to be sure not to miss is the way that describes the motive in the heart of God for sending His Son. Jesus came because of the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior. When Jesus appeared on the scene of history, it was goodness and lovingkindness that appeared on the scene of history. This is what motivated the heart of the triune God to intervene. And when He intervened in goodness and lovingkindness by sending Jesus Christ, He saved us, Paul says.
Those are three little English words – two words actually in Greek – to turn over and over and over in your heart today that ought to make you weep and worship. There is a world, a universe of comfort and joy in them – isn’t there? He saved us! You didn’t do this! You contributed nothing but your sin and need. You were a helpless, hopeless case, and He saved us. He did it. The initiative was all His. You were drowning, and He pulled you from the flood. You were sinking fast and He rescued you from the miry classy and set your feet on a solid rock. You were trapped in a burning house, and He plucked you like a brand from the burning. He saved you, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His mercy. Which part of your own salvation can you take credit for? To what can you point in the narrative of your own redemption and claim it as the accomplishment of your own labor? On what ground can you stand before God at the last day and say to Him, “Look what I did!” There is none. “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground, all of it, is sinking sand.”
No work of yours, no decision you made, no religious rite you performed, no momentary kindness that you showed, there is nothing of yours, nothing of yours, nothing at all to afford you any basis for boasting before Him. He saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness but according to His mercy. You owe it all to mercy. As Toplady put it, “You are debtors to mercy alone.” You were the blind beggar sitting on the roadside at Jericho when Jesus came passing by in Luke 18. Do you remember him? Hearing that Jesus was passing, he cried out, “Son of David!” – what? “Life’s not fair! Give me some of what should rightfully be mine! I just want my share!” That’s not what he said. “Son of David! Have mercy on me!” Have mercy. In his utter helplessness, he cried for mercy and received his sight. That’s who you were, who I was – helpless, blind, destitute in our sin. And the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior, embodied in the Lord Jesus Christ appeared, came, had mercy on us and made us whole. Doesn’t that make you love Him and long to please Him? And doesn’t it move you to compassion for those who are still sitting on that dusty roadside bereft and bankrupt in their sin, every bit as much blind beggars as you once were? The initiative of grace.
Secondly, notice the work that grace does. What did Jesus, who is the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior, do when He saved us? In verses 5 and 6, He sent the Holy Spirit into our lives. He saved us “by the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.” Don’t skip past the glorious trinitarianism of that sentence. God the Father sends the Holy Spirit into your heart through Jesus Christ our Savior. That means, do you know, that means salvation is not the work of Christ who prizes the Holy Spirit from the reluctant hands of the Father who really otherwise would rather not have to fool with you. Your salvation isn’t the work of the Holy Spirit who conspires with Jesus to clean you up enough for the otherwise hostile Father to allow you into His kingdom.
No, your salvation was the Father’s idea who loved you in your sin, had mercy on you, sent His Son to die in your place, and through His Son sends His Holy Spirit to make you new creatures and shed His love abroad in your heart. The heart of God in all three glorious persons of the blessed Trinity, beats with goodness and lovingkindness toward you. The divine mind, possessed in its entirety by each of the Trinitarian persons without any remainder is taken up with thoughts of mercy toward you. You are not an afterthought, a mere addendum to the grander plans of God focused elsewhere. Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is occupied in showing you mercy.
And that mercy, Paul says, erupted into our lives by the Holy Spirit and gives us a new heart, a new status, and a new destiny. Do you see that? A new heart. He saved us “by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.” Regeneration and renewal. A new heart. A new life. That’s what He gave you. You were Lazarus in the tomb, dead and helpless, and then one day Jesus called you through the Gospel message. You heard the good news about Jesus Christ – that He died to save sinners – and in that moment, the Holy Spirit enabled you to hear the voice of your Savior saying to you, “Lazarus, come forth.” And suddenly, death came to heel like a whipped dog at the command of Jesus Christ and you stepped alive, blinking into the sunshine, from the old tomb of your sin and death. You were like the first creation, formless and void, darkness covering the face of the deep, but the Holy Spirit hovered over the waters so that when God said to you in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, “Let there be light and let there be life,” the Holy Spirit worked and you came to life and you saw the light of the knowledge of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ. You became new creation in Christ. God makes you new. He gives you a new heart.
Mercy also gives you a new status. Verse 7, He saved us through Jesus Christ “so that being justified by His grace we might become heirs.” Do you know that the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior can’t shower mercy on you while you are still condemned before the bar of His perfect justice? God doesn’t wink at sin, you see. He doesn’t merely wave you through with a shrug and say over your sin, “No big deal.” What is it the children’s catechism asks? “What does every sin deserve?” What’s the answer? “The wrath and curse of God.” There is a great barrier, a towering impediment standing between you and the goodness and lovingkindness of God – your sin. It’s the Berlin Wall and you’re on the wrong side, cut off, separated from the good life. You can’t get over it; you can’t get round it; Your sin deserves the wrath and curse of God. Mercy lives on the other side of the wall and you can’t reach it, but through Jesus Christ, God tears the wall down and treats His Son as though His Son was the guilty one. He bears gladly in His body on the cross the penalty your sin demands so that it is as though in the accounting of God you paid the debt in full but Jesus paid it for you so that looking upon you as you trust in Christ God might count you righteous in His sight, declaring you just. It’s not that you are righteous – I’m not righteous. We are dreadful sinners. But through Jesus, the wall crumbles to the dust. In Jesus, the wrath of God is satisfied and the mercy of God rolls down upon us and we are counted righteous in His sight.
And when that happens – look again at verse 7 – we become heirs. Here’s the full wonder of the new status grace gives you. Can you see it? We’re not just forgiven, acquainted, and then merely tolerated as sort of second class citizens in the kingdom. No, no, we are adopted into the family. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, having given His Son for us, is not content to leave us at a distance. He makes you His child. “Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us that we should be called the children of God!” Counted righteous though sinners still, sons and daughters of the Most High God, taken from the dust to the heights of privilege and blessing. That’s your new status.
And grace also gives you a new destiny. Look again at verse 7. He saved us so that “we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” You were once on a path, on a road that led to eternal death under the judgment of God in hell forever. But then God saved you and there were those little, three little dots on the GPS of your soul recalculating. You have a new destination now, a new destination now, according to the hope of eternal life, fellowship with the Father by the Son with the Holy Spirit, unbroken by any last remnant of your sin, forever in a new creation with the saints and the angels with joy filling your heart. That is your new hope, your new destiny.
And all of this is yours, Paul says, for free. A gift of grace. It’s all mercy, all mercy. And having surveyed it, you know, in just a few verses at a glance, Paul is turning to us and he is asking us, in light of all that, in effect, “Will you continue still to repeat the mistake of the unforgiving servant in Jesus’ parable, Matthew 18:23?” You remember him? He owed an enormous debt, the king forgave his debt, and then having been forgiven he immediately goes out and grabs his debtor with violence, demanding that his own debtor pay the debt in full. It is the height of hypocrisy, and Paul is saying the same thing that Jesus was saying. Having been so forgiven, so loved, having received such extravagant mercy, are you going to now turn with your debts forgiven so freely and fail to forgive your debtors?
To live like a Christian in the public square we must be exhorted by the Word rather than shaped by rage-baiting, online influencers. We must be exhorted by our past. You’re not better. Your life was once the same broken down car crash that theirs is still. And you must be encouraged by the Gospel. In His great mercy, God took you in your wretched, broken, dead condition. He made you new. He gave you life. New heart, new status, new destiny. Can’t you find it in that new heart of yours to show similar Christ-like compassion and kindness to others who, like you, do not deserve it? To show mercy to the unmerciful? In this way, we live for Him, our Savior, in the public square, pointing back to the only Redeemer that all people so urgently need.
Let us pray.
Our God and Father, we praise You for Your holy, inerrant Word. We ask You now as we come to the Table where we see the emblems of mercy, the tokens of the body and blood of our Savior given for us, we ask You now as we come to this Table to help us repent of our unforgiving hearts, to help us to show perfect courtesy to all people, to be gentle, not quarrelsome, to be obedient, to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be like our Savior, the Lord Jesus, who showed us how to do it and then gave us the grace to enable us to do it. Help us, O God, today to feast by faith on Him, and receiving that grace, rise to go forth and live for Him in the public square, for honor and glory. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.