This morning we begin the last of the three letters that comprise the pastoral epistles. This will
take us, God willing, almost all the way through the summer weeks. So if you would, take your
Bibles in hand and turn with me now to Titus chapter 1. Titus chapter 1. You can find that on
page 998 if you are using a church Bible.
You may remember Paul wrote 1 Timothy during a season of house arrest in the city of Rome.
First Timothy 1:3 indicates that prior to his arrest, Paul left Timothy in the city of Ephesus before
heading on to Macedonia. And now here in Titus chapter 1 verse 5, in very similar language, we
learn that at some point around this time Paul had also gone to Crete and planted churches there.
And much as he had done with Timothy in Ephesus, he had left Titus behind him to minister
among the new believers on the island. By the time we get to 2 Timothy a few years later, Paul is
once again under arrest in Rome. This time, he is languishing in the brutal Mamertine Prison in
the city of Rome awaiting his own coming execution. You may remember in 2 Timothy 4:10, we
looked at this last Lord’s Day, Titus had actually been with Paul in Rome around that time before
going on to ministry in Dalmatia. That means, therefore, that the letter to Titus was written
during or shortly after the first imprisonment of Paul in Rome before Titus arrived there and
before he went on to Dalmatia. That puts the letter to Titus between 1 and 2 Timothy in terms of
the chronology.
And like Timothy, Titus is a younger colleague who has served along with Paul on his mission
team, has earned his trust and his deep affection. In Titus 1:4, Paul calls Titus, “my true child.”
That language generally indicates that Paul is a spiritual father, that is, that he has led Titus to
faith in Christ. But unlike the letters to Timothy, the letter to Titus comes to a pastor who is
serving in a network – we would say a presbytery – of brand new churches at Crete. Timothy,
remember, he went to Ephesus. Ephesus, the church there, had enjoyed three years of Paul’s
daily preaching and teaching in the hall of Tyrannus. And of all the churches of the New
Testament, the church in Ephesus was the most mature. And Timothy had been sent there to
engage in what we may call a revitalization effort to refresh what had begun to grow stale and
tired and to help protect and guard the church against a growing threat of false teaching.
But Titus is in a different situation. These are baby congregations, still figuring out how to
operate, how to fulfill the mission that Christ has entrusted to them on the island of Crete. And so
Paul is writing this letter to explain again how the grace of God in the Gospel orders the life of
the church in basic and foundational ways. And the first four verses of this chapter, our text for
this morning, contain the greeting that was customary in ancient letter writing where Paul sets
out, as you’ll see, his fundamental thesis in this letter and gives us a rich, densely packed
summary of the way the Gospel works. In other words, Paul is not writing the equivalent of a
first century Book of Church Order for the Presbyterian Church of Crete, explaining to them in
cold, legal jargon which policies and procedures ought to be adopted by the leaders of the Cretan
churches so that they might not make a dreadful mess of business. That’s not it at all. Rather,
Paul is writing to give us clarity on the ways that the good news about Jesus shapes the church
and her leaders and her members and her mission for the glory and praise of God.
And as I say, these opening four verses focus our attention on the nature of that good news – the
Gospel. Look at the passage with me please. Titus 1, verses 1 through 4, and notice in the first
place in verses 1 and 2 the three tenses of Gospel salvation. Paul speaks about the Gospel here in
terms of its present effects, its future blessings and its past foundations in the eternal election and
purposes of God. And then secondly, verses 2 through 4, the three modes of Gospel
communication. If salvation through the Gospel comes to us so comprehensively in present,
future and past tenses, it really matters how the Gospel is communicated so that we might
embrace it and live in its light. And so Paul speaks here about God’s eternal promise of the
Gospel, the historic manifestation of the Gospel in history, and his present proclamation of the
Gospel, and Titus and our proclamation of that Gospel in the days in which we live. And so
there’s our outline; I hope you can see it. The three tenses of the Gospel, first of all, and the three
modes of Gospel communication secondly.
Before we read the passage, let’s bow our heads and pray and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us
all pray.
Lord our God, we thank You that You have promised salvation in Christ before all ages. You
have manifested that salvation in the coming of the Lord Jesus in His birth and His life of
obedience and His sacrificial atoning death and glorious resurrection to Your right hand. And
now You proclaim Him to us in Your holy Word. Give us, we pray, ears to hear what Your Spirit
is saying to the church, for the honor and glory of the name of Jesus, amen.
Titus 1 at verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s
elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal
life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time
manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the
command of God our Savior;
To Titus, my true child in a common faith:
Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.”
Amen.
You are at a social gathering, you’re at a party, you’re in a crowd, maybe you know one or two
people but that’s really it, and so you find yourself chatting to a stranger over coffee. And what
do you typically say? In social situations like that, you shake hands perhaps, you say, “Hi, I’m
David. What is your name?” You might ask, “What do you do for a living? Have you lived in
Jackson for many years? How do you know our hosts?” These are the awkward, customary,
introductory remarks we are all prone to make in such circumstances. Now look at these opening
verses please. Notice that is essentially what Paul is doing here according to the norms and the
patterns of ancient letter writing conventions – he’s introducing himself with his name and his
role. Of course Titus knows him well, but this letter will be read to the whole church in Crete.
He’s introducing himself. “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ.”
By the way, the word for “servant” there, remember, is really the word for “slave.” Paul is the
slave of God, bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ and deployed entirely at the
command and sayso of God alone. And so he’s not writing this letter on his own initiative with
his own agenda, asserting his own opinions. In fact, he says, he has been sent into the world as
the divinely authorized spokesman of the risen Christ Himself. That’s what the other part of his
title means. He is an apostle, a sent one. Jesus, who reigns at the Father’s right hand, has sent,
commissioned, commanded Paul to go and speak with His authority to the church. And so these
words of Paul carry weight and gravity and conviction and authority. They are the words of
God’s slave who dares not speak on his own account. They are the words of Christ’s apostle, His
sent one, who writes with the Savior’s direct commission. And so Titus, so church in Crete, so
First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi, these are words we dare not dismiss. Paul is
introducing himself here.
But unlike our – or at least my – awkward introductions meeting strangers at a party, Paul’s
introduction here isn’t really focused on making himself known to his readers. Paul gets the stuff
about Paul over with as quickly as possible. Do you notice that? And he gets to what he really
wants to talk about, what has come to occupy his life’s mission, what will occupy the central
focus of this letter, and what he wants to occupy our hearts and our lives. Paul’s introduction
isn’t really about introducing himself; it’s really about introducing the Gospel, the good news
about Jesus Christ.
And look at how he does that. First of all, by describing the three tenses of Gospel salvation. The
three tenses of Gospel salvation. Consider verse 1 with me. Notice the present effects of the
Gospel. “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Christ Jesus, for the sake of the faith of God’s
elect and their knowledge of the truth.” Paul’s ministry is focused on calling the elect of God
scattered throughout the world to faith in Jesus Christ. That phrase, “God’s elect,” as you know,
refers to the number of those chosen in eternity by God for salvation out of the mass of fallen
humanity and scattered all over the world in every tribe and language and nation. They are the
elect, the chosen ones.
And the task given to Paul, the task now given to Titus here in Crete, the task given to us as the
First Presbyterian Church of Jackson, Mississippi is to go and find them by proclaiming to them
the good news about Jesus all the way to the ends of the earth, seeking to bring the elect of God
wherever they may be found to faith in Jesus Christ. Paul has been sent for the faith, for the sake
of the faith of God’s elect. What is our great mission as a church? Paul tells us here. It is to serve
God for the sake of the faith of God’s elect. We want to be instruments in the gathering in of the
chosen people of God, into His kingdom, by bringing them through our labors, our prayers and
our proclamation of the Gospel, to trust in Christ alone for salvation.
And notice that having been instrumental in bringing the elect to faith, Paul is also sent, he says,
to bring that faith to full maturity. Look again at the text. He is a servant and an apostle for the
faith of God’s elect “and their knowledge of the truth.” Paul isn’t in the business simply of
making converts; he’s in the business of making disciples. He wants to bring people to faith and
then to bring them to full maturity by increasing their knowledge, their grasp and comprehension
of the truth they have come to believe. The calling of the church is not simply to be an
evangelistic agency, seeking only to get people saved and nothing else. The church is not the
spiritual equivalent of a multi-level marketing scheme, peddling Jesus, pressuring folks to sign
on the dotted line. No, the church, rather, is a neonatal ward where new Christians are born, and
it is a nursery and a school and a family in which new believers are nurtured so that they grow up
into maturity, well equipped to live for Christ in a hostile world.
And look again at verse 1 and notice how Paul presses that point. The faith of God’s elect and
the knowledge of the truth, he says, “accords with godliness.” Saving faith and deepening
knowledge of the truth is practical. It is life changing. It results in godliness. It makes people
holy. When faith is little better than mere sentiment and knowledge is nothing more than an
intellectual comprehension of the facts, there can be no lasting, moral, spiritual change. But
when faith receives and rests upon Christ as He is offered in the Gospel, and knowledge of the
truth of God’s Word is understood and applied and lived out in our daily experience, it all
accords with godliness. It results in growing Christlikeness. Contrary to the suspicions of many,
faith and knowledge are not impractical, ethereal things, rendering those who embrace them all
but useless in the real world. True faith, a living knowledge of the truth, changes us from the
inside out into the moral image and likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Gilcomston South Church of Scotland in Aberdeen was the scene of the famous and fruitful
ministry of William Still for decades. It had a sign outside the church that often featured
provocative features for passersby. On one occasion it read, “Renovations within, showroom
upstairs.” And that’s really what Paul is saying here, isn’t it? God is at work renovating lives by
the Gospel, changing us so that our lives accord with godliness. He’s hanging, Paul is here
hanging a sign on the door of the First Presbyterian Church of Crete that reads, “Want to change
your life? Inquire within.” Faith in Christ and a knowledge of the truth guaranteed to make you
new. Here’s the present tense of Gospel salvation. Do you see it? What it does right now in our
hearts – it produces faith, it gives us a knowledge of the truth; not just a head knowledge but an
experiential knowledge, an acquaintance with the reality of the truth, and it all leads, it accords
with godliness.
But then there’s also the future tense of Gospel salvation. Look at verse 2. The faith and the
knowledge of the truth that accords with godliness are all “in hope of eternal life.” The change
that faith in Jesus and a growing personal, experiential knowledge of the truth produces in us
here, making us godly, have a future orientation to them. They are wedded to the hope of eternal
life. Hope there is not an uncertain wish, a mere aspiration. It is, in the New Testament, it is a
confident expectation, an assured destiny, an undoubted future. That’s the Christian hope. And
Paul here is balancing masterfully two dangers into which many of us continue to fall to this day.
On the one hand, some Christians become so focused on heaven and securing a place there by
professing faith in Jesus Christ that they have almost nothing to say about how to live the
Christian life practically in the real world here and now. That’s why verse 1 is so very helpful
when it insists that faith in Christ and a knowledge of the truth makes us godly.
But then on the other hand – and this, I rather suspect, is the prevailing danger in our own day
and in our own context – there are other Christians who become so focused on the present
benefits of following Jesus that they spare hardly a thought for the glory that awaits us. The
reason to believe in Jesus, you will hear them say, is that He shatters the idols of your heart. He
unravels your dysfunction. He remakes and reconfigures your loves. He straightens out your
broken relationships. He makes you a better neighbor, a better friend, a better employee, a better
colleague. And there is so much truth in all of that, of course there is, but remember the words of
the apostle Paul who warns us, “If only for this life we have hope, we are of all people most to be
pitied.” Our hope isn’t that Jesus will simply straighten out our messy, broken lives, though
praise God, wonderfully the Gospel often does indeed do just that. But that’s not our hope. The
Christian hope is that one day the whole world will be made new – a world, certainly, that we
glimpse, we taste here in anticipation, but it is incomplete, isn’t it, in the slow, slow, painfully
slow process of inner spiritual change that we talk about when we talk about sanctification. We
get to glimpse something of the power of a new world already at work in our lives, but we only
glimpse it. But one day, the faith shall be sight. The hope is that Jesus is coming soon and He’s
going to make everything new. Root and branch, top to bottom, inside and out, and forever!
Remember the sign at Gilcomston South? “Renovations within, showroom upstairs.”
Renovations within happening in your life right now, for sure, by the Gospel. But the showroom
is upstairs. The finished article, the completed remodel, waits for the age to come. And when that
day dawns, our focus will not be on our new, completed spiritual transformation, as glorious as
that undoubtedly will be. Our focus on that day will be on the glory of the one into whose perfect
likeness the renovation work has remade us. What is it that we sing? “The bride eyes not her
garments, but her dear bridegroom’s face. I will not gaze at glory, but on my King of grace. Not
at the crown He giveth, but on His nail-pierced hands. The Lamb is all the glory of Immanuel’s
land.”
And something is skewed, it is off kilter in the Christian heart when our constant focus is on how
Jesus helps me feel better, look better, do better here and now. Our focus in the age to come will
be on Jesus who is better, looks better, and has done better than all the creatures of earth or
heaven. And hearts that are being faithfully remade here begin already and more and more to
direct their attention toward Him there. That is our future hope.
The present tense of Gospel salvation. The future tense of Gospel salvation. Now look again at
verse 2 and notice the past tense of Gospel salvation. Our hope is eternal life, “Paul says, “which
God, who never lies, promised” – when? “Before the ages began.” How far back does your
salvation go? All the way back to the person who first shared the good news about Jesus with
you and led you to Christ. Maybe back further to children’s Sunday school where you learned
the basic contours of the Christian story. Or back perhaps further to the family environment that
nurtured you in the faith and loving parents who prayed for you and taught you to trust in Jesus
from your earliest moments. Well verse 2 says that actually the roots of your salvation, the roots
of saving faith in Christ, of growing in the knowledge of truth, of personal godliness, of the hope
of glory, the roots of your salvation and all its complexity and beauty and power, they lie before
the ages began.
God promised to save you, believer in Jesus, in eternity. The Father promised the Son that He
would give you to Him as a heritage and an inheritance. And the Son promised the Father that
He would represent and stand in your place before the bar of heaven’s justice, paying your
penalty, obeying for you, that you might be adopted into the family of God, and then sending
into your heart the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of adoption, uniting you to Christ and working in you
saving faith. The reason the hope of glory isn’t a forlorn hope, a desperate, uncertain wish, the
reason it is, as we often say at funerals at the graveside, “a sure and certain hope,” has ultimately
nothing to do with the present strength of your faith or the quality of your obedience. Your
eternal future is utterly secure, believer in Jesus Christ, because it was promised in the counsels
of the blessed Trinity before time began. And God never, God never lies nor does He ever break
His promises. The three tenses of Gospel salvation. Do you see them?
Now, notice with me the three modes of Gospel communication. How do you come to access
saving faith and have a personal, experiential knowledge of the truth so you begin to live
according to godliness with hearts full of the hope of eternal life, all rooted in God’s age-old
promise? Where do you get this from for yourself? How do you make it yours? Well notice, if
you would, the three verbs that explain how this Gospel is communicated to us. It is, first of all,
promised, as we have already seen – “promised before the ages began,” in verse 2. Then, it is
manifested, manifested at the proper time, right in the middle of history at the coming of Jesus
Christ in the first half of verse 3. Then it is proclaimed. It is preached by the apostle Paul, by
Timothy, by your pastors here in this place in the second half of verse 3. Promised. Manifested.
Proclaimed.
Who was the first evangelist? Who was the first preacher of the Gospel? I wonder what you
would say. What’s on your candidates list? Not Paul. Not Titus. Not even Jesus Christ. The first
two verbs that we just mentioned tell us who the first evangelist was. The Gospel was promised
and manifested, and those verbs have God as their subject. Don’t they? God promised this
Gospel and then God manifested His Word. God is the first evangelist. God is the first preacher
of the good news. God promised salvation by Christ and at the right time, verse 3, God
manifested that salvation in His Word when Jesus stepped onto the scene of history. This is
Paul’s equivalent of John 1:14. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” “God
manifested.” The word “manifested” means “to reveal, to disclose, to make known, to unveil.”
God manifested at the right time in history, according to His eternal plan, His Son, His Word, so
that in Him all that He intends to give sinners in the Gospel might be purchased by His
obedience and blood and made available to everyone who will take Christ by mere faith alone.
Which is why this promised and manifested Gospel is to be proclaimed. Verse 3, “It is
manifested in His Word “through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the
command of God our Savior.” Now pause there for a moment because I want to make sure you
see the significance of Paul’s claim here about preaching. It’s really quite stunning. The faith of
God’s elect, the knowledge of the truth that accords with godliness, the hope of eternal life, all
promised before the ages began and manifested at the proper time in the person and work of
Christ, all of this, Paul says, is made available, communicated, offered to you – how? “Through
the preaching, with which God’s servants have been entrusted.”
Now isn’t that an amazing statement of the instrumental role that preaching plays in God’s
design? Paul has summed up in really just two verses the whole Christian life – present, future,
past, promised, revealed in Christ. It is a breathtaking survey of the whole scope of salvation
from eternity to eternity in as few words as can be imagined and it all comes to sinners like me
and you – to the people of Crete under Titus’ ministry. It comes to a lost, dark world in need of a
Savior. How? What is God’s means of conveying every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places
in Christ? How do you get it? It comes to us, it is conveyed to us in the preaching of the Word.
You sometimes hear us talk around here about the ordinary means of grace. Preaching is the
principle means. The Larger Catechism says, “God maketh the reading, but especially the
preaching, an effectual means of salvation.” And Titus 1:3 explains what we are talking about.
Preaching is the instrument, the means by which God has ordained to get every spiritual blessing
into your heart and into your life as you trust in Jesus Christ. It might not seem like much, but
think about it this way. The same hands that took the five loaves and the two fishes and
multiplied it to feed the 5,000 with baskets left over, the hands of our Savior, the Lord Jesus
Christ, they take the meager efforts of ordinary sinners called to preach the Gospel and they
multiply those efforts to the spiritual sustenance of the whole flock of God. That’s what’s
happening in preaching. King Jesus, breaking the bread of life for the nourishment of your life
and your soul. Isn’t that glorious? At first glance it might not look like much – a monologue, a
talking head explaining the text of a millenia old book. What possible good can that do for
contemporary people? What possible help for today’s world can that offer us? But Paul says God
works by precisely such unlikely means to bring us to Jesus, feed us with Jesus, make us like
Jesus, prepare us to be with Jesus, and then bring us home to dwell there with Him at last.
And so listen, if you do not yet possess the faith of God’s elect, my best advice to you is to sit
weekly under the ministry of the Word. If you know yet so little of the truth, be sure to listen
regularly to the exposition of the Scriptures. If you want to begin to live more and more
according to godliness, give careful attention to the preaching of the Bible. If you want to get
hold of the hope of eternal life, it is the proclamation of Christ in all the Scriptures that you need
most. Don’t look elsewhere. Look to the Word, read and proclaimed. It is God’s way for the
welfare of your life. God, the first preacher who promised Christ and manifested Christ, is now
offering you Christ, right here in the preaching of the Word. I wonder if you would take Him?
Just take Him.
I want you to understand that God has spread a table and it is groaning under the weight of every
spiritual blessing you could ever need, all comprehended in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And He
says to you, “Come and be welcome. Come and take My Son. He’s for you. All you need right
here. Hear My invitation in the preaching of the Word and come and be satisfied.” When you do,
when you answer His call like that in the proclaimed Word, you’ll begin to know for yourself the
realities that Paul describes in his opening word of benediction in verse 4. Here’s what you get.
When your heart responds in faith to the ministry of the Word, you begin to know “Grace and
peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.” May the Lord grant you grace and
peace in His holy Word today.
Let us pray.
Our Father, as we bow before You, we pray, we pray for each other, that You would make us
lovers of Your Word, thirsty, hungry for the Word, not because of intellectual curiosity, not
because we’ve become sermon tasters, but because in the preaching of the Word You have
promised to give us Your Son and He is all that we need, all our hearts need. We pray for each
other that You would help us now, having heard Your invitation, by faith, repenting our sin,
abandoning self reliance, help us now to take the Savior, to come to the banquet table, and feast
and be satisfied. And we pray for any here who know nothing of Christ’s saving mercy. O God,
by the power and work of Your Holy Spirit in their hearts, as they hear Your invitation to come
and be pardoned and cleansed and made new, renovated, would You draw them to Christ? Grant
that they may pass from death to life before the doors open and they walk out into the sunshine,
that all glory and praise might be Yours, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.