As preached by Timothy O'Day.
Faith...
1) Leads to godliness (1).
2) Comes by preaching the hope of eternal life (2-3).
3) Unites God's people in Christ (4).
Right Conduct Begins at the Cross
Titus 1:1-4
October 6, 2024
Several years ago, Haley and I were traveling and got lost. This was before either of us had a smart phone, so there was no real time GPS for us to use. We had an atlas but, as we pulled it out, we realized quickly that it was useless because we did not know where we were. This atlas, which had clear instructions about all the major roads in the state, was useless to us because we did not know where to start. If you had to know where to begin in the instructions of a map are going to be of use to you.
The book of Titus is the same. This is a letter that gives instruction on how a church should be ordered, but if you simply aim to order a church without hitting the right starting point, then the book will be useless to you. And, unsurprisingly, the introduction to the letter gives us the right starting point, namely, the gospel. Until our hearts are ordered around the reality of the gospel, we will not be able to order the church.
An introduction to Titus
Titus is an epistle, written by Paul, to one of his co-workers. It had two purposes for Titus. First, it was meant to direct Titus on what he was to do in Crete. Look down at verse 5,
“This is why I left you in Crete so that you might put what remained into order…”
Sometime after Paul’s imprisonment in Rome, which was described in the book of Acts, Paul was freed and continued his missionary endeavors. This took him to Crete. For an unknown reason, he had to leave before the church could be properly ordered, so Paul left Titus behind to order the church and to address false teaching that had arisen in it. Titus was no novice to this type of work. Titus had worked with Paul since at least his first missionary journey (Gal 2:1), accompanying him on his subsequent journeys. The reality of Titus’ experience leads to the second purpose of this letter. This letter wasn’t merely instruction for Titus; it also served as a grounds of authority from which Titus could act. Here is what I mean: the believers in Crete recognized Paul as an apostle and submitted to his authority. But who was Titus? What gave him the right to say who could be an elder, what counted as sound doctrine, and how believers should conduct themselves? Paul addresses all of these issues as instruction for Titus so that, as he taught and exercised authority, he could say, “I am just following apostolic instruction.” You get this from Titus 2:15, where Paul writes to Titus, “Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.”
And when we, as a church, follow the instructions laid out in this epistle, that is exactly what we are doing as well: living under the authority of Christ has he called his apostles to declare the gospel and order his church.
Now the introduction to this epistle, in verses 1-4, is a microcosm of the issues that Paul will deal with throughout the whole letter. Many have summarized the theme of this letter as belief and behavior, creed and conduct, or doctrine and duty, which are clever ways of saying that what you believe changes how you live. The reason Titus is left to put things in order is because there is disorder and misunderstandings of what the gospel is. This letter lays out how what you believe connects to how you live. So it is no surprise that in the introduction to the letter Paul stresses some key realities about faith in the true God that address the errors in the churches of Crete. Let’s walk through what he says.
First, faith leads to godliness (1)
Like I said, Titus is left in Crete, but many seem to be questioning his authority since he himself is not an apostle. This is why Paul, in writing this letter, does what is normal for him to do: he lays out his credentials of authority. In verse 1 he defines himself as a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. While all Christians should rightly see themselves as servants of God, not all Christians can call themselves apostles. It was an office reserved for those who witnessed the resurrected Lord and were then set apart by him to witness his resurrection in the world. In Acts 9, Jesus appears to and calls Saul—who will later become known as Paul—to be such a witness to the Gentiles.
In stating these credentials and writing these instructions to Titus, Paul is investing Titus with his authority to order the churches of Crete.
To understand what Paul says next about his apostolic ministry requires us to know the situation in these churches. False teaching had already arisen there, and we will give more attention to what this false teaching is next week. For our purposes today, we just need to look down at 1:16 to understand the nature of this false teaching. There Paul says of these false teachers,
“They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works.”
In other words, their doctrine does not lead to godliness. But true faith in the gospel necessarily leads to godliness. This is what Paul means in the rest of verse 1 as he defines why he was made an apostle. God put him in this office for the sake of the elect—meaning those whom God has chosen and called to himself. And he serves as an apostle specifically for the faith, knowledge of the truth, and godliness of God’s elect. All three of these things go together and cannot be separated. These three things—faith, knowledge of the truth, and godliness—are inseparable. For faith to be genuine and saving, it must be based on truth. Faith, in and of itself, is useless if it is not based on what is real. Faith is a response to truth, so if the knowledge is false the faith is useless. Faith in falsehood, even if the faith itself is sincere, is a false faith. I can believe with complete sincerity that my bank account has enough money to pay the bills this month. But if it doesn’t, the sincerity of my faith doesn’t matter. For faith to benefit anyone, it has to be based on the truth.
Paul was entrusted with the good news of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As he made the truth of the gospel known, those upon whom God elected to receive mercy respond to this truth in faith. So in order for faith to come about, the truth must be made known. Saving faith is confidence in the content of the gospel.
Saving faith is hearing the truth that you are a sinner separated from God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, and, because of your sin, you deserve eternal punishment. Yet, in his love and mercy, God sent his Son, the second person of the Trinity, to take on flesh so that he might live a life of perfect obedience, die on the cross to absorb the wrath that all sinners deserve, and rise from the dead in order to defeat sin and death once and for all. Jesus lived the life you should have lived and died the death you deserved to die so that you might have eternal life. All one must do is turn from sin and to Christ, which is what the Bible calls repentance. In turning from sin, you are saved from wrath and brought to God. You become a new creation because you are counted now as one of his people.
And since you are his possession, the result is that you progressively grow in godliness. When you are claimed by God and brought into his family, this necessarily changes you. Consider a human analogy of this. When a family adopts a child, the identity of that child is forever changed. Simply by exposure to his new family, he begins to change and to take on the patterns of his family. This is what happens to us when we receive the Spirit of God and are brought into his family, the church.
While godliness does refer to your behavior, it is not a bare reference to behavior. Godliness issues forth when your life is centered on God instead of yourself. Think of it this way: when you have yourself at the center of the universe, deciding by your own authority what is right and what is wrong, sin is the result. But when you view God at the center of the universe, godliness is the result. Godliness issues forth when your life is centered on who God is, what he has done for you in Christ, and all that he promises to still do for you in Christ.
The alternative to a God-centered life is a self-centered life that manifests itself either in legalism or antinomianism.
Legalism is the belief that, while your faith may be in Christ, ultimately your standing with God depends on your own righteous living. So when you have a really good day and you think you obeyed well, it results in pride. When you have a bad day in which you did not obey, you live in dejection and fear because you did not live up to your standard of behavior. Legalism leads to boasting in yourself or condemning yourself. Either way, it is a life centered on yourself: you measure your standing with God based on what you do. This is not godliness.
Antinomianism is the belief that since Christ died for sin, there is now no law you need to follow. You can simply do what you please. This leads to licentious living and, as such, is a self-centered life. You are doing what you want to do instead of submitting your desires to the Lord. This is not godliness but selfishness.
The gospel provides freedom from the self-centered life because, when you look at the cross, you are met with the reality that sin is evil and there is nothing you can do to atone yourself of it. Yet God is so loving that he set us free in Christ Jesus from the guilt of sin and from the power of sin. The good news of Jesus Christ is that you do not have to perform in order to be right with God. Jesus has done all that is necessary for you to have peace with him. And the good news of the gospel is not only that you are forgiven, but that you are changed into God’s possession. His law no longer condemns you but guides you in how you can live in communion with him.
Faith in the Truth Leads to Godliness
As we come together as God’s church, we must begin at the level of our own hearts. Does your faith—your doctrine—lead you to godliness? Put differently, does your doctrine lead you to God-centeredness? Are you preoccupied with what God has done or what you have done? With who God is or with who you are?
Here is the real test of your doctrine: does it cause you to dwell on God and delight in God or to obsess over yourself? Both legalism and antinomianism are self-obsessions. But the fear of the Lord is an obsession with the glory of God that draws you to hear him, heed him, trust him, rest in him, and through this become conformed to his image.
Faith and knowledge lead to godliness, but from where do faith and knowledge come? That is what we see in verses 2-3 in our next point.
Second, faith comes by preaching the hope of eternal life (2-3)
Verse 2 tells us that faith and knowledge rest on the hope of eternal life. That is to say, if there is no such thing as eternal life, if there is no resurrection from the dead, then the gospel isn’t beautiful—it is foolish.
If you do not believe that there is an age to come, then you will—in some shape or form—live out the principle, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
The good news of the gospel rests on the reality that there is more than this present age. Beyond this world, there is another, where we will be in perfect communion with God or eternally separated from him and all good things. In the world to come, there is eternal life and eternal punishment. Jesus teaches us this. Consider Matthew 19:29 and Jesus’ promise to those who leave what the world promises in order to be with him,
“And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.”
And hear his word of warning to those who do not receive him in Matthew 25:46,
“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Don’t Lose Sight
It is so easy to forget about the world to come and that this life is not all that there is. This is especially true for us who live in such an affluent age and country. I remember years ago talking with one of my professors who had the opportunity to teach some pastors in China. He went over secretly and met with them and taught them over several days. At the end of his time, he thanked them. He told them that, even though he was teaching, they had built up his faith. He confessed to them that he did not know if he would have a faith strong enough to make it in such a hard area. At this, one man immediately broke in and said, “Oh, no. You are the one with the strong faith. I don’t know if I could make it with all the temptations for ease and compromise. I am afraid I would forget Christ.”
Present pleasure can cloud out the sight of eternal treasure. Present hardship can block our view of eternal hell.
If you have all the pleasure now, then the knowledge of the truth will not seem appealing to you and you will not apprehend the gospel by faith.
And because we are confronted with temptations to live for this age only and thus forsake the hope of eternal life, disregarding the knowledge of the truth, God gives us great confidence that the hope of eternal life is true.
The Hope of Eternal Life is Secure
The Lord shows us that the hope of eternal life is secure in two ways. First, God promised the hope of eternal life to his elect, as we read in verse 2. This promise should rouse in us great confidence because God does not lie, as we read in verse 2 as well. He is not a man that he should lie. He is perfect and faithful so, when he makes a promise, he keeps that promise. Simply read through the Old Testament and you will see evidence again and again that when God makes a promise, he keeps it, even when it seems impossible.
But not only should this promise make us feel confident because God does not lie. It should also make you feel confident because he did not give this promise on the fly. Before there was time, God determined to save a people for himself to whom he would grant eternal life. Before anything else existed, God existed. He is the only one who is eternally self-existent, meaning that he depends on nothing and no one else. That is the exact opposite of who you are and who I am. We are dependent creatures. We did not decide to exist and we rely on God to keep existing. This is what makes God’s promise so utterly secure and trustworthy. When I make a promise, I can have all the intention in the world of following through on what I said. I can say to my wife, “I promise that I will be home at 5 pm,” but then get a flat tire and get home at 7 pm. I didn’t lie, but I was not able to deliver on my promise.
God is not like that. When he makes a promise, he will keep it and nothing and no one can turn back his hand from doing so. The hope of eternal life is secure because of who God is—faithful and all-powerful.
The hope of eternal life is secure in a second way as well: God has commissioned the proclamation of eternal life. Look with me at verse 3, speaking of this promise of eternal life, “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.” When Paul writes “word” here, it is another way of saying “gospel” and Scripture that promises the gospel. In other words, he is saying “At the exact right time this promise of eternal life was made manifest in the gospel through the preaching that I was called to do.” Paul and the other apostles, witnessing the resurrection, now preach Christ, who is the key to understanding how God could actually give eternal life to sinners.
God did indeed promise eternal life and that the nations would be blessed through the seed of Abraham. But how he would actually do that remained a mystery because God’s people had to continually make offerings for their sin. In order to have eternal life, there would need to be a final answer to the sin problem. How this would be done remained a mystery—until the cross. On the cross, God the Son provided the answer to the issue of sin. By dying as our substitute, he paid finally and forever the penalty of our sin by taking on the wrath we deserve. And we know that he totally absorbed the wrath of God for us, leaving nothing for us to fear, because he rose from the dead, showing that the debt was completely paid. And now, by faith, our sins are paid and we receive His Spirit and the gift of eternal life.
The preaching of the gospel is the declaration of the resurrection—that eternal life is not an empty promise. So don’t be distracted by the pleasures or the pains of this age. Don’t set your hope on merely accumulating pleasure now or escaping hardship now. Instead, set your hope squarely on the promise of eternal life.
This is the message that Paul proclaimed as an apostle, commissioned by Jesus Christ so that God’s people could have the hope of eternal life. And it is the message we proclaim today as God’s people.
Don’t Change the Message
In ministry, we do not have to invent something to say in order to appeal to people. This is what can often go wrong in churches. People think, “What could get more people to come to our services?” And then they try to shape the message to fit the ears of the people. Yes, we should consider how to get people’s attention. Yes, we should consider people’s need and how best to communicate the gospel to them. But we should not tailor the gospel itself in order to get more people to join us. That is not our mission. Our task is to receive what God has promised and to proclaim this authoritative message given to us once and for all in Scripture.
And yet, gospel does more than just speak of what life will be like. It changes our lives now. This is where our text finishes in verse 4 in our last point.
Third, faith unites God’s people in Christ (4).
In verse 4, Paul finally reaches his addressee, Titus, calling him “my true child in a common faith.” This most likely means that Titus was a convert under Paul’s ministry, likely during his first missionary journey. What’s remarkable about this statement, especially considering the fact that the false teaching taking place in Crete was around circumcision, is that Titus is a gentile by descent. And here Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews, calls him his true son.
And the reason they have this relationship is because they share a common faith, meaning that they have responded to the gospel and believe the same content of the gospel. As such, they both rest under the grace and peace of God the Father and Christ Jesus.
God’s people do not have to share an ethnic, cultural, or historical background. What they share is a common faith in the one true God, because they are recipients of the grace of God, and thus rest under the peace of God.
As we continue to read through Titus, you are going to see that, while separated by a lot of distance and time, we are not that different from this church that Titus must set in order. In our church, we need faithful pastors to refute error. We need to be on the lookout for those who spread false doctrine. We need to acknowledge that we have room to mature and, by God’s kindness, God has supplied people around us in the church to help us mature. We need to pursue good works, but from the right motives.
We need to do this as a church. And it all begins as we share a common faith, sharing God as our Father because we have Jesus as our Savior and Lord.
To be rightly ordered as a church, we must begin at the cross. There is more instruction to come, but the map of right conduct will not make sense if we do not start at the cross of Christ.
Which is why if you do not know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you need to set everything else aside and make this your number one priority. One day, Jesus will separate people to his right hand and to his left, welcoming his own into the New Heavens and Earth, while casting those who embraced their sin into eternal Hell. You do not need to die in your sins. You can have the hope of eternal life because Jesus offers it to you freely. Do not delay another day. Come to him and have this sure hope of eternal life.
This is the hope that we, God’s people, celebrate every time that we come to the table. Let me pray for us as we prepare to receive this meal today.
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