Sermon: Titus (Part Four): Traits of a Healthy Church
Sound Doctrine, Sound Congregation
#1622
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 23-Oct-21; 81 minutes
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transcript:
Even though the epistle of Titus is a book of just three chapters, it has very well-delineated sections of a pointed instruction. Paul organized the book of Titus in blocks here and we can follow them very well and get a lot of good instruction out of it. But having reached the end of chapter 1 in the last sermon, we completed the opening section and that concentrated on the wickedness of Cretan society and Cretans in general.
They had a terrible reputation in the Mediterranean region for being lazy and selfish and liars. That was one of the big things, that they were deceitful people. These days to paint a culture or people with such a broad brush is not PC, but Paul does it here because that is generally how they were. He was telling the truth and God verified it, put it in the Bible. So we do not have to worry about what he said there as being true or not. And throughout the book of Titus, he keeps going back to certain things that reflect Cretan society. We will not get into a whole lot of those until the end of chapter 3, but there are a few along the way that I will hopefully point out, were especially pointed at the Cretans because of their particular problems.
Now, chapter 2 opens an entirely new section of the book, and the New King James, if you have one of those, has headers in it. It says there to introduce it: Qualities of Sound Church. That is a very apt description of the contents of the first ten verses here in chapter 2.
Paul had already pointed out the primary need in the elders of blamelessness and sober-mindedness, and he had talked about their very difficult task that they would have in combating the false teachers because, for one thing, it was just so ubiquitous throughout the island that there were people who were contending with them because of the way the Cretans are.
And so in chapter 2, he has to talk directly to the congregation in saying through Titus that these elders that Titus would appoint would need all the help that they could get from the congregation, their support and their blamelessness as well—their good character. Because a church can have the very best pastor or elders or what have you, but if the people they oversee are uncooperative and lazy and neglectful and otherwise disunified with their leadership, the church is going to have some serious problems and it is not going to give the witness that a culture like Crete and a culture like ours today needs to see from the church.
Not only that, it is going to cause a lot of division and disunity amongst the members and it is very likely that that congregation is going to shrink. People are going to be offended, people are going to leave, there will be all kinds of problems. So you not only need an effective, blameless leadership in front of the congregation, you need the congregation to be supportive and helpful in getting the aims of the church where they need to be, getting to the goals of what the church leaders are trying to do.
Now, Titus is called a pastoral epistle for two reasons. Not only do we see Paul, who acts as a pastor over these churches, and he is concerned about the way that they are going to progress. But he also gives Titus, his protege, pastoral advice on how to be a pastor. A short letter like this, only a few thousand words, cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be called a pastoral manual. There is just not enough verbiage in there to give everything that a pastor might need as instruction on how to do his job. But it does provide necessary instruction to pastors on how to handle various situations, what to emphasize in their preaching, how to conduct themselves at all times, not just within the congregation, how to prioritize, and certain things like that.
So it does give a lot of necessary instruction, but not everything. There are still things that have been left out. But if we put Titus together with the two epistles to Timothy, it gives a young pastor a well-rounded foundation to build upon wherever he may be stationed. There is a lot of wisdom there that has been put into the God's Word for all time on this very subject.
Chapter 2, we could say, begins the meat of Paul's pastoral instruction to Titus. And we can see this in Paul's language. Now, most of us do not read the New Testament in Greek. Most of us here rely on translations. So it is not as easy to see in our English translation that there has been a change in his writing style between chapter 1 and chapter 2. But it is readily apparent in Greek, because Greek has, as part of its grammar, what are called moods and they are readily identifiable by the way the words are written.
Moods are grammar-speak, if you will, for the intended purpose, attitude, or tone of a sentence. So, you know from the form of the verb whether it is a question, whether it is a command, whether it is just a statement, whether it is conditional—we should do this or that—or whether it is more imaginative, speculative, and usually this is in a future tense about something that can be done or might be done.
Well, chapter 1 of Titus is written almost entirely in the indicative mood, as it is called. That is, it expresses facts. It just makes statements, one right after another. If you go through Titus 1 quickly, you will not find questions in there. You will only find one command and that is in verse 13, where he says to "rebuke the false teachers sharply." That is the only time that the imperative mood, which is the command mood, is used. So we have all this indicative stuff. We are just learning facts that Paul presents before us, and one command.
But when we get to chapter 2 and chapter 3, they contain ten formal imperatives, as they call them, on pastoral matters. You can see them in chapter 2, verse 1. The word speak. The word underneath that is in the imperative mood. Chapter 2, verse 6, you have the word exhort. Chapter 2, verse 15, you have actually four verbs that are all in the imperative mood. Speak, exhort, rebuke, and let no one despise you. The verb in that sentence is also imperative. There is also four in chapter 3, verse 1, verse 9, verse 10, and verse 14. There are also three more imperatives in chapter 3, verses 12, 13, and 15. Those are all personal requests of Titus by Paul and not these formal imperatives on pastoral work.
So chapter 2, we can say, is where Paul is starting to get down to brass tacks, the nitty gritty of his instruction to Titus, and thus to us, the members of the congregation. He is telling Titus that if he is going to accomplish his task in Crete, which includes appointing elders, which includes confronting the false teachers, as well as being a pastor and all his other duties, he is going to have to accomplish certain things. He needs to do this, he needs to do that, he needs to do this other thing, with some explanatory material in between that Paul felt necessary to include. He is really giving Titus here in chapters 2 and 3, a lot of instruction and it is coming across in the form of formal commands. Speak this way, exhort this way, and whatever other ones that he uses there. Chapter 3, verse 9, avoid these certain other things.
So that is the change that happens between chapters 1 and 2. It gets much more direct, a lot of commands coming at Titus pretty fast. And as I mentioned, this is also the beginning of the instruction for the lay member. While speaking to Titus and his pastoral responsibilities, the apostle is also providing us, Joe and Jane church member, if you will, with teaching about our responsibilities toward God, of course, but in a way I could say especially toward our fellow members in the body of Christ.
This is what makes things a little bit different in Titus than in some of the other instructions that he may have given to Timothy. Paul approaches the idea of a congregation as a whole, a whole thing with many individual parts. We know that he has done this elsewhere and we will get to those in a few minutes. We can call it a single organism with multiple organs and appendages, like a human body, if you will, that are all needed to provide health and strength and focused movement toward the goal that that organism is there for.
He is looking at this as that whole group with its individual members and the individual members need to be all engaged in the roles that they have been called to play within the larger organism. Something we all know, but it comes out in Titus 2 that Paul is looking at it this way. In fact, it is so strong an idea in Titus 2 especially, that our personal transformation into the image of Christ fades a little bit into the background here. Instead of him emphasizing and focusing on that, he is more focused on letting people know what their role is for the whole, for everybody else. There is a little bit in there about one's personal change or transformation into the image of Christ, but he is focusing those changes that we make personally on how we can help the rest of us in our path toward the Kingdom of God. How we can strengthen the whole church, not just ourselves.
So he is telling us, "Yeah, do those things. Become like the new man, grow into the image of Jesus Christ, but use all those changes in an outward loving way to help other people." And we will see this as we go through some of the individual things there in chapter 2. Each individual has a role to play before God in a one-on-one relationship. Yes, that is a given. But what we are taught, how we grow, must be then relayed or changed, refocused into service for the church in one way or another.
Now, the approach here that Paul has is probably a reaction to the situation in Crete. He had to do it this way, because remember, Cretans were selfish. They were known for looking out for number one all the time. They had a very individualistic society. It was predicated on this idea of each man for himself. So what Paul was doing through Titus is he was doing his best to change the mindset of all these newly-called Christians in Crete from being so radically individualistic to being concerned members of a large family. He was trying to change their minds, to make them repent, renew their minds in a way that they were not so focused on themselves, but they were focused actually on bringing God's Word and God's way to the whole congregation and building everyone up to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. To get them from looking inward to looking outward and helping everybody else as much as they can.
We are going to dive into chapter 2 today, where if you want a way to to look at this chapter—at least the first ten verses—this is Paul's instruction to Titus on how a congregation should function. That is pretty much the same thing as the New King James title of Qualities of a Sound Church. I have just changed it a little bit, How a Healthy Congregation Should Function. And his teaching is especially useful for us right now because Western civilization, and definitely America, is highly individualistic and self-centered. All me, me, me. It is what I want, it is what I want to do. And we have to change our minds. We have to change our mindset so that we are not looking out for number one all the time, but having that outgoing concern for our brethren and helping them in whatever way our gifts allow us to.
So Titus 2 tries to pull us out of our little individualistic cocoons that we have placed around us to shield us from other people and pushes us into the fray of living for the good of a family—a united family or a community—through which God is working to build righteous character in each person and bring them all up to and prepared as the bride of Christ. He is teaching us some very fundamental things here, and as we will see as we go through this, it will help to establish unity in a congregation.
Let us kind of chase out over three passages this idea from Paul about unity among many individuals. We will first go back to Ephesians the 4th chapter and we could actually call Ephesians 4:7-16 the essential framework for his instruction to Titus. It is even approached from the same direction in which he first talks about the ministry and how, through the ministry, a unified harmony is a created within the church.
Ephesians 4:7-8 But to each one of us [talking about members of the church] grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, He says, "When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and He gave gifts to men."
Here we find that when Christ rose and He started the church, He started giving out gifts to the people that He was calling in order to help the whole body.
Ephesians 4:11-16 [one of the major gifts] He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers [now notice the reason], for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children [This is very interesting. Just put this in the back of your head that we should no longer be children.], tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does it share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself [the building of itself] in love.
We find here this is what God is doing. This is what Christ as the Head of the church is trying to accomplish. And this is how He is trying to accomplish it: He gives gifts. That is one of the major things. He gave gifts in terms of grace to us. But He also gives us individual gifts that will be helpful for the whole body. One of the major gifts that He gave was the ministry to the church and the ministry has very specific instructions about what its role is. Its primary mission, which we find in verse 12, is, one, to equip and teach and organize the called to serve Christ. That is what their first thing is. Our job is to help you in whatever way we can, so that you can serve Christ because you have been called as just as much a servant as any minister.
We are all servants of Christ. We have all been selected for a role, but some of us have not found it yet because it is not so obvious as someone being called to be a minister and the person is anointed and ordained to that office. He knows what he needs to do. But there are people out there who call themselves, "I'm just a common lay member of the church," who maybe do not recognize their own gifts in which they can serve the church and it is part of the ministry's responsibility to help you find them. But our job is to equip you to use those gifts in the right way, to teach you the things that you need to know to use those gifts in the right way, and to organize these things in the congregation so everybody does his share, and causes the body to move forward toward the Kingdom of God.
The second thing is also in that verse, which is to edify or build up, encourage, unify the body of Christ. We are supposed to help everybody see things in the same way, and to be encouraged that they are not alone, and to help them grow and overcome and become more harmonized with the church and with Christ in bringing therefore more unity to the body of Christ.
So, Paul states the goal, it is a very lofty one, as bringing every member to the perfection of Jesus Christ, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. It is an impossible goal, but it is the ministry's job to move as much as possible toward that goal with as many people as God has given them to serve. To fill their minds with the knowledge of God, to give them the encouragement to keep going, to provide, as we will see in Titus 2, an example of how that works out in the world, or within the church. Lots of ways that ministers have to do their best to bring everybody into the fullness of Jesus Christ. Like I said, an impossible task, but it is that impossible task that we have to reach for, yearn for, in the work that we do.
To put it simply, the ministry are to assist members to mature into the image of the new man, Jesus Christ. Their whole focus is on that.
Note verse 16. This is very important to our study of Titus 2. Paul uses here the metaphor of the human body as his illustration of how all this works. Let us read that again.
Ephesians 4:16 Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does it share, causes growth of the body for the edifying [or building up] of itself in love.
Paul uses this metaphor to demonstrate unity and purposeful interaction for the good of the whole. He is encroaching on what he says in I Corinthians 12 about the body metaphor as he uses it there, encroaching a little bit on that. But what he starts with is the fact that it is a whole body. No parts are amputated, no parts have been taken out. Everything is there. It is the whole body, it is unified, and in harmony. It is not divided in any way. Every joint—this is an important metaphor here. Every joint.
Where is a joint? Joints are in your feet, your ankles, your knees, your hips, your elbows, joints in your neck, everything is one bone connected to another bone. Look at my arm. I have a forearm here and my humorous. Anyway, the elbow is in between and that is where the joint is. It is the connection between two parts. So my forearm is made up of two bones and my humorous here all meet at the same place, my elbow, and that is the joint. This means that (and actually this is a bad illustration because there is two bones in the forearm and not just one but we will just leave it at that), these two parts, my forearm and my upper arm, meet at this point. That is a joint.
Think of my forearm and my upper arm as two members of a congregation. They meet at the joint. That is where they get along. That is where they connect. And he says, "the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies." So, every relationship, every connection between people in the church, supplies something toward the whole body. And it needs to be a good thing to make it a healthy body and a unified body.
So, every joint representing the connections between people, supplies what is necessary for harmony and solidarity and health in the body. This is effective, he says in verse 16, this works when every part does it share. We are not dragging certain parts around with us that do not want to do any work or do not want to do any service. This works best when every part of the body contributes— contributes what is necessary for the good of the whole. He says, this is when the body grows, this is when growth occurs. When we are all saying the same thing, we are all thinking the same thing, believing the same thing, heading along the same path, and all contributing. Each part does its share toward fulfilling this goal. That is when we can have growth, because the body is building itself up in godly love.
See, that is where the joint comes back into it, because in the connection between the two parts there is love. If you will love, greases, lubricates, these joints and makes them work. That is what he is saying here. If we are not all in this endeavor to reach the Kingdom of God and to become like Jesus Christ, then something is going to be lacking. But if we are all in, if we do put all that together, then watch out, because the church is going to grow or at least the congregation that we are specifically talking about.
Let us go to Romans. He uses a similar analogy here. We are going to go to Romans 12. Now, everybody knows Romans 12:1-2, present your body a living sacrifice and do not be conformed, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is what comes immediately after this, that wonderful instruction.
Romans 12:3-8 For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry [service], let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.
This is the immediate instruction after him saying we need to present our bodies a living sacrifice. We need to be transformed by the renewing of our mind as we try to figure out and to do, demonstrate, the will of God. And so the first thing he does, this tells us not to get a big head. That is essentially what he says, "not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think." We might think, "Oh well, I have this great calling by God. This must mean that I'm top dog," and what have you." He is saying, "No, that's not good."
Our approach, once we have been given this calling and we are doing what God wants us to do—we are sacrificing ourselves, we are doing these works, we are trying to become like Jesus Christ, repenting of all the things that we have done that are wrong, and changing the way we think—we need to be humble. Because we have each been dealt a measure of faith. We have each been given certain gifts and God expects us to use them, not for ourselves, but for others. So he is saying, "Okay, these are wonderful things that have been done for you. God has given you many great things, but do not focus on yourself. That's the worst thing you could do is we are focused only on yourself. Don't dwell," he says, "on what is in it for you."
That is going to come naturally. We will dwell on what is in it for us because that is the way human nature works. We already have that selfish nature where we are wondering, well how is this going to work on my behalf? That is there. He says, no, part of that transformation of your mind, the renewing of your mind has to be that you are humble about all this and that you are wanting to use what has been given to you for the good of others. Which is why he immediately launches into this thing about, let us serve one another with the gifts that we have been given. We have all been given something different. Use it! Use it for the good of others.
Now, he tells them, after he says do not get the big head, he says, "but to think soberly." This is a very important word for us today. What is translated here soberly, this is Strong's 4993, the Greek sophron. It is our Greek word of the day. It does mean soberly, that is one way that we can define it. But it really means sound-minded or prudent or self-controlled, and that is the one I like the most. Sophron. We are going to see it several times in chapter 2. We have already seen it at least once in chapter 1. Remember, the elder that was supposed to be appointed was to be self-controlled. He was supposed to have self-mastery. Paul uses it several times in the rest of the book.
What does this word really mean? Definitions are great, but descriptions are sometimes better. Here is one from Dr. Richard Trench. He defined it as a person's "entire command over the passions and desires, so that they receive no further allowance than that which the law and right reason admit and approved." Well, that was from a guy about two centuries ago and the language was a little bit of more difficult. But, a person who has entire command command over his own passions, over his own desires.
We will go back a little further in time to Socrates. Socrates called sophron "the foundation stone of virtue." Xenophon described it as "that spirit which shunned evil, not only when evil could be seen, but even when no one would ever see it." So he is talking about a person who shunned the evil in himself. That is the evil people do not see. If you do evil acts, people see those, but if you have evil thoughts or evil desires and put them down so that they never come out as acts or words, then that is virtuous. That is mortifying those sins, which is something Christianity would approve of, obviously, because it says that in several places.
Putting all these together, these descriptions point to a person who has self-mastery and that is why we like the definition self-controlled. It is one who wisely controls every internal instinct, every urge, every drive, to do what is right. He has perfect control over himself, his body, his thoughts, his words. This is what Paul is trying to get the people in the church to do—to be self-controlled, to be masters of themselves, not let anything slip out that is evil, that is not right and good.
Now here, it has a slightly different implication, because he is talking mostly about humility here—do not get the big head, but think soberly. So, here in chapter 12, verse 3, it is essentially have a humble, modest mind. Be submissive, if you will, because he is talking about a person who realizes his place under God and in the church and in the grand scheme of things. And when we understand our place and we understand our gifts, we can apply them where we are and however we can.
Paul's next sentence after this one in chapter 3, reminds us that we are one part of a far larger body or organism and each part does something different for the good of the whole. We do not all have the same talents. We do not all have the same gifts. We do not have the same upbringing or perspective or any of those things. God has given something to each of us individually and placed us where He placed us for the good of the body, the good of the whole. So, whatever we have been assigned to do, wherever we are, we need to use God's gifts to help edify the whole body, the whole church, or the whole congregation. That is really what Titus was getting at in Titus, he was talking about single congregations. But this can apply even further to the whole body of the church. Or if we do not have the ability to reach more people, just serve those who are nearest, and that will eventually flow out to others.
Let us look one more place for this image, this metaphor in I Corinthians 12. We are going to divide this into two sections.
I Corinthians 12:1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant.
I Corinthians 12:4-11 There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries [or service], but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but is the same God who works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues [languages], to another the interpretation of tongues [languages there]. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.
Here in I Corinthians, we see the beginning of Paul drawing this analogy out to its furthest. Something we need to consider very seriously, especially since we are so scattered far apart. We are scattered all across the nation. We are scattered all across the world. How can we be unified with the body and help others if there is no one else around? But it is imperative that we do so. There has got to be things that we can do to affect the unity and the harmony of the whole because that is how God constructed the church.
So we need to be using our gifts as well as we can and figure out ways that we can use them to help others. We need to consider, as it says in verse 7, what we are contributing to the profit of all. What are we doing to help everybody else as they make their way toward the Kingdom of God? Because God has indeed given us gifts. He calls them manifestations of His Spirit. There is something that He has given us through His Spirit in order to flow out into good works. What are we doing with them?
Are we allowing our gift to just sit there? Are we neglecting it or are we maybe not thinking through how it can be used? Or let us go even further back. Maybe we are not thinking about it all because we have not figured out what our gifts are! We need to take some time for honest self-reflection to determine what it is that God has given us that can help the body because He has given it and maybe we just have not been discerning enough to figure out what it is or maybe we are afraid of it.
Maybe we are afraid of the gift that God has given us because it will tend to expose us in some way. We may have to do something publicly. Let us say, public speaking, That is the number one fear of men. To have to get up in front of an audience and give a speech. Many men would rather go into battle then speak publicly. But if the gift has been given, it needs to be used, it needs to be developed, because God has given that gift to edify the whole. Now that is an easy one to see.
Some people's gift may be an ability to pray fervently. Maybe their prayers work like this gift of healing that is mentioned here—that God really listens to such people. He does say at the end of James that the "fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much."
I do not know how it all works. God has not given me the complete blueprint on all those things, but we know that God has given manifestations of His Spirit to everyone and they are all given purposefully for the unity and edification and growth of the body. They need to be used. They need to be found out, developed, and used. And why? Let us go on.
I Corinthians 12:12-27 Whereas the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. [Notice the oneness here that he is talking about, the unity.] For in fact the body is not one member but many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body," is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body," is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling?
But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be? But now indeed there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you"; nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor; and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty, but our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to the part which lacks it, that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually.
There are two points to be made here before we move on. The first is perhaps the most important— that God has, by His sovereignty, set each one of us in Christ's body exactly where it pleased Him. He put us where we are for a purpose. I am just going to change the wording here a little bit—for a purpose that will glorify Him. When God is pleased, He is glorified, He is honored. So He puts you in a place where you can do the best job of glorifying God. And He gave you the tools to do it. He gave you gifts and He has probably given you a whole lot more that you are not aware of, other things that feed into that major gift that He has given you.
So we need to start right where we are and serve however we can where God has placed us. We do not need to go somewhere else to do what we do. You can start right here, right now, and that will glorify Him because now we are doing exactly what He placed us in the body to do. And that brings Him great pleasure. Like I said, you will add to our gifts to supplement our growth and our service. That is the kind of God He is. He is giving all the time.
The second part that we need to get out of this is he talks about the showier parts. Those who seem to get all the attention, like the ministry. We are up front and center and people see us, but they are not necessarily the most honorable or even the most important. Paul says that those who seem to be weaker or less presentable are actually worthy of greater honor. There are people behind the scenes doing things that bring great honor to the church. If we look on things in the church in this way, if we have this idea that the showier members are not necessarily the greater of the members, if we look at it this way, that makes appreciating the shut-in who prays for others or the senior citizen who writes encouraging notes and cards, we are more likely to be unified, in harmony, because we are realizing that we are all in this together, no matter what our outward circumstance may be.
People may be doing things in the church that nobody ever sees. There are things that no one ever talks about. They are doing all these things privately. But the church is edified by what they are doing. So this should bring harmony because this makes us realize that we are all in this together, no matter what our outward circumstance. And so, if we look at it this way, we can all suffer together, take on other's burdens or we can rejoice together realizing we are, by the grace of God, all in this work of our Savior as equal members, His body, that will ultimately be prepared as His bride. Each of us has a part to play. God has made it that way. But when we all work together, we are going to have the greatest growth, and our attitudes and our character will turn around if they are not in the right place or we will all feel the joy of being one body united in the church.
I hope I have given you the proper background to it all, because this is the idea from which Paul is speaking or writing to Titus. This idea of the unity of the church and the body metaphor. So I am going to read the first eight verses because I think that is all we will get to today and then we will go back and take this in smaller chunks.
Titus 2:1-8 But as for you [he is speaking directly to Titus], speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine: that the older men be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience; the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things—that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. Likewise, exhort the young men to be sober-minded in all things, showing yourself to be a pattern of good works; in doctrine showing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say of you.
Back to verse 1. "But as for you speak, the things which are proper for sound doctrine."
This comes right after he had given him an instruction about these false teachers and how he had to handle them. So here we get to this point in Titus 2 where he gives his first command to Titus for the care of the church. Not his first command overall, because that was directed at the enemies. This is his first command having to do with all his friends in the congregation. He tells him that he has got to be careful of what he says. That is the first command.
Jesus said that we are going to be judged for every idle word or brought into account for every idle word. This, as James says, comes in spades for those who teach. We are going to get the stricter judgment, he says in chapter 3, verse 1 in James, because that is a great part of their role—speaking. And so they have to be very careful about what they say and this does not mean just speaking from the pulpit. This is speaking at all times. So he says, speak what is proper for sound doctrine. He tells him to go on the offensive because this is exactly what the people in Crete needed. They needed someone to speak what was appropriate for sound doctrine because they had been hearing the false teachers speak what is not appropriate for sound doctrine.
So he says, you need to go out there and preach to your congregation the truth, everything you say from the time you step on that island, you need to be saying what is good and right. Because, I know it is as a minister myself, everything that comes out of my mouth that another member of the church hears, is going to be taken as doctrine or as what I am teaching. Whether it is here or whether it is in a conversation wherever it happens to be, whether it is in counseling, whether it is even in my prayers, if somebody hears them, they are going to think that because I am a minister that it is sound doctrine and people will believe it even if it is not. So he tells Titus that you need to be careful about what you say in every situation.
The real reason he was telling him this, not only as an overall instruction as a pastor, but he needed to make sure the members there in Crete knew what was right and good so that they could see, recognize, that the false teachings that they were getting from their opponents were wrong. Paul's representative, Titus, had to teach them the truth, give them the pure truth of the gospel. And by seeing the pure truth of the gospel, they could more easily see the deceptions of the false teachers. This is analogous to the U. S. Treasury teaching its agents to understand the real dollar bill so that when they go out in the field any fake is going to stand out.
He is telling Titus here, you preach the truth. It will make a difference when you preach the truth because people who are really listening will see the difference between the truth and the error.
The word "speak" here in verse 1 is rightly translated as speak. It is not teach. It is the Greek word laleo, which means speak, or say, or talk. So it is any verbal expression from the minister has to be in accordance with sound doctrine. It is another pretty high standard to try to reach. Everything he says—everything!—must be appropriate and in agreement with God's Word. That is hard because our hearts are not pure. What does God say? What does Jesus say? That out of the heart will proceed all these evils.
Sometimes when we speak, we say things that are not right, especially in conversation or what have you, when things are just going around, talking with friends or whatnot, you tend to get a little bit less serious about things, and we tend to be a lot more vigilant about these things when we are giving a sermon. But we have to be this way all the time because of the position that we are in. We cannot afford to slip up because it may make somebody veer off the path. So it is very important to have no "slips of the lip" as a minister.
Like I said, a minister has to be aware from the get-go that everything he says will be taken as teaching. So his words had better accord with Scripture or as Paul puts it here, it has to be sound teaching. It has to be healthy, solid, wholesome, beneficial teaching. And a minister has to expect that every time he says something that it is going to be teaching and not just an idle word because someone will hear it.
Let us go to verse 2. He tells him here that the older men "be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience." Let us just stop right there, pick up the older women there in a minute. Now, there is no verb in this verse. It starts off with "that" and does not give you a verb. But it is probably the same one in verse 6: Exhort. He is telling him to exhort or preach to or encourage or however you want to take it. He is supposed to help these older men in these ways.
Remember what we went through earlier in Ephesians, Romans, and Corinthians. That he was talking about the whole and each person's part to play in it. Well, Paul, in Titus 2, takes these various groups as examples of what they should be doing within the congregation at that age. What is the role in the church for an older man? What is the role in the church of an older woman? What is the role of the church of a younger woman or a younger man? And so he is giving instruction for these various groups on how they, in their particular time and place, can help the whole grow into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. He breaks it down in these age groups.
Now, we are not used to being grouped like this and given particular roles. Obviously this is cultural to the Mediterranean region, but it is fitting for us to look at it this way because we all as baptized members of the church, fit into this role, one of them—older men, older women, younger men, younger women. We are all one of those, at least in our own minds. And so we need to understand what the apostle Paul, and therefore Jesus Christ, expects of us at that time in our life. It is very good instruction. We have to do certain things at certain times in our lives and we have to make sure that when we get to that point or not long thereafter that we have these approved character traits that Paul says we need to have so that we can do the job that we have been given by Jesus Christ to do. So we can fulfill these responsibilities.
You have likely run across these things in your studies, you have probably looked these words up. I am not going to assume you have. But what it all comes down to if you really want a simple way to understand this, is Paul advises Titus to teach people to act their age and fill their roles in the culture of the church. Age was different in that society. In the Roman empire it is thought that the average lifespan during that time was somewhere between 25 and 30 years. People did not get very old. There were lots of deaths in childbirth. There were lots of wars, slaves were worked until they dropped, in some places. There were a lot of things that made people die young. So Paul may considered older men or aged men to be 40! If people were dying most of the time between 25 and 30 years old, if you got to 40 and started to have gray hair, you were considered one of the old in that society. We would probably have to raise that quite a bit in our society when people live to, I think the lifespan is around 78 or something like that across most of Western Europe and America.
It is hard to figure out, but I would say that we will consider an older man in this context to be one whose children are adults and that would go the same for older women. Younger women and men are those who are still of an age to have dependent children. So if your children have left the nest, you are an older man or woman. But if you still have some young ones running around, you are probably in the younger man/younger woman categories. The older men today, let us say, are about my age. I am 55, almost 56. I have got adult children, there is still a couple at home, but they could fly out the coop as early as tomorrow, if they really wanted to. So I guess I am one of the older men. But older men, older women are of this age.
He tells the older men to be sober. This means sensible and clear of mind. Even the word temperate could be used here. I know that it uses that word to translate another word that is coming up here, but it fits better here than it does in the other place. So, an older man is to be temperate or clear of mind—sensible. I like this one, "not given to self-indulgence having learned what true pleasure is." He does not go out looking for for kicks and and pleasurable experiences and all that because he understands that the real pleasures are family, they are good conversations, they are things that are not reckless or too exciting, too dangerous. That he has come to understand that the real pleasures are elsewhere.
He says that these older men need to be reverent. This is the Greek word semnos. It means worthy of honor, respectable, dignified, and serious-minded. The person having reached this age is not somebody who would act the fool, but he would be one who is serious-minded and dignified and seen by others that way. And then this word temperate here, which the New King James has there, is very wrong, I think. This is our word of the day. Sophron, it means self-controlled, sound-minded. And then he adds on here that in their faith, love, and patience, they should be sound. By this point in their life, by this point in their conversion, they should have a very healthy faith, love, and patience. They should be balanced in the way they approach matters. They should have these doctrines, if you will, these fruit of the Spirit figured out and they should have been working on them for a long time. And this all comes out in the fact that they are self-controlled.
That is why sophron is such a very necessary word for us to understand. That they have mastered these things and they are working toward perfection and they have come a long way toward that end. So even as our bodies age and become less healthy, our spiritual attitudes and character traits should be coming more healthy. They should be stronger. We should not let those things wane with age. That is no excuse. We have to be strong in our finish.
So the overall concept that Paul is trying to get across is that the older men should project a sense of gravitas, to use a Roman word, the Latin word. It describes a man who has learned the lessons of life. He has overcome his youthful reckless behavior and realizes that one must take life's journey toward the Kingdom of God with all seriousness. It is not something to laugh at. It is not something to belittle. It is a great and worthy goal and we should apply ourselves to reaching it. This person though, is not a killjoy. He can still laugh and joke and do those things. It is not that he never enjoys those sorts of things, but he takes his responsibilities seriously, especially those responsibilities that are before God. And he has earned the respect of those around him for doing so.
Let us go to the next here, in verse 3. "The older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things—that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed."
The older women have similar responsibilities to the older men. They are to be reverent. This is an interesting word because it means "appropriate for the Temple." It is almost like they are seen as kind of priestesses, these older women. They take their sacred duties very seriously. That is what it means. Their behavior and demeanor are pure, that they cannot be maligned in any way for the way they act. This then goes into what he says here. They are to live up to their status as consecrated by God. So they should not be slanderers, he says. That is diabolus, like the Devil. They cannot be accusers, they cannot be fault finders. They cannot be criticizers. That is not what God does. That is what the Devil does. And remember, this is one of the places where it touches with the Cretan behavior. They were known for lying and deceiving, like the Devil. So he says, you older women, you cannot be like this. You have got to be pure in everything. So do not be a slanderer.
He then he goes on to say that they should stay away from the Schnapps. That they should not be given to wine. It says here, "not enslaved to wine." Do not let it become an addiction for you to drown your pain in some sort of substance. Be very careful. Remember, this was also a particular problem on Crete, that they love their wine. But he tells them instead, be known as teachers of good things. This is both privately and publicly by word and example.
Paul then proceeds to tell what they should be teaching. They should admonish, that is, warn, teach or train or cultivate, the young women in their roles as wives and mothers. This is interesting because in the Greco-Roman culture of the time, women did not have a whole lot of options. Their basic options were be a wife and mother or become a prostitute or a slave. In Greco-Roman culture, especially in the Greek part of that, the women were basically cordoned off in one part of the house and they could not go out in public without a chaperone. They had always to be under the thumb of a man. They could not own a business. They had very few options of what they could do.
So Paul naturally says that the older women are to tell the younger women how to keep the home, how to do all these things, because they were essentially trapped there without these options, so they best make the best of it. They should learn how to be the best wife and mother that they can, and the older women were given the responsibility of training them in this role because they had already been through it. They have made the mistakes, they probably had some good advice to give.
In short, the older generation, their job is to help the younger to order their lives in a godly way and help them not stumble as they had going through their lives. These things are to be done, Paul says, so that God's Word is not blasphemed. There is no reproach to the activities and behaviors of the people. There is no way that someone can speak evil of the people because they are doing what is right and good. God wants us to make a good witness. And one of the ways we do this is by the older people helping the younger people get up to speed and all these things. So teaching these things from the older generation to the younger one lowers the risk of hypocrisy where someone can point a finger at people in the church and say they are not living up to what they believe.
Let us finish this section in verses 6 through 8. "Likewise exhort the young men to be sober-minded [Hey, guess what that word is?] in all things, showing yourself to be a pattern of good works; in doctrine showing integrity, reverent, incorruptibility, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say of you."
Paul includes Titus in his instruction to younger men. So, Titus was probably (somebody asked me this), I said maybe late 30s, early 40s, he was still in the younger man category though. Now, the first thing he mentions is that younger men are to be our word of the day, sophron, self-controlled, exhibiting self-mastery. Younger men are chiefly to develop this trait. That is their first goal: become self-controlled. Because young men tend not to be self-controlled. They are the risk takers, they are the ones that go out to battle. They are the ones that risk themselves in all kinds of endeavors or think that certain things are easy and they put all their money into it and it goes down like a sunken ship and they lose their shirt because they did not see all the troubles and the obstacles that might be there, which an older man with more experience, would be able to see and advise them against
Paul is saying that the younger we develop this vital trait of self-mastery, the better our lives will turn out, because we will learn not to be foolish, headstrong, reckless, or caught up in self-indulgence. When we master our own desires, this means that we can choose to do right, because we are in control of what we do. This sophron is a necessary characteristic of a successful leader, not only in the family, not only at work, not only in the church, but everywhere. If you master yourself, you can do anything that needs to be done, and is right and good.
So Titus, as the most visual member of this group, had to be the local example. An exemplary model of this sophron toward the congregation. Paul really made this guy's life difficult because he had to be the perfect example of all these things. Of course, we have Christ to look at and say, well, He was self-controlled, He exhibited self-mastery, but it is far easier to see it in somebody local. You can see how he actually works, how he uses it in his life. So Paul says, first of all, this is a thing that each minister has to do. He has to be the example of self-mastery.
He was to show this in doing what is good, it says here. That his behavior had to be righteous. His service had to be with integrity. And in the teaching he gave them, his teaching was to be with integrity. That is, it had to be incorrupt. It had to be pure. He had to do things in reverence. He had to be serious and have dignity, and he had to be incorruptible. That is, blameless—there is that word again—in the way that he taught.
Verse 8 expands this last description out, explaining that his speech must be so sound, that is, healthy and strong and whole and correct, that it cannot be maligned in any way. There has to be no chinks in his armor. His opposition, those false teachers that we talked about, will be ashamed, he says, because they have no ammunition to take pot shots at it. There will not be anything there, and they will have to fade into the background.
As Paul's instructions to servants or slaves in the next two verses leads into his more doctrinal paragraph on God's grace that ends the chapter.
If you get anything out of this message today, let it be that we all need to develop self-mastery or self-control, because then, once we do, we will be more fit to help others on the path to the Kingdom of God.
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